There is a dearth of books covering drawing and product design. Drawing for Designersfills this gap, offering a comprehensive guide to drawing for product/ industrial designers and students. As well as industrial product design, the book encompasses automotive design and the design of other 3D artefacts such as jewelry and furniture.

Covering both manual and computer drawing methods, the book follows the design process: from initial concept sketches; through presentation drawings and visualizations; general arrangement and detail drafting; to fully dimensioned production drawings; and beyond to technical illustrations and exploded/assembly diagrams used for publicity and instructing the end user in the product's assembly, operation, and maintenance. Case study spreads featuring famous designer products shown both as drawn concepts and the finished object are interspersed with the chapters. There are also several 'how-to-do-it' step-by-step sequences.

The much-anticipated fourth edition of Designing the User Interface provides a comprehensive, authoritative introduction to the dynamic field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Students and professionals learn practical principles and guidelines needed to develop high quality interface designs—ones that users can understand, predict, and control. It covers theoretical foundations, and design processes such as expert reviews and usability testing. Numerous examples of direct manipulation, menu selection, and form fill-in give readers an understanding of excellence in design. Recent innovations in collaborative interfaces, online help, and information visualization receive special attention. A major change in this edition is the integration of the World Wide Web and mobile devices throughout the book. Chapters have examples from cell phones, consumer electronics, desktop displays, and Web interfaces.

Widely esteemed Mac authority David Pogue weighs in on the latest offering from Cupertino with Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. It's a fact-packed romp through the operating system and the extras that come with it, made resoundingly more readable by the depth of Pogue's knowledge, his familiarity with Mac history, and his eagerness to engage novices as members of the Mac user community. Unlike most books about Mac OS X, this one explores its Unix-like underpinnings (the Apple implementation is called Darwin) pretty thoroughly. However, based on the logic that if you wanted to use Unix, you would, Pogue emphasizes the traditional, graphical Mac interface over the Terminal window.

Pogue, who's written about Macs for years and whose professional qualifications extend beyond computers (he's an orchestral conductor), writes about Macs at the user level with clarity. He's also quite good at dealing with the numerous options and variations that apply to Mac procedures, and makes very good use of sidebars for clarifying details. In a section on printing, for example, Pogue explains why there's no longer an option to turn off background printing (true multitasking has rendered the option obsolete). There's also good coverage of the online iTools, tailored to people unfamiliar with integrating remote resources into their personal computing environments. —David Wall

Topics covered:Apple Mac OS X for people who will use the operating system, either on a standalone computer with Internet access or on a computer that is part of a home or organizational network. Running applications (in Classic mode as well as in native Mac OS X mode), printing, networking, multimedia, security (including Keychain), and utilities are all covered.

A visual feast of fifty of the most craptastic cars ever to hit the American highway.
 
Crap Cars is a window into the vanity and silliness of almost any decade as expressed through that ultimate of status symbols: your car. Traveling from the ’60s to the ’90s, it showcases the cheapest, the tackiest, and the mechanically inept, including cars made by companies like Porsche and BMW that put them to shame. There’s also the blobby Merkur Scorpio, the ungainly Rolls-Royce Camargue, the squarish Maserati Biturbo, and the (ironically) flammable Renault Fuego. Each photo spread is accompanied by a short, hilarious critique by Richard Porter, a crap car expert, who sees straight through all the pimped-out bodywork to the true lemon that lies underneath.
 
Crap Cars is the perfect gift for anyone who loves cars or the casualties of bad taste, or for that special someone who misses their own beloved, long-gone piece of crap.

Neil Postman is one of the most level-headed analysts of education, media, and technology, and in this book he spells out the increasing dependence upon technology, numerical quantification, and misappropriation of "Scientism" to all human affairs. No simple technophobe, Postman argues insightfully and writes with a stylistic flair, profound sense of humor, and love of language increasingly rare in our hastily scribbled e-mail-saturated world.

First published in 1950 and revised over time, Italy's bestselling culinary "bible,"Il Cucchiaio d'argento, is now available in English. The Silver Spoonboasts over 2,000 recipes and arrives in a handsome (and weighty) photo-illustrated edition complete with two ribbon markers. Its chapters make every menu stop from sauces and antipasti through cheese dishes and sweets, with many standout dishes like Genoese Pesto Minestrone, Eggplant and Ricotta Lasagna, Pork Shoulder with Prunes, and Chocolate and Pear Tart; the book also includes a number of "eccentricities," like sections on patty shells and bean sprouts, surely not an Italian dining staple. Meant to be inclusive, the book also offers a wide range of non-Italian, mostly French formulas, supplemented by a few "exotic" and other non-traditional entries.

Though the recipe range is vast, it must be said that American readers, anxious to cook this authentic fare, will encounter problems. Translating a cookbook from one language to another requires cultural recasting as well as word substitution, and in this the book's editors have been lax. The problems include non-idiomatic usages, for example, calling for "pans" when "pots" is needed; awkward conversions from the metric system, resulting in requirements like eleven ounces of zite; and the inclusion of ingredients like cavolo nero (Tuscan cabbage), tope (a Mediterranean fish), and pancetta copatta (ham-stuffed pancetta) that are unavailable here and for which no alternatives are suggested. In addition, the recipes themselves are often insufficiently specific or detailed—even seasoned bakers will pause before cake recipes that don't specify pan size—and can also lack yields. Space considerations have also meant printing recipes in single, one-column paragraphs, which can make place-finding while cooking difficult, and there are typos and other goofs (one recipe for four specifies six cups of sliced scallions; another requires that a marinade be "stirred frequently for five to twelve hours").

All this said, many cooks—casual and serious alike—as well as cookbook collectors, will want The Silver Spoon. It's an essential document of the Italian table and as such a classic. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a complete cookbook library without the book—a welcome evocation of a much-beloved repertoire by those who know it best. —Arthur Boehm