Let’s start our review of just how dumb our population, society and culture have become since The Great Stupid spread its dark wings over the land with the book covers above. The book, current on sale and display at Barnes and Noble among other stores, is called “Mona’s Eyes,” referring to the “Mona Lisa,” perhaps the best known and most famous painting of all, by Leonardo Da Vinci. But the publisher allowed the eyes being used on the cover jacket to be those of a completely different woman in a different painting by another famous painter. Those eyes belong to “The Girl With A Pearl Earring, by Vermeer.
Morons.
There is a silver lining here, however. In mocking that cover, “Instapundit’s” Ed Driscoll quoted a minor Ethics Alarms post from 2023 on a book about Pearl Harbor with a cover graphic showing German planes attacking our navy on December 7, 1941. I clicked on the link and was amazed to find myself reading my own post, which I had completely forgotten about. In the resulting phenomenon known as an Insta-lanch (this is EA’s third), that post got over 3,600 views (and counting) after only being read about 500 times in three years.
Meanwhile:
Ethics Alarms 
I’m not sure the cover of the book, “Mona’s Eyes” is a mistake or oversight.
“Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser is about a 10-year-old girl, Mona, who experiences a mysterious, temporary blindness, prompting her art-loving grandfather, Henry, to take her on a year-long journey through Paris museums to study 52 masterpieces of Western art, teaching her about life, beauty, and the power of art to transcend physical sight before she potentially loses her vision forever, exploring themes of love, loss, and art history.”
Plus, “Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) is an iconic Dutch Golden Age oil painting, renowned as the “Dutch Mona Lisa” for the subject’s enigmatic gaze and intimate, mysterious allure”
Very interesting! Of course, since the title implies the Mona Lisa and the eyes are from a painting, it’s an incompetent design choice even given your explanation, no?
Maybe incompetent, maybe genius.
How many people who would never had heard of it are aware of the book because of the cover design choice?
Well me, for one, and as with the Pearl Harbor book, I decided not to waste money on a book produced by morons.
For me, the title doesn’t imply Mona Lisa; the book is about a girl named Mona who is going blind. If they had put the Mona Lisa painting on the cover perhaps people would have said, “I thought the book was about Mona Lisa but it was about a girl named Mona….”. I think saying the book was produced by morons is a little harsh. That’s just my opinion; my background in the arts and theater compared to you is like a thimble of water against an Olympic sized pool.
Q: What would you have assumed in the title had been “Mona’s Smile”?
Fair question — I’m not sure what I would assume. The most likely scenario if I happened to be in a book store is that I wouldn’t pay any attention to it to begin with. I think I’ve only read about 3 books of fiction in my whole life (A M Golden puts me to shame in that category).
The last book I read was “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All” by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares. Although I am concerned about the potential dangers of AI, that book didn’t seem very convincing to me.
I still think that the cover of the book is wrong. Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is not located in a museum in Paris; it is located in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands.