Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The image featured on the cover of The Mosaic Handbook for Microsoft Windows is of a sailor on look out in a crow's nest. It is likely that this particular crow's nest was attached to the mast of a late 19th century Arctic whaling vessel. During the whaling industry's height, from about 1820 to the onset of the Civil War, more than 500 ships and 15,000 men, mostly from New England, were employed in the trade at any given time. These ships plied the Altantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, hunting mainly sperm whales. The oil derived from the blubber of the sperm whale was considered to be the finest.

By the time the Civil War began, overharvesting had greatly depleted the whale population. New England's whaling fleet was diminished by the War, and the increased availability of petroleum led to a decreased need for the oil of the sperm whale. Whalers shifted their focus to Arctic Ocean, and the huge supplies of baleen they could elicit there from bowhead whales. Baleen is a flexible material found in the mouths of most whales that was used to make umbrellas, corset stays, fishing rods, and knitting needles, among other things.

The hunt for whales was, obviously, a very dangerous profession. Journeys often lasted as long as four years, and boredom, sickness, and death were accepted hazards of the job. Because of the harsh Arctic conditions, these whalers faced a set of perils unknown to those who went before them. The job of look out was a particularly unpleasant one. There was little or no shelter from the elements in the crow's nest, which was situated 100 feet or more above the deck. Visibility, which was from eight to 12 miles in the Pacific ocean, was rarely more than six miles in the foggy Arctic, and often much less. Watches were for two hours at a time, and injury from falls or frostbite was common.

Today many species of whales are endangered or threatened, including the bowhead and the sperm whale. Only the Pacific Blue whale has increased inpopulation enough to be removed from the endan gered list. Since 1946 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has sought to limit, but not ban, commercial whaling. The IWC has no power to punish nations that exceed the limits that they set forth. Most nations have agreed to a total ban on commercial whaling, but in 1993 Norway and Japan lifted their bans. ...

Edie Freedman designed this cover. The cover image is adapted from a 19th-century engraving from the Bettman Archives. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font.

The inside formats were designed by Edie Freedman and implemented in sqtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Aldus Freehand by Chris Reilley, and the screenshots were processed in Adobe PhotoShop using Photomatic. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary. Special thanks to Janet Hamilton of the Museum of Science in Boston for her help.