Programming Elastic MapReduce

Colophon

The animal on the cover of Programming Elastic MapReduce is the eastern kingsnake (lampropeltis getula getula). The eastern kingsnake is a subspecies of the common kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula) that mostly lives in the Eastern United States. Common kingsnakes can be found in swamps, streams, grasslands, and deserts across the United States and Mexico.

Adult common kingsnakes, depending on the subspecies, are 20 to 78 inches in length and weigh between .62 and 5 pounds. They can be black, blue-black, or dark brown colored with two to four dozen white rings around their body. Even though they eat lizards, rodents, and birds, they also frequently eat other snakes. They eat other snakes by biting the mouth of their prey and stoping it from being able to counterattack. Common kingsnakes are also immune to the venom of other snakes. They have no venom themselves, however, and are considered harmless to humans.

There are eight subspecies of common kingsnake, which may be the reason why this species is known by several dozen names. Depending on the location, the common kingsnake is called the Carolina Kingsnake, North American king snake, oakleaf rattler, thunder snake, black moccasin, thunderbolt, wamper, master snake, and pine snake.

The cover image is from Wood’s Animate Creation. The cover fonts are URW Typewriter and Guardian Sans. The text font is Adobe Minion Pro; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is Dalton Maag’s Ubuntu Mono.