I just finished reading Beautiful Evidence, by Edward Tufte, the fourth in his series on information presentation. I wrote a review of the first three books in the series early last year, but neglected to post it here, so I’ll start with that.

Edward R. Tufte has written three excellent books that describe how to effectively present information using graphical displays: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations.
 
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information seeks excellence in statistical graphics. Simple tables can mask interesting qualities of large data sets, so graphics should be used to effectively communicate the ideas represented by the data. In fact, “graphical excellence gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space” – within reason, of course.
 
Is it also important to Tufte that graphics “tell the truth” about the data. It is easy – and common – to manipulate graphics in subtle ways to help prove an idea that the data doesn't necessarily support. He gives a number of guidelines to help maintain graphical integrity.
 
Envisioning Information aims to increase graphical excellence in charts and maps using the theories of his first book. The book consists mostly of examples of graphical excellence and Tufte’s explanations of what makes them so great.
 
Each chapter focuses on a different category of graphic. Micro/macro readings show patterns at a glance, and details when you look closely. Proper layering and separation is important to direct attention to the information. Small multiples show similar images on the same page for easy comparison. Color has great potential when used properly. Finally, combining a map and a time-series is a great way to show a narrative of space and time.
 
Visual Explanations is about using graphics to help explain complex processes. This book has a number of excellent examples of graphical presentations that had great success in communicating an important idea, as well as examples of poor presentations that were unable to do so – such as the recommendation to not launch the Challenger Space Shuttle in extremely cold weather.
 
All three books are fun to read and beautiful to look at. They provide challenging insights into what makes great informational graphics.

I also enjoyed reading Beautiful Evidence, but I didn’t find it as interesting as I had hoped. The material seemed too familiar. The book teaches the same fundamental concepts as his previous three books, and uses some of the same examples. Two of the chapters were adapted from previously published white papers, which I had already read. I also found the end of the book to be rather anticlimactic – the last chapters have to do with sculptures, which I unfortunately found uninteresting.

Still, if you’ve already read his first three books, you can hardly neglect his fourth. I certainly recommend the series as a whole – it is great food for thought.

Professional .NET 2.0 Generics, by Tod Golding, explains why generics are important to the .NET Framework, explains the differences between .NET generics and C++ templates, and describes how generics are used in C# and VB.NET. Unfortunately, after the first few chapters the book is often difficult to understand, provides incomplete explanations, gives some bad advice, and is occasionally incorrect.

Thus I can’t recommend this book, though it may still be helpful for those who need a basic introduction to generics, or to experienced developers that are looking for the occasional nuggets of interest. For example, I wasn’t certain that protected members were accessible among all “closed constructed types” of a generic class. I also hadn’t explored the ways in which ambiguities can arise with generic method overloads; specifically, I didn’t know that potentially ambiguous methods prevent VB.NET from even compiling a class, whereas C# will not fail until code attempts to call the ambiguous method.

I browsed through The Zen of CSS Design, by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag. It's a beautiful book that describes a number of the designs at http://www.csszengarden.com/. I learned a few things about CSS along the way, but I mostly learned to be glad that I'm not responsible for creating nice designs for multiple browsers using only CSS on semi-structured content. Even if I were a capable designer, it does not look like a fun task. I'm glad that there are people out there that can do it, though; the Web would be an uglier place without them.