The Oxford-Duden Pictorial Chinese & English Dictionary

The Oxford-Duden Pictorial Chinese & English Dictionary is a dictionary covering lots of specialized words by using pictures. Each page has a thematic picture at the top with definitions below. Sample topics include the bedroom, dining room, meteorology, electrician and gliding (soaring). Using pictures to find the items is very helpful, because a lot of the time I don't know what the English terms are for some of the things, like diagonal spar or golf ball cap.

I'm of course highlighting obscure words, but a lot of them are actually useful and if you are interested in one of the specialized areas this dictionary will be helpful. Having said that, though, there are two problems with the dictionary. One is that the dictionary only displays the Chinese in traditional characters with no Pinyin. If you aren't familiar with the characters it can be difficult looking up definitions like the one for "line space adjuster", which is 5 characters long. The second problem compounds the problem, and that is the small font used for the Chinese. It can be hard to distinguished the strokes of the traditional characters when they are squeezed in a tiny font.

In conclusion, if you want to learn specialized vocabulary and know your traditional characters well then this is a good book to get. You should look at the book before buying, though, to see if it will actually be useful for you.