Every time we play the game Mouse Trap—introduced in 1963—we’re getting a lesson in Rube Goldberg’s principle of design: form doesn’t follow function. Goldberg was a cartoonist and he delighted readers with drawings of convoluted gadgets that were, he said, symbols of “man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to achieve minimal results.” He did, however, turn his vision to more serious subjects: in 1948 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons. This is the first comprehensive retrospective on the illustrator, author, and inventor since 1970. —L.J.