When you go to a new school it takes a while to know the ropes.
到一所学校读书要花一段时间熟悉情况。
A book is the same today as it always was and it will never change.
一本好书今天如此,将来也如此,永不改变。
Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history.