One of the greatest "free finds" I've ever had was when I walked into my office's recycling room and found *all four* of the main Tufte books (https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_be) just sitting there about to be thrown out. Yoink!
I spent years as a pre-teen, then teenager, and then young adult, drooling over whichever of his books were available back then in whatever Borders or Barnes and Nobles I happened to be in at the time. But I always ended-up picking (beautiful) architecture books instead. I can't remember if ET's books were more expensive. Architecture books (with beautiful illustrations) are usually pretty expensive! I did love architecture then, and don't remember loving data visualization, so that might be why I never actually got ET's books until much later. But they're wonderful!
I actually never noticed, or don't now remember, any of the 'autistic' things you describe, or that the books ever rambled, or took off on surprising tangents. If anything, the text and illustrations seem, in my memory, _very_ coherent and, overall, orchestrated (and very well). It is (again, in my memory) very 'poetic' – in part because it's _very_ concise.
I wonder if I also just happened to pattern-match the anti-PowerPoint stuff as being in the 'genre' of works that also includes (legendary) 'tech' rants (that launched a thousand flame wars). But, like those other rants, I think the anti-PowerPoint stuff is _mostly_ true. I very much disagree that anyone ever _needs_ to use PowerPoint (or similar); at least not in the standard (terrible) way by which presenters infantilize their material by trying to fit it into a bulleted list of a handful of short awkward phrases.
If I didn't already love this substack "It is as if I spent my entire life reading Isaac Asimov and thinking that that was what prose is, and then I read Vladimir Nabokov for the first time" would have done it for me.
Is the edwardtufte.com website the best place to get this book?
One of the greatest "free finds" I've ever had was when I walked into my office's recycling room and found *all four* of the main Tufte books (https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_be) just sitting there about to be thrown out. Yoink!
I spent years as a pre-teen, then teenager, and then young adult, drooling over whichever of his books were available back then in whatever Borders or Barnes and Nobles I happened to be in at the time. But I always ended-up picking (beautiful) architecture books instead. I can't remember if ET's books were more expensive. Architecture books (with beautiful illustrations) are usually pretty expensive! I did love architecture then, and don't remember loving data visualization, so that might be why I never actually got ET's books until much later. But they're wonderful!
I actually never noticed, or don't now remember, any of the 'autistic' things you describe, or that the books ever rambled, or took off on surprising tangents. If anything, the text and illustrations seem, in my memory, _very_ coherent and, overall, orchestrated (and very well). It is (again, in my memory) very 'poetic' – in part because it's _very_ concise.
I wonder if I also just happened to pattern-match the anti-PowerPoint stuff as being in the 'genre' of works that also includes (legendary) 'tech' rants (that launched a thousand flame wars). But, like those other rants, I think the anti-PowerPoint stuff is _mostly_ true. I very much disagree that anyone ever _needs_ to use PowerPoint (or similar); at least not in the standard (terrible) way by which presenters infantilize their material by trying to fit it into a bulleted list of a handful of short awkward phrases.
His site has a forum with lots of great posts. Interestingly, a recentish one is all about how Amazon 'banned' PowerPoint and apparently to great (positive) effect: https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000JLy&topic_id=1
ET also has a new book: https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/seeing-with-fresh-eyes
I received my (autographed) copy a few days ago but haven't started reading it yet.
If I didn't already love this substack "It is as if I spent my entire life reading Isaac Asimov and thinking that that was what prose is, and then I read Vladimir Nabokov for the first time" would have done it for me.
Lovely review, thanks.