about the cover illustration
The figure on the cover of Natural Language Processing in Action, Second Edition, is “Woman from Kranjska Gora, Slovenia,” taken from Balthasar Hacquet’s Images and Descriptions of Southwestern and Eastern Wenda, Illyrians, and Slavs, reprinted by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2008.
In those days, it was easy to identify where people lived and what their trade or station in life was just by their dress. Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional culture centuries ago, brought back to life by pictures from collections such as this one.