MapReduce Design Patterns

Colophon

The animal on the cover of MapReduce Design Patterns is Père David’s deer or the Chinese Elaphur (Elaphurus davidianus). It is originally from China, and in the 19th century the Emperor of China kept all Père David’s deer in special hunting grounds. However, at the turn of the century, the remaining population in the hunting grounds were killed in a number of natural and man-made events, making the deer extinct in China. Since Père David, a zoologist and botanist, spirited a few away during the 19th century for study, the deer survives today in numbers of over 2,000.

Père David’s deer grow to be a little over 2 meters in length, and 1.2 meters tall. Its coat ranges from reddish in the summer to grey in the winter. Père David’s deer is considered a semiaquatic animal, as it enjoys swimming. The deer eats grass and aquatic plants.

In China this deer is sometimes known as sibuxiang or “like none of the four” because it has characteristics of four animals and yet is none of them. Many remark that it has the tail of a donkey, the hoofs of a cow, the neck of a camel, and the antlers of a deer.

The cover image is from Cassell’s Natural History. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Adobe Minion Pro; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is Dalton Maag’s Ubuntu Mono.