You Big Dummy!

The internet has probably put a dent in the sales of how-to books and other reference manuals. And except for thoroughness and ease of access, the internet has books beat all over.

Here's three books for you in the likely case that you can't find the answer to your question on the internet.

Home Buying for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown. If more dummies had read this the troubles of the past couple of year might not have happened. Good condition with some notations. $2.00 + $3.00 shipping and handling.

Upgrading & Fixing PCs for Dummies by Andy Rathbone. Good condition. $1.00 + $3.00 shipping and handling.

Access 97 Programming for Windows for Dummies by Rob Krumm. Good condition. $0.50 + $3.00 shipping and handling.

How to Settle an Estate

by Charles K. Plotnick and Stephan R. Leimberg

Take the heartbreak of a death of a provident parent, add some lawyers and a byzantine tax code, and you have an experience about as much fun as going to the dentist--only it takes longer, much longer.

The amount of money gathered by the death tax is peanuts, relatively speaking, so the only reason for its existence could be class warmongering to the point of spite, and the guaranteed work for estate planners, accountants, and aforementioned lawyers.

I predict that once the Greatest Generation begins to pass and the Baby Boomers have to write five and six figure checks to Uncle Sam, the estate tax will join the AMT as a widely ancknowleged, oppresive burden on the middle class.

In the meantime you will need this book. Third revised edition, paperback, in near good condition with underlining and marginal notes (by me). $2.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling.

P.S. General comments about lawyers, accountants, etc. made above are meant to imply nothing about the very helpful professionals who assisted me in settline my mother's estate. Books are good to have, but you need professionals who know their stuff.

The Fall of the House of Usher

and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

The used book store I visited the other day was selling Dover Thrift, Signet paperbacks etc. at several $$ over the original price. This Signet paperback is yours for just what I paid for it 30 years ago: 95 cents. ($0.95) +$3.00 shipping an handling.

It contains a total of 14 short stories and Poe's only full-length novel, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. It also features groovy 60-70s art work on the cover. Someday, somebody is going to collect paperback cover art. Good condition.

History of the Conquest of Peru II

The plot so far...

Illiterate ex-swineherd and his drinking buddies solemnly swear around a table in Panama to conquer a rumored empire to the south.

I reiterate the question posed below, why doesn't the Ken Burns/PBS/Doris Kearns Goodwin popular history mafia deviate from the standard WASP-o-rama and do something about Latin America, particularly the conquest. It features Hispanics (the nation's largest growing minority!), Native Americans, and locales more exotic than Northern Virginia. Although, the Hispanics and Native Americans spend most of the time beating the hell out of each other. And there are also all those priests running around.

For sale below.

History of the Conquest of Peru

"It was his [author W. H. Prescott] ambition, too, to compete with the latest novel, to be seen in ladies' boudoirs, to sell by the thousands, and to be given away year after year as a Christmas present." --from the introduction by Thomas Seccombe to the 1909 Everyman Edition.

So what can you write about if you want to be the Doris Kearns Goodwin or Stephen Ambrose of antebellum America? Lincoln's still practicing law in Illinois, Eleanor Roosevelt hasn't been born, and the Germans have yet to get around to founding the Second Reich let alone the Third.

A history of Spanish America! Plenty of blood and thunder swordplay in exotic locations. It's surprising this is a vein that hasn't been mined more by popular historians.

I have two editions. The first is a 1933 printing of the above Everyman edition. It's as fascinating for what surrounds the book than the book itself. There's the introduction by Seccombe at the front and a list of the 930 books that should be in the library of the Everyman circa 1933 (the works of Dickens with introductions by Chesterton, the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco's Essays on the Study of Folk Songs, etc.)

There are also the clues left by the previous owners. George F. Collins bought the book in 1939 and seems to have been interested in engineering judging by the notations he left. There is another owner whose name has been erased (Fred L. Percy or Prescott). Mr. Percy/Prescott's notations seem to have been left on the front endsheet which has been torn out.

But it's not for sale.

What is for sale is a 1998 Modern Library edition in good condition (VNSA price tags on dust jacket and front endsheet.) $4.00 + $3.00 shipping and handling.

What I'm Reading

Reinventing Gravity--by John W. Moffat Is dark matter the epicycle of the 21st century? John Moffat thinks so. Einstein-Newtonian gravity can't explain some cosmic phenomenon so astrophysicists having added various fudge-factors in the form of dark matter, dark energy, and ever-more fanciful theories of strings and branes--some of which can't even be tested.

I tend to believe Moffat's solution, not because I know enough to judge either the theory or the evidence; but rather because of his emphasis on coming up with a theory that can actually be tested. A criticism launched at many modern theories is that they, as their creators admit, can't be tested.

So what is the difference between cutting edge cosmology and theology?