Beautiful Evidence
I’m the newest member into a small book club that only counts tech geeks in its membership. The first book I read in the club was Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence.
I was really excited to read this since I’ve been to Tufte’s lecture twice before but I will sheepishly admit that I hadn’t read any of his books. They look really good on the book shelf though! 
Beautiful Evidence had some really good moments, but it also had some not-so-good moments. All of the members of the book club had issues with the book. Those that have read his other books felt it wasn’t up to par with the others. I really liked the chapters on labeling and sparklines, but there were several parts that just seemed to ramble.
I’m not going to rag on the book. It wasn’t bad — I guess I just expected something more.
Tufte has his moments, and there are chapters in my copies of his books that have seen quite a bit of wear, but some of his stuff seems to exist only to make all of the books about the same thickness on the shelf.
(I liked the sparklines section too.)
Ira
13 Mar 08 at 11:47 am