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> Assembly is the language, assembler is the tool.

*Ahem*

https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780805318111-us-300.jpg

There was also a version of Visual Basic for MS-DOS, scary as that seems now. It lets you form-draw and create code behind the forms on plain vanilla MS-DOS. The graphical elements (buttons, boxes, etc.) are rendered in the 'graphical box' characters in the plain vanilla (non-graphical) charcacter set on an IBM MDA card. I have the full Professional version in my collection.

There are apocryphal stories from back in the time that Microsoft was selling applications for both the Mac and the IBM-PC about the application developers needing to hide the Macs when the guys from IBM showed up and hide the PCs when the guys from Apple showed up. It's mentioned in 'The Making of Microsoft' by Daniel Ichbiah published in 1993. It's quite an interesting read, copies for under $5 including shipping can be bought here. (not an affiliate link, I get NOTHING if you buy from one of these booksellers.)

Fascinating! I new nothing about the "VisualBASIC for MS-DOS"!!!

Thanks for the history lesson!

There was also a version of Visual Basic for MS-DOS, scary as that seems now. It lets you form-draw and create code behind the forms on plain vanilla MS-DOS. The graphical elements (buttons, boxes, etc.) are rendered in the 'graphical box' characters in the plain vanilla (non-graphical) charcacter set on an IBM MDA card. I have the full Professional version in my collection.

There are apocryphal stories from back in the time that Microsoft was selling applications for both the Mac and the IBM-PC about the application developers needing to hide the Macs when the guys from IBM showed up and hide the PCs when the guys from Apple showed up. It's mentioned in 'The Making of Microsoft' by Daniel Ichbiah published in 1993. It's quite an interesting read, copies for under $5 including shipping can be bought here. (not an affiliate link, I get NOTHING if you buy from one of these booksellers.)

Larry is probably not into golden showers.

Don't drag your private life into the discussion, creimer.

Oh, and your link to Mike Wilson's book? It's quite an old book at this point. It would be a terrible mistake to buy it off an Amazon.com link.

ABE Books has it available for $3.48 with free shipping.

You can still buy that book at abe.com for $7.86 including shipping.

Don't click on creimier's referral link.

Anybody considering buying that book but not wanting to give an affiliate bonus to creimer can buy this used copy at abebooks.com for $5.46 with $3.99 shipping.

If you want to skip creimer's referral bonusyou can buy that book at abe.com for $3.48. Always check first at ABA, which is an online database of independent used book resellers.

Abe.com has copies of that book for $2.99 Creimer, and you don't get your referral bonus if people buy the book there.

I'm still trying to figure out how this is an appropriate slashdot topic. This sounds more like a topic for People's World.

Some of us are the kind of nerds who have books like Highway Engineering on our bookshelves. It's extremely nerdy to be into roads, highways and transportation.

Or are you one of the people who mistakenly thinks Slashdot is an 'IT' site?

My reading of the history http://www.abebooks.com/Notes-... of the time is that it's difficult to separate categories of people like "Jews," "Poles," "Germans," or even "Nazis" as all good or all bad.

It seems that like most nationalities at the time, a minority of Poles helped the Jews, a minority of Poles killed the Jews, and the majority in the middle went where they were led. A lot of them formed alliances of convenience, with the Soviets or Polish nationalists, and a lot of them collaborated with the Nazis, based on cold calculations of what gave them the best chances of surviving the war.

Ringelblum said that the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto hated the collaborators, Kohn and Heller, even more than the Germans.

There was definitely a history of anti-Semitism and pogroms in Poland. There were also periods of uneasy tolerance and even acceptance. During the good times, the Polish Jews were quite successful.

Even after WWII, there were some Jews who were quite influential in Polish society, like Marek Edelman and Helena WoliÅska-Brus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... So tell me whether those Polish Jews themselves who survived the war were all good or all bad.

I used to try to figure out which nations were good and which were bad. Now I realize that it's a complicated mixture, and I think that's a more satisfying answer.

"But on the computers, the best thing about them is that they let children go much more self-paced. Except, I usually find they block the 3rd graders from doing 4th grade work, even if their ability and time allows. As someone who never fit in the school time schedule, I would have loved something that let me progress as fast or slow as I wanted."

Decades ago, in public school, probably in third grade or so, I had a substitute teacher literally snatch a Boxcar Children series book out of my hands (which I had picked up from a shelf in the class room) saying I might be assigned to read it in the next grade so he did not want me reading it then. It wasn't ever assigned, and I never did get to finish it -- something about being in a mysterious castle... I can wonder if this was the one -- but it can't be as it was published many years later:
http://books.google.com/books/...

To be fair though, my actual third grade teacher said it was OK for me to read ahead in the science text book, and I read most of it over a weekend or so. She then suggested to my parents they get some science-related booklets, which they did. So, I owe a lot of my early science education to Ms. Kivlen(sp?) as well as Lady Plowden and her collaborators:
http://www.abebooks.com/book-s...

Also, while most math classwork bored me in school with repetitive rote work, one year there was a "programmed instruction" box of math problems where you did a card of problems, and depending on how you did, you would either get a similar card or skip ahead. I rapidly skipped along through that entire box and it was fun and enjoyable. So, such things are also possible just with paper systems. Sadly, that experience with such "programmed instruction" for math was not repeated in other years in school. Still, there were other teachers who I can give credit for letting me have some freedom to learn on my own in various areas (especially computers).

In some ways, not much has changed in many schools as far as schools and their use of digital educational materials. Some teachers are very helpful (like my third grade teacher or John Taylor Gatto), but some are not, and, in any case, the overall compulsory school system works against most individualized instruction because it is designed to mostly turn out a standardized product like canned hams (or compliant worker drones in this case for most kids).

Yet computer technology offers the promise of more, even if it is a promise not yet realized for most kids. I wrote a related essay here:
http://patapata.sourceforge.ne...
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ...
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process. ..."

That's one reason we homeschool/unschool to better support more learner-directed inquiry.
http://www.holtgws.com/wh

Come to Portland, experience Powell's Books.

Why? What does it give me that Amazon (and the rest of the Internet) doesn't?

I used to spend a lot of time in bookstores, and would almost always go into a bookstore in whatever town I was visiting. Today, I never go into a bookstore, because I guarantee you I have a much better chance of finding the book I want at Amazon, and will almost never pay more for the privilege.

Most of my hunting for books was for hardcovers, because they last longer. I would also search for obscure older books in whatever format I could get. With eBooks as an option (which last even longer than hardcover), plus the vast number of 3rd-party sellers at Amazon, I can find whatever I want. On the rare occasion that Amazon doesn't have what I want, I can try ABE, which is like being able to walk into every independent bookstore in the world at the same time and look for my book.

Powell's Books might be a fine bookstore, but it's unlikely they have a few million easily searchable volumes, sometimes with hundreds of copies of each book (and with each copy trying to price itself competitively against the others). Then, too, one of the things I always hated about bookstores was trying to figure out where they might put a book...is it science fiction, horror, fantasy...and why do "bestsellers" often get their own section, even though the books there are from all genres.

Didn't Seymour Hersh blow the lid off this in his book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House? http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=hersh&sts=t&tn=power

Now lots of online businesses peddling second hand goods will spring up in no time.

You're right, it's happening already! Look at these evil merchants of second hand books I found just searching online:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=465600
http://www.abebooks.com/
http://www.powells.com/

If somebody doesn't do something soon, we'll be seeing merchants of second-hand records and CDs and videos as well!! I've even hear rumors that there are some brick-and-mortar institutions springing up and collecting second hand materials and LOANING THEM OUT FREELY TO ANYONE WHO ENTERS! Have we reached such a nadir of respect for commerce and capitalism that we're going to allow every moocher and freeloader in the 47% to simply BORROW someone's intellectual property without paying for it?! I'm shocked the Supreme Court would hand such a victory to the Marxists and Linuxists.

You can track down an English edition of Stalin's Collected Works if you look hard enough. I built mine up from single volumes I found here and there. It was published in about 1953.

It's a fairly uncommon thing to have in your library, and can be interesting reading if you like reading between the lines.

Abe.com . . . Bezos can stay out of that biz.

LOL. Bezos owns that biz. http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/

when I was 20 I scoured used book shops etc, even got very good deals on old rare books.

if you don't have those where you live, here is something that will add ~30,000 books of all kinds to your family library : http://www.gutenberg.org/

If you don't have one of those where you live, AbeBooks.com will get you access to used bookshops all over the world.

I'm not currently in the US, the book isn't for sale here, nothing by him is in any library in the country (as far as I can tell from a couple searches), and Amazon wouldn't ship his book here.

Lots of Slashdot readers are non-US, myself included. Strangely I don't find that any limitation.

I am not personally familiar with regards to South America or the Middle East and Africa, but I'm guessing it's available via South Africa at least. Otherwise in 2 minutes I found new copies available from UK, Germany, and Australia. Hint, try meta-search sites for books such as http:www.bookfinder.com, AddALL, www.abebooks.com and www.Alibris.com.

Your accusations of vitriolous seem very harsh of someone, whom by Slashdot standards is being mature and respectful in his criticism. Other than in some no-fault divorce states or provinces, the law does seem to place an a priori burden on male (husband) in regards to both financial settlement and parental access/rights. I agree that divorce is something that is always emotional ugly as like most civil or family court manner, both sides view themselves as having been wronged, and too often there is little or nothing in the way of unbiased confirmation of either parties' claims.

Ever since proportional fonts came to the desktop, people have found it hard to decide whether they are 'typing' or setting type. (eventually, in the DTP era, there was even a book, The Mac is not a Typewriter).

In typesetting, all word spaces are treated equal (except by TeX, which implements a more typewriter-like convention after periods; it also subtly modifies spacing after commas, semicolons too). This may also be a European/North American distinction, similar to the spaced-en-dash versus unspaced-em-dash convention.

TeX, and the TeXbook, are where many geeks from the CS side of the fence got their first typographic exposure and education. Some of Knuth's aesthetic decisions, like this one, do smell a bit funny to professional typographers. But his implementation of math setting is probably close to definitive (damn it Jim, I'm a typographer not a mathematician).

Wait till they find out that German uses letterspacing for boldfacing, and that it used to be normal practice to have thin spaces before punctuation, etc, etc... The study of typographic conventions is easily a life's work.

Why are we concentrating on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel lists 12,381 results for VDM Verlag as a publisher. On the US Amazon, I see 25,127 for a similar search. The UK's Blackwell just sets it at an even five thou (but what's the real number?). You want infection, take a gander at Abe Books' hilarious 191,042 results on the same search (even putting it in quotes results in that)!

Now before you fall all over yourself to point in horror at the infected zombie Abe Books lumbering your way, lets engage in a simple mental exercise. We hate expensive books. Online retailers know this and they cater to us by giving us near wholesale prices. Good. Now, they shave a little bit off but in their strive to be number one, they rely on large volumes of sales with razor thin profits on each sale. This means that its in the company's (and your) best interest for them to automate book sales for publishers and remove the human element. But also remove the overhead cost that comes with it. And maybe even encourage several thousand books so their marketplace looks vibrant and full of sellers selling anything imaginable.

Enter VDM Verlag. All too happy to profit off of the above situation. They have freely available material to publish and they have end users ready to pay.

I'm not an expert in any of this but my gut tells me that this is what is going on. Go to Borders and note their 4 VDM "books". Now, if the lack of titles was a matter of principle and ethics, there would be zero titles. If they had a difficult to use process to register book sales with them then you would have few books (likely case) and if you were streamlined like Amazon, Abe Books or Blackwell then you hit the hilarious numbers. Everybody hates the big guy but in this case the One-Click-Demon is not really the culprit nor are they the lone retailer.

There's really no way to fix this except consumer awareness. Be aware that your paying an exorbitant fee for something that is just a few keystrokes away and a bit of link clicking.

Can someone help me out with an example of how they came to an author for each particular "book"? I'm having a hard time tracing these people. Some of them appear to be legit authors published through other publishers like (random example) Michael Sage. Other people appear to

Have you thought about buying them used, either from outfits like Abebooks or Amazon's second-hand market? I ask because those sources are where a lot of my older books come from -- and I read a lot of them.

Michael Light sifted through thousands of NASA shots (many never published) to produce a coffee table book of Apollo photography, "Full Moon". Definitely worth finding a copy if you are interested in Apollo. Many of the shots reproduced are breathtaking; all are beautiful in some way.

A long time ago, I used barnes and noble used book service, which was very good. They messed it up and I went to Amazon. Maybe it is time to go back. Or Alibris.

I've found ABE Books a good site for this kind of service. They don't try to impose a standardised delivery charge, which means you can actually get stuff cheaper than Amazon (where the delivery charge was set too high and many vendors ended up essentially giving the books away).

The San Francisco Exploratorium, an interactive, hands-on science museum, published a three-volume set of instructions for creating useful and educational (and sturdy) projects for children and adults to manipulate and study, although these are now hard to find, and expensive. Search the used books website http://www.abebooks.com/ for "Exploratorium Cookbook" (and grab any copies you can) and see also the Exploratorium website at http://www.exploratorium.edu/ . See also the very recently published book "Laboratory Experiments in College Physics" by C. Bernard and C. Epp, published in December 2008 (ISBN 978-0471002512) available on http://www.amazon.com./

To Kernighan & Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style.

Linky.

> the used market kicks in.

Yes indeed it does:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=aerofax+mig-21&x=0&y=0

A dollar per page? In other words, unattainable.

http://www.abebooks.com/ is great as well. Nothing better than an English language CoSc book with a Chinese cover shipped from India for $45 less than the cost of buying it at your campus bookstore.

Thorazine is extremely destructive to the mind and body... Read Kate Millett's disturbing nightmare involving Thorazine when she was involuntarily committed - The Loony Bin Trip.

There are a number of Heinlein's novels that were aimed at the young-adult-to-adult category. Some of my favorites are:

'Have Space Suit, Will Travel.' This is my top pick. Best of all, there's a full-cast audio edition available that's nothing short of a radio play. Outstanding stuff!

Some of my other favorites from Heinlein, though not necessarily available (yet) on audio, are: "Starman Jones," "Rocket Ship Galileo," "Space Cadet," "Between Planets," "Red Planet," "Farmer in the Sky," and "The Puppet Masters."

Others have suggested Anne McCaffrey's works. There are lots of good books from her, true, though I have to say I'm not fond of what I see as a downgrade in quality of writing from her over the last decade or so. If you're going after her stuff, I highly recommend the earlier works, notably the earlier 'Dragonriders' books. Of those, two of my all-time favorites are "The White Dragon" and "The Dolphins of Pern."

I would also strongly recommend the "Inheritance" trilogy from Chris Paolini. The first book in the series, "Eragon" (and the book, BTW, was orders of magnitude better than that horrid excuse for a movie which has, thankfully, faded to obscurity) lays the groundwork. The second, "Eldest," picks up where it leaves off. The third and final one in the series, "Brisingr," is coming Sep. 20th of this year.

There are a couple of lesser-known authors that I went bonkers over as a kid, and I still re-read them to this day. If you can find a book club edition of "The Roads of Heaven," by Melissa Scott, do so. If not, there are three books in her "Silence Leigh" series: "Five-Twelfths of Heaven," "Silence in Solitude," and "Empress of Earth."

If your youngsters are interested in the ocean and its inhabitants, at least one lesser-known author I would recommend is Carl Biemiller. He did a trilogy called "The Hydronaut Adventures" that I found to be a terrific read.

Yet another recommendation (I'm just full of them today) I'd make is the books of James Schmitz who, sadly, is no longer with us. However, he left us a marvelous legacy in the form of wonders like "The Witches of Karres" and the Telzey Amberdon stories.

One of my all-time favorites from Schmitz is a book called "The Demon Breed." Among its other endearing characters, it features a pair of oversize, sentient, mutant otters.

Oh! One more... If you can locate a copy of Edward Ormondroyd's "David and the Phoenix," grab it!

There's probably others I'll think of after I hit "submit," but I think you'll have a pretty good start with this. As for getting the books, many of which are out of print, you would do well to search Powell's Books, as well as abebooks.com, a wonderful site that links together literally thousands of new and used book dealers.

Happy reading!

One of the better online SF communities is the venerable rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup (available here for the usenet-challenged), worth reading for an unusually high level of discussion (if you can ignore the usual sprinkling of spam). There are plenty of people there who'll make useful suggestions if you let them know what you like already.

Check out SF Site for tons of reviews, excerpts, and another forum.

I actually find Amazon quite useful for discovering new stuff (especially now they have excerpts from a fiar number of books). It doesn't need to be 'dicey and expensive' if you buy secondhand or discounted stocks from Amazon Marketplace traders with decent feedback (or similar small dealers that sell via ebay or AbeBooks ).

Why not subscribe to one of the major SF magazines like Interzone or Analog ?

Try http://www.abebooks.com/ . This site links up book stores from all over the world. I have used it many times to complete previously owned SciFi series and other rare books that are no long in print. Highly recommended. James

In English, we generally unconsciously associate "holding-back" with the left-side of the page
& "going/doing-it" with the right-side of the page
( check the graphology stuff, used in criminal-cases btw )

If I could have one single wish answered in Linux/KDE it'd be this:

MAKE THE HOLD-BACK OPTION ALWAYS BE ON THE LEFT FOR ENGLISHERS ( & similar L-to-R languages )
and the corollory
MAKE THE "COMMIT/DO-IT" OPTION ALWAYS BE ON THE RIGHT

if that one single thing were implemented,
it'd mean I could react to a decision-box window by instinct,
rather-than being stopped every time to
discover what the hell goddamn variant of "flow" this particular window implements.
( do they use /dev/random for it?
how many millions of us are sabotaged by it every hour? )

The best book to get for UI design? 2, actually:

Don't Make Me Think ( made for web-meisters, but it's still UI stuff ) by Krug
( Advance Book Exchange ( second-hand books search ) http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=don't+make+me+think&x=0&y=0

: )

& The Design of Everyday Things

Definitive novels dealing with intergalactic contact are Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco and Eden. I cannot recommend these books highly enough as explorations of human psychology and what-could-possibly-go-wrong!

Definitive novels dealing with intergalactic contact are Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco and Eden. I cannot recommend these books highly enough as explorations of human psychology and what-could-possibly-go-wrong!

I'm not going to disagree with the "laid open" part, but the "free of charge" nonsense is just typical marxist university professor hypocrisy.

Let's price some math texts:

Atiyah & MacDonald, Commutative Algebra; $57.54, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201407515/

Eisenbud, Commutative Algebra; $41.30, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0387942696/

Hartshorne, Algebraic Geometry; $59.10, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0387902449/

Elements de Geometrie Algebrique; out of print, http://www.amazon.com/dp/3540051139/

Rudin, Real and Complex Analysis; $142.50, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0070542341/

Rudin, Functional Analysis; $137.16, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0070542368/

Dym & McKean, Fourier Series and Integrals; $85.00, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0122264517/

Sugiura, Unitary Representations and Harmonic Analysis, 2nd Edition; Out of Print, http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Sugiura&tn=Representations[Someone wants $495.00 for the first edition.]

Or try a few titles which might be a little more familiar to Slashdotters:

Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set; $145.00, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201485419/

Sedgewick, Algorithms in C++, Parts 1-5; $93.00, http://www.amazon.com/dp/020172684X/

Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein, Introduction to Algorithms; $61.88, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262032937/

Aho, Ullman & Hopcroft, Data Structures and Algorithms; $53.20, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201000237/

McLachlan, Discriminant Analysis and Statistical Pattern Recognition; $90.40, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471691151/

Haykin, Neural Networks: A Comprehensive Foundation; $120.12, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0132733501/

Duda, Hart & Stork, Pattern Classification; $117.00, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471056693/

Fukunaga, Introduction to Statistical Pattern Recognition; $74.40, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0122698517/

Bishop, Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition; $82.81, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198538642/

Bishop, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning; $66.54, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0387310738/

Higgins, Sampling Theory in Fourier and Signal Analysis: Volume I; $171.60, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198596995/

Higgins & Sten, Sampling Theory in Fourier and Signal Analysis: Volume II; $264.00, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0198534965/

Princeton, which has the finest mathematics department in the world [or at least had the finest mathematics department in the world, before Harold Shapiro & Shirley Tilghman decided they wanted to turn the

http://www.saxonpub.com/
they've changed their URL, but it redirects pronto, and the new one isn't rememberable. . .

Diff between these and the normal ones?

One concept, one lesson.

Big concept? broken into several components, and distributed over several lessons.

Syncopated plan: one gets the chance to get a knowing into long-term-memory/function before one hits the next lesson that relies on it.

having tried many, and lost my math in some brain-damage I got in my teens, this is THE required one.

Find the book you need,
by doing a placement-test,
then get the ISB# for that recommended book,
then find a second-hand copy on http://www.abebooks.com/ for cheap.

For those interested in playing around with a slide rule, the book An easy introduction to the slide rule by Isaac Asimov (1965) could be very helpful.

Here is a (modern) review of the book; here is a list of second-hand copies.

AbeBooks is an international clearing house for the sale of used and rare books. 100 million books on sale from 13,500 booksellers in 57 countries.

At last count, AbeBooks had sold 55 Harry Potter books priced at $1.000 or more. In August 2005, AbeBooks sold probably the world's most expensive Harry Potter book when a buyer spent $37,000 ($20,000) on an exceptionally rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Most Expensive Harry Potters Ever Sold on AbeBooks

To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more then 300 million copies worldwide in over 200 countries and the books have been translated into more than 60 languages - only the bible can better those statistics.
In France, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first English language book to ever top bestseller list but the series has permeated almost every corner of the atlas.
The books have been translated into most Eastern European (from Albanian to Ukranian), East Asian (Cambodian to Vietnamese), and Scandinavian languages. Some countries even have books in several dialects - for instance, in Spain it is possible to buy the books in Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.
But it's possible to find even more obscure translations such as Faroese (with a mere 60,000 to 80,000 worldwide speakers) and Kalaallisut (the dialect of Greenland spoken by about 54,000). Some of the books have even been translated into the dead languages of Latin (meet Harrius Potter) and Ancient Greek, the latter translation being the longest work in the language since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD. The Wild World of Harry Potter Books, The Harry Potter Series

The literary critic, the academic, doesn't quite know what to make of Harry Potter:

Literary manias expire with horrible suddenness. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the novel in 1852. In America, at the height of its popularity, steam-driven printing presses exploded, trying to keep up with sales demand. But, two years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was dead on the shelves. Last year's book. Harry mania...and there may be more

The only problem with this particular example is that it isn't true. Stowe's novel sold well throughout the nineteenth century. Stage productions and later films embedded Stowe's most memorable images in the in the American consciousness. Simon Legree. Eliza crossing the ice. In the 1930s the WPA's Federal Theater Project produced a stinging, unsentimental adaptation that took the story back to its anti-slavery roots.

Perhaps the key to understanding Rowling's appeal to children, to adolescents, is that she like Twain, like Dickens, like Lemony Snicket, is an uncompromising moralist.

AbeBooks is an international clearing house for the sale of used and rare books. 100 million books on sale from 13,500 booksellers in 57 countries.

At last count, AbeBooks had sold 55 Harry Potter books priced at $1.000 or more. In August 2005, AbeBooks sold probably the world's most expensive Harry Potter book when a buyer spent $37,000 ($20,000) on an exceptionally rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Most Expensive Harry Potters Ever Sold on AbeBooks

To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more then 300 million copies worldwide in over 200 countries and the books have been translated into more than 60 languages - only the bible can better those statistics.
In France, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first English language book to ever top bestseller list but the series has permeated almost every corner of the atlas.
The books have been translated into most Eastern European (from Albanian to Ukranian), East Asian (Cambodian to Vietnamese), and Scandinavian languages. Some countries even have books in several dialects - for instance, in Spain it is possible to buy the books in Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.
But it's possible to find even more obscure translations such as Faroese (with a mere 60,000 to 80,000 worldwide speakers) and Kalaallisut (the dialect of Greenland spoken by about 54,000). Some of the books have even been translated into the dead languages of Latin (meet Harrius Potter) and Ancient Greek, the latter translation being the longest work in the language since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD. The Wild World of Harry Potter Books, The Harry Potter Series

The literary critic, the academic, doesn't quite know what to make of Harry Potter:

Literary manias expire with horrible suddenness. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the novel in 1852. In America, at the height of its popularity, steam-driven printing presses exploded, trying to keep up with sales demand. But, two years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was dead on the shelves. Last year's book. Harry mania...and there may be more

The only problem with this particular example is that it isn't true. Stowe's novel sold well throughout the nineteenth century. Stage productions and later films embedded Stowe's most memorable images in the in the American consciousness. Simon Legree. Eliza crossing the ice. In the 1930s the WPA's Federal Theater Project produced a stinging, unsentimental adaptation that took the story back to its anti-slavery roots.

Perhaps the key to understanding Rowling's appeal to children, to adolescents, is that she like Twain, like Dickens, like Lemony Snicket, is an uncompromising moralist.

Prefigured responsive buildings in his wonderful Return from the Stars. Highly recommended.

An arresting portrait of the effects of globalization as seen through the eyes of highly acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky on his travels through China. In his photography Burtynsky not only captures the astonishing transformations in the landscape through industrial production but also shows us the social repercussions of these changes. Both the photographs and the film present us with the large-scale complexity of a global situation, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions.

I wonder if those researchers ever saw a 1944 book entitled "The Educations of T. C. Mits," by Hugh and Miriam Lieber? Listings at Amazon, and at abebooks

It was intended to popularize mathematical concepts for laymen ("the celebrated man in the street," hence T. C. Mits), and it used exactly that style of formatting. As I recall, the introduction said something along the lines of

This is not
    free verse

but is simply
      an way to
            make reading easier.

It seems they were right.

Keep this book in mind as prior art if they try to patent the technique!

George W. Bush a bookworm? White House aides say it's so. The born-again president's literary interests start with the predictable, such as his daily readings from the Bible. But he also enjoys books about Abraham Lincoln, his political hero, and, of course, yarns about baseball-in a past life, he was, after all, the managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Staffers say the president is actually engaged in an informal contest with White House senior adviser Karl Rove to see who can read more books this year. The latest score card has Bush ahead 60-50.A sampling of the president's reading list so far this year, according to White House aides:

Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb)
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine
Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr.
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (discussing how polio affected the United States in the mid-20th century)
The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
The Stranger by Albert Camus

Donald H. Rumsfeld was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001. Before assuming his present post, the former Navy pilot had also served as the 13th Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, U.S. Congressman and chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.

http://www.abebooks.com/

An aggregation of second hand booksellers.

Silly robot, there is life beyond the web.

Now, all of those encyclopedias of science fiction are stored in the library at the University of Texas. You very likely live nowhere near Texas. The point is that there are about a zillion encyclopedias of science fiction around, and you can find them easily. Check YOUR local library. Even if you haven't got a university library, I'll bet your local library has atleast one of these, unless, possibly, you live in a town with a very very small library. In which case you can get it through inter-library loan, or buy it cheap from a used bookseller.

Now, I'm no luddite; if somebody wants to build a gigantic science fiction wiki, terrific, have fun. I'm just annoyed that so many people now think of the Internet as the One True Source of Information, which contains All Wisdom and Knowledge. Good grief.

At this point I frankly prefer Barnes and Noble to Amazon. B&N has finally caught up with Amazon as far as I can tell in terms of hugeness of inventory for books and DVDs, and all that stuff Amazon sells that isn't books and DVDs... well, who cares? This zshops thing is just a crappy version of eBay, and there are better places to buy used books.

What I've really found that's interesting lately is that if you order from bn.com from inside of a barnes and noble brick and mortar store, they waive shipping. So if I want something, I can stop at a B&N on the way home from work; and if they have the book I want I can go home with it immediately, if they don't have the book I can just ask them to order it from the website and I get it in a few days without even having to pay for shipping. It's kind of the best of both worlds.

Plus Amazon's switched to this MSN Live Search nonsense. What purpose does amazon.com serve at this point except as a repository for politically biased book reviews? As far as I'm concerned, screw 'em.

Obviously, you read the wrong manual... Check item 0809229005. Quality work, written by a top investigator!

I've taken the time to hunt through used bookstores to find and read Sapir, Boas and Whorf

Dude, if you don't do it for the atmosphere and leg-work, use Abebooks :)

I am currently reading Your Body's Many Cries for Water and it has been very eye-opening about body chemistry, and covers the subject with medical and scientific rigour. I highly recommend it to people for whom conventional medicine is at best 'managing' and not reversing their health issues. Particularly compelling in that book is Dr Batmanghelidj's thorough scientific explanation on how 'diet' sodas actually substantially contribute to weight gain.

The immediately curious can access his library of scientific papers (in PDF format).