The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition

Very good book. I really enjoyed the quality of graphs and interpretion of them. Tufte gives practical guidelines and observations about graphs and graph-making.

Tufte's work is absolutely essential for everyone in the business of creating or consuming Information, which is to say, Everyone. Although his book is extremely beautiful, some of the most essential advice is so crystal-clear that even the Graphically Challenged will gain from reading it.
Although readers will also get a lot out of Tufte's other two books, "Envisioning Information" and "Visual Explanations", there is no question that this is the book that had the largest impact, and which contains the most original thinking. This book was like a bucket of cold water in the face of established thinking regarding Graphic Design and the reporting of Information.

Pros:
1. This book is considered by some one of the key books in this field
2. It has some great observations on how to detects "lies" within charts
3. General advices are sound (if a bit obvious): don't use irrelevant marks, shades and hatches; do plot information...
4. Some interesting information on history of graphs

Cons:
1. The book is dated. This is the 2001 edition but I am not sure how much updating has happened since the late 1980s.
2. Some proposed techniques are peculiar; the author goes way too far into removing what he considers redundant lines: he has a new box plot and a new way to do bar charts that (although contain the same information from a mathematical point of view) will just loose the audience focus, since the audience will spend attention into puzzling out the new graph
3. The book is extremely idiosyncratic on what types of charts it covers, and you are likely not find anything of interest to you besides the general advice

This is absolutely one of the books that should be proudly displayed on everyone researcher's bookshelf: it details a usable theory of data graphics, provides an excellent rogue's gallery of misleading figures, and is the kind of well-designed book that we need to see more of.

The only thing I can find about this to complain about is the fact that the majority of what Tufte presents as new and better methods for presenting or refining old styles of plots CANNOT be found in modern graphing packages.

In truth, this is wholly an excellent book for anyone that has to deal with graphs. If you have ever been interested in a graph, or have ever been fascinated by data, get a copy of this book. It won't disappoint.

I recieved this book along with the most excellent (almost a companion book) Envisioning Information, from my CEO. Since I work a lot with numbers and he had been stressing the importance of presenting data clearly and concisely.

I feel that, this book, more than being a guide to creating beautiful charts is a book to appreciate charts. The book mroe hopes that we will do the right thing rather than instructing us how to do the right thing.