The Annotated Mona Lisa takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks to a world of dynamic design, succinct page-length essays, and instructive sidebars. These graphic device heighten the reader's ability to retain an impressive amount of information, even through a cursory reading. A brief run-through of the book's captions and sidebars provides a mini crash course in art history. Incorportating more than 300 illustrations drawing on the very elements of art-composition, movment, balance, color, and design-to achieve a visual and textual approach to the subject that no ordinary book could aproximate.