About the cover illustration

The figure on the cover of Hadoop in Action is captioned “A young man from Kistanja, Dalmatia.” The illustration is taken from a reproduction of an album of Croatian traditional costumes from the mid-nineteenth century by Nikola Arsenovic, published by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2003. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum in Split, itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of the town: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

Kistanja is a small town located in Bukovica, a geographical region in Croatia. It is situated in northern Dalmatia, an area rich in Roman and Venetian history. The word “mamok” in Croatian means a bachelor, beau, or suitor—a single young man who is of courting age—and the young man on the cover, looking dapper in a crisp white linen shirt and a colorful, embroidered vest, is clearly dressed in his finest clothes, which would be worn to church and for festive occasions—or to go calling on a young lady.