As this was published in 2009 and a lot of the content refers to the world of digital information making the book significantly out of date and I would only recommend buying it if it was priced under ten dollars.
The A-Z format does cover a lot of ground apart from the dated digital aspect. There's a lot about historical encyclopaedias from various parts of the world, attempts over the decades to present information in an easily digestible form, for example Otto Neurath's Isotype system or an interview with Nigel Holmes, hired in 1977 as the Graphics Director of Time magazine. There are also plenty of entries on things like: Big bang; Censorship; Deep thought; Hacker; Junk; Print-on-demand; Secret; Wonder room; Zoo et cetera. Oddly Mr 'Chart Man' Ed Tufte doesn't have an entry.
Maybe a bit less than half the book is visual, principally graphics rather than photos. The entry on Memory has sixteen pages of images relating to the history of the world, the UN has a nine pages of chronology from 1945 to 2007 with graphics showing when member countries joined, agencies and what countries had UN troops to handle wars.
According to the last page this book is one of a three-part series, as far as I can tell part two: 'Designing breaking news' and three: 'Designing world projections' were not generally published.
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