After reading a couple of reviews (notably by Stephen Few and Nathan Yau) of The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, I picked up a copy myself out of curiosity.

For the most part, I agree with Stephen Few's critique of the book, but his vantage point is as an expert in the field. In author Dona Wong's defense, it's hard to write a book for newbies and present do's and don'ts that won't ruffle the feathers of anyone who knows better.

Being in BI, I see a lot of crappy reports with poorly chosen graphics. And many of these are coming from "seasoned veterans" in report writing. The problem is that "seasoned veterans" in report writing only means you really know how to use the tool, not necessarily how to communicate quantitative data visually.

I think that this book, despite its many flaws (Wong almost had me in a tizzy by referring to "sans serif" fonts as "sanserif" - that's as heinous as a Freedom Fry), is ideal for one particular audience. And that is people who have no knowledge of visualization, and who do not have the will or the patience to learn.

The book has two key strengths for newbies:

1. Everything is in bullet points (ideal for the attention challenged)
2. Wong's rules-of-thumbs are pretty black and white (ideal for the critically thinking challenged)

One glaring weakness, however, is that while the images in the book are lovely, they weren't really created by real world BI tools. You're not going to be easily able to reproduce these charts and graphs in Cognos Report Studio or any other tool to match Wong's aesthetic.

Stephen Few's books are easy reads, but only a small percentage of the people to whom I recommend his books actually read them (sadly, I think the reason behind this is that too many people just don't seem to care enough about their "craft" to improve). Edward Tufte's books contain prose that requires a significant amount of patience, and are much more appropriate for true believers than newbies.

Bullet points and "black and white" rules be damned, I think this book should be read by anyone who designs reports in Cognos or any other other BI tool. It's about 100 times better than what is usually described as "the most popular seminar each year" at Cognos Forum, where the presenter talks about Few and Tufte, and then goes ahead and presents the one of the most horrible PowerPoint decks I've ever seen.

If we're lucky, people who start with this book will develop an interest in visualization and then actually read something meatier like Information Dashboard Design or Beautiful Evidence.