About the Cover Illustration

On the cover of Mahout in Action is “A man from Rakov-Potok,” a village in northern Croatia. 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.

Rakov-Potok is a picturesque village in the fertile valley of the Sava River in the foothills of the Samobor Mountains, not far from the city of Zagreb. The area has a rich history and you can come across many castles, churches, and ruins that date back to medieval and even Roman times. The figure on the cover is wearing white woolen trousers and a white woolen jacket, richly embroidered in red and blue—a typical costume for the mountaineers of this region.

Dress codes and lifestyles have changed over the last 200 years, and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is now hard to tell apart the inhabitants of different continents, let alone of different hamlets or towns separated by only a few miles. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.

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 back to life by illustrations from old books and collections like this one.