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. A vulture is featured on the cover of Windows NT File System Internals. Vultures are divided into two famlies--New World vultures, a family that includes the majestic but near-extinct California condor, and Old World vultures. Both families are closely related to eagles and hawks, but, unlike their relatives, vultures are carrion eaters, not hunters. A vulture will rarely kill for food. Instead, they sit by and wait for another animal to die before starting to dine. Vultures often live in open country where herds of large mammals, such as cattle, can be found. They fly in slow circles, searching the ground for dead, sick, or injured animals. They also watch for running packs of jackals or hyenas, who often lead them to food. When food has been spotted, the vulture swoops down to the ground, and other circling vultures follow.

Both Old World and New World vultures have heads and necks that are almost bare, covered only by a thin layer of down. Many vultures have a thick ruff of feathers around their neck. These adaptations allow the vulture to place its head deep inside carcasses without soiling its plumage. The digestive enzymes of the vulture allow it to survive on decaying meat that would be toxic to other animals. Although the modern view of vultures is often one of disgust and comtempt, some ancient cultures revered them as embodiments of immortality. Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.3 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use RepKoverTM, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds RepKover's limit, perfect binding is used.

The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker 5.0 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.