The figure on the cover of Groovy in Action is a “Danzerina del Japon,” a Japanese dancer, taken from a Spanish compendium of regional dress customs first published in Madrid in 1799. While the artist may have captured the “spirit” of a Japanese dancer in his drawing, the illustration does not accurately portray the looks, dress, or comportment of a Japanese woman or geisha of the time, compared to Japanese drawings from the same period. The artwork in this collection was clearly not researched first hand!

The book’s title page states:

which we translate, as literally as possible, thus:

Although nothing is known of the designers, engravers, and workers who colored this illustration by hand, the “exactitude” of their execution is evident in this drawing. The “Danzerina del Japon” is just one of many figures in this colorful collection. Travel for pleasure was a relatively new phenomenon at the time and books such as this one were popular, introducing both the tourist as well as the armchair traveler to the exotic inhabitants, real and imagined, of other regions of the world

Dress codes have changed since then and the diversity by nation and by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is now often hard to tell the inhabitant of one continent from another. Perhaps, trying to view it optimistically, we have traded a cultural and visual diversity for a more varied personal life. Or a more varied and interesting intellectual and technical life.

We at Manning celebrate the inventiveness, the initiative, and the fun of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life two centuries ago, brought back to life by the pictures from this collection.