Give someone who has an initial interest in diving the BSAC Sport Diving manual, and you might put them off for life. The same goes for the PADI Open Water Diver manual.
Manuals form part of a structured course. When someone has a casual interest in an activity, they need something which is attractive, easily digestible and 'sells' the idea.
The Diver's Handbook by Alan Mountain sets out to do that. It is bright, colourful, invitingly laid out and attempts to explain all about diving, without being daunting to anyone who might pick it up and flick through a few pages.
In no way is the subject trivialised - all the information is there. In fact I would risk saying that all the information you will find in the Sport Diving manual is there, but presented in a way that the training agencies might care to note.
Neither text nor photography is startlingly innovative, but the design puts it all together in a very digestible way.
One or two photographs of divers under water have that stilted, wide-eyed look so popular with publishers of US magazines, but the rest are of the highest quality. Scuba-diving here looks fun and bright and modern.
If you want to know about computing, a computer manual is no place to begin. If a non-diver asked me for a suitable book for starters, I would not hesitate to recommend this big softback.

Strangely, New Holland has also brought out another, very similar book. Scuba Diving, by Jack Jackson, is part of a different series of how-to-do-it books on a wide range of activities. With fewer pages (96 as opposed to 160), and in a hard cover, its style otherwise mimics that of the other. Even the photos have the same look.
The publisher tells me that The Diver's Handbook would appeal to the more serious diver (I beg to differ) whereas Scuba Diving fulfils the role of being part of a set. I wonder how many people buy a set of books on how to participate in disparate outdoor activities? They might look good on the bookshelf but the collectors would seem to be rather sad.
Taken as a stand-alone volume, my reactions to Scuba Diving are similar to my reactions to The Diver's Handbook, except to point out that some subjects have been omitted in Scuba Diving.