About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Windows Phone 8 in Action is captioned “L’Usurier,” which means a money lender, or, perhaps more accurately, in 21st-century parlance, a banker. The dapper young man exudes confidence, no doubt stemming from his profession. The illustration is taken from a 19th-century edition of Sylvain Maréchal’s four-volume compendium of regional dress customs and uniforms, published in France. Each illustration is finely drawn and colored by hand. The rich variety of Maréchal’s collection reminds us vividly of how culturally apart the world’s towns and regions were just 200 years ago. Isolated from each other, people spoke different dialects and languages. In the streets or in the countryside, it was easy to identify where people lived and what their trade, station in life, or rank in the army was just by their dress.

Dress codes have changed since then, and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It’s now hard to tell the inhabitants of different continents apart, let alone different towns or regions. Perhaps we’ve traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.

At a time when it’s hard to tell one computer book from another, Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought to life by Maréchal’s pictures.