“A woman once rang me up and said, ‘Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print , you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.’ I replied, ‘Madame, if that’s the way you see it, so be it.’” A fittingly sly comment from renowned Dutch graphic artist (1898–1972), whose complex and ambiguous drawings continue to leave hasty interpretations far behind. Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images, Escher was . His lithograph dates as far back as 1946. By taking such a title for the book, mathematician Bruno Ernst stressed the enrapturing spell Escher’s work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in . Ernst’s account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself. Escher’s work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain: Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before achieving the final version? And how are his various creations interrelated? This —complete with , , and —offers answers to these and many other lingering mysteries, and is an of the first order.