Rating: 
Summary: Awesome, a must!
Review: What an amazing book. Incredibly complex and massive information is broken down into easy to understand charts, graphs, and picutres. This book is really about two things - one is understanding various aspects of the United States from politics to demographics to education. The second, is how charts can be designed in creative ways to communicate information. I've used several of the concepts myself at work. Great book.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: What an amazing book. Incredibly complex and massive information is broken down into easy to understand charts, graphs, and picutres. This book is really about two things - one is understanding various aspects of the United States from politics to demographics to education. The second, is how charts can be designed in creative ways to communicate information. I've used several of the concepts myself at work. Great book.
Rating:
Summary: what's the deal with the funny box...
Review: What's the deal with the funny box that surrounds one of the bombs in the War & Defense section of the book? I looked to see if it was a ghost image from the preceding page, but it there was no matching image. Is this another example of those designer snobs thinking that they can pull the wool over the eyes of the innocent public? Do they really think that they can get away with this? And what's the deal with all those pictures? If I look at more than one page I get confused and suddenly I can no longer recognize family members and I start to sieze. Damn designers!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome, a must!
Review: Wow, what an awesome book! It's the perfect coffee table book, especially for the social scientist and those who are interested in the world around us. No, it does not serve well as an almanac or reference book that you turn to when you're looking for information about one tiny specific topic. Rather, it is the perfect book to flip through and in which you will find a myriad of interesting information. The graphics are absolutely fabulous. If only textbooks were written this way, students would actually learn something from reading their assigned material. A wonderfully imaginative-while-factual look at the world.
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