For any experienced or budding cartographers out there, this is a book well worth seeking out. The software demos are application specific, but the really great part of this book is the how the author seeks to reinforce good cartographic design principles. The author succeeds in making the point that creating maps is about more than throwing data at people on a website, or printing maps with the appropriate symbols. Cartographers are authors, telling a story visually. The ultimate goal of this book is to help the people who make maps keep that in mind.