Printing books in small runs is expensive. Thus, the publisher/editors reduced Hergsell's five inches-thick quarto into a trade paperback. (Why they used Yellow Pages-colored stock, however, will remain an enigma to me.) The editors also decided to cut out Hergsell's lengthy analysis, focusing on reproducing the plates, with the modern German transcription of Hergsell's interpretation.

That, of course, is the book's main weakness. Hergsell himself had been criticized for sloppiness and inaccuracies in the last century -- most notably by Karl Wassmannsdorff, who wrote an entire book deconstructing Hergsell's interpretation line by line by line. None of that made it into the paperback.

But as the editors point out, their intent was not to provide an academic source reprint, but a basic pictorial primer for re-enactment enthusiasts. This they achieved quite admirably.

The text, of course, is in German.