Ocean State Libraries

"Everything looks like something else. Ambiguity. Uncertainty. Beauty. That's what you'll find in this gallery of images. From Joe Burull's photograph of a leaf that looks like a woman's lips, to Tang Yau Hoong's paradoxical Erasing Hands (a playful take on Escher's famous drawing), to Rob Gonsalves's magical scene of a city bathed in darkness, a universe of wonder awaits you here."-- back cover.

"[A] mind-bending collection of 150 of the most significant optical phenomena, loosely grouped into 33 chapters according to particular visual effect ... Concise text describes the history of the optical illusions and their origin. Some are ancient (like a 3D Roman mosaic in a 2nd-century BC home on Malta) and others are modern (like emoticons and street art). There are rarely seen phenomena, works by great illusionists, like M.C. Escher, and well-known...

Presents a series of optical illustions and explains what is seen.

A magical tale of optical illusions, in which objects seem to shift color and size while images appear and disappear.