The Quick Python Book, Third Edition

About the cover illustration

The illustration on the cover of The Quick Python Book, Third Edition, is taken from a late-eighteenth-century edition of Sylvain Maréchal’s four-volume compendium of regional dress customs published in France. Each illustration is finely drawn and colored by hand. The rich variety of Maréchal’s collection reminds us vividly of how culturally apart the world’s towns and regions were just 200 years ago. Isolated from one another, people spoke different dialects and languages. In the streets or in the countryside, it was easy to identify where people lived and what their trades or stations in life were just by what they were wearing.

Dress codes have changed since then, and the diversity by region, so rich at the ...