David Topper writing of the second edition in Choice said "This beautiful book remains one of the essential studies of this most popular artist." Gerald L. Alexanderson writing in MAA Reviews said "It's an impressive piece of scholarship that is extraordinarily beautiful as well. This book is an old friend and it's good to welcome it back in such an elegant and sumptuous form." Laurence Goldstein reviewing the second edition in Print Quarterly said: "... the reader is enabled to glimpse the process through which the artist struggled towards the finished works of art that Hofstadter (and, of course, many others) find so sensuously gratifying. There is also a wealth of biographical information concerning the mathematical and artistic influences on Escher's work, and on the creative process as witnessed by people close to him and as perceived by the artist himself." A brief, unsigned review in Science said: "Escher's periodic tilings have made the artist a favorite of mathematicians and scientists. In her classic 1990 book, Schattschneider analyzed his art and notebooks to explain how Escher created his colorful, puzzle-like regular divisions of the plane [...] This new edition adds a short survey of reflections of his work in mathematics, computer graphics, the Internet, and contemporary art." An unsigned review in the Epsilon Pi Tau Journal of Technology Studies said: "A revision of a classic book that appeared in 1990, this is the most penetrating study of Escher's work in existence and the one most admired by scientists and mathematicians. It deals with one powerful obsession that preoccupied Escher: what he called the 'regular division of the plane', the puzzle-like interlocking of birds, fish, lizards, and other natural forms in continuous patterns. Schattschneider explores how he succeeded at this task by meticulously analyzing his notebooks."