A Tale of Two Covers

English version of "The Art of Concurrency"

The original cover, the English version, shows combines working in parallel in a wheat field.  I must admit that I was a bit crestfallen when my editor told me that my book would not feature an "O'Reilly animal" on the cover since it was being published under their "Theory to Practice" imprint. However, since I got my Masters degree from Washington State University in the heart of the Palouse, this photo had a double meaning for me.  And it really is a perfect choice to illustrate parallelism.

But, with the publication of the Japanese version, I've joined the club. The Japanese cover features a bird sitting on a branch.

Japanese version of "The Art of Concurrency"

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what species of bird this is.  My first thought was that it was an Oriole of some kind.  If it were in color and had orange feathers, it would be a Baltimore Oriole.  I can't read the Japanese to find the "Colophon" section in the text and probably wouldn't be able to translate the name of the species even if I could. Plus, the amateur ornithologist in the office is out on vacation at the end of the year. I may just need to wait until he gets back to ask his opinion.

Still, I'm very pleased on how this edition turned out.  I'm indebtted to everyone that had a hand in the translation and the production of this book, especially Junjiro Okajima (creator of the Aufs file system for Linux) for his translation and depth of pop culture knowledge. 

I hope this text will prove to be helpful to Japanese programmers that are confronted with parallel programming projects.