About the AuthorAndy Oakley is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, England with a degree in Computer Science. Currently, as a lead program manager at Microsoft, he is building the new publishing system for MSDN that hosts the hundreds of thousands of pages of developer documentation published by Microsoft.

ColophonOur look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of Monad is the common toad (Bufo vulgaris), a familiar European species. There are over 200 known species under the genus Bufo, all of which secrete poisonous fluid from their skin. These secretions are often highly toxic to animals when ingested, and they can cause skin irritations in people. Bufos are fairly large-size toads, normally reaching between six and eight inches in length. Concerning habitat, toads prefer warm and wet environments. They are found virtually everywhere in the world except the North and South poles, preferring the tropics but settling for ponds, canals, and moist backyards. Toads are cold blooded-so they hibernate during the cold parts of the year-and are usually nocturnal.

All toads breathe through their skin and have superb hearing and eyesight. Toads are especially receptive to movement, which is why they don't eat things that are already dead. Unlike frogs, most toads only leap when they are in danger; however, the common American toad leaps inordinately more often than the European species. Toads eat a lot. One toad can eat 100 flies in 10 minutes using its long, sticky, lightning-quick tongue. Toad tongues are so fast that they cannot be followed with the human eye. This characteristic, among others, led primitive peoples to believe that toads were supernatural creatures. The modern belief that people can get warts from toads is likewise due to superstition rather than science.

Bufo toads appear in cultural history as early as 2000 B.C.E. Because the toad's lifecycle is such that it is born in the springtime-which is the rainy season in most parts of the world-toads were associated with sexuality, fertility, and rain. Peruvian Indians worshipped the "Toad Mother," and ancient Tanini peoples from Bolivia portrayed their "Earth Mother" as a monstrous toad. It also has been documented that the Olmecs consumed Bufos for hallucinogenic purposes; the Mayans used a drink called chicha in their rituals, made of sugar fermented with a live toad and toad poisons. (O'Reilly advises against ever doing this.)

Marlowe Shaeffer was the production editor for Monad. Annette Pagliaro was the copyeditor. Lydia Onofrei proofread the book. Adam Witwer and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Judy Hoer wrote the index. Loranah Dimant provided production assistance.

Karen Montgomery designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is from Wood's Natural History: Comprising Mammals, Birds, Reptiles and Fishes. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Keith Fahlgren to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Lydia Onofrei.