content/en/colophon.md
Martin Kleppmann is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he teaches on distributed systems and cryptographic protocols. The first edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications in 2017 established him as an authority on data systems, and through his research on distributed systems he helped start the local-first software movement. Previously he was a software engineer and entrepreneur at internet companies including LinkedIn and Rapportive, where he worked on large-scale data infrastructure.
Chris Riccomini is a software engineer, startup investor, and author with 15+ years of experience at PayPal, LinkedIn, and WePay. He runs Materialized View Capital, where he invests in infrastructure startups. He is also the co-creator of Apache Samza and SlateDB, and co-author of The Missing README: A Guide for the New Software Engineer.
The animal on the cover of Designing Data-Intensive Applications is an Indian wild boar (Sus scrofa cristatus), a subspecies of wild boar found in India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. They are distinctive from European boars in that they have higher back bristles, no woolly undercoat, and a larger, straighter skull.
The Indian wild boar has a coat of gray or black hair, with stiff bristles running along the spine. Males have protruding canine teeth (called tushes) that are used to fight with rivals or fend off predators. Males are larger than females, but the species aver‐ ages 33–35 inches tall at the shoulder and 200–300 pounds in weight. Their natural predators include bears, tigers, and various big cats.
These animals are nocturnal and omnivorous—they eat a wide variety of things, including roots, insects, carrion, nuts, berries, and small animals. Wild boars are also known to root through garbage and crop fields, causing a great deal of destruction and earning the enmity of farmers. They need to eat 4,000–4,500 calories a day. Boars have a well-developed sense of smell, which helps them forage for underground plant material and burrowing animals. However, their eyesight is poor.
Wild boars have long held significance in human culture. In Hindu lore, the boar is an avatar of the god Vishnu. In ancient Greek funerary monuments, it was a symbol of a gallant loser (in contrast to the victorious lion). Due to its aggression, it was depicted on the armor and weapons of Scandinavian, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon warriors. In the Chinese zodiac, it symbolizes determination and impetuosity.
Many of the animals on O’Reilly covers are endangered; all of them are important to the world. To learn more about how you can help, go to animals.oreilly.com.
The cover image is from Shaw’s Zoology. The cover fonts are URW Typewriter and Guardian Sans. The text font is Adobe Minion Pro; the font in diagrams is Adobe Myriad Pro; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is Dal‐ ton Maag’s Ubuntu Mono.