Judging Books by Their Covers

2 Comments

And bindings.

Not many publishers turn out good technical books in physics, astrophysics, and mathematics. Until recently, I would have said Cambridge University Press, Princeton U P, and Springer. This was before Springer decided to embrace sucketude and start putting their books in cheap, crappy bindings.

I have quite a few Springer books, and the older ones are well bound and open flat. The newest ones have stiff, cheap, crappy glued bindings, and won't open flat and stay open. I hate that.

Cambridge U P is the gold standard. Lots of good books, mostly affordable prices, and nice bindings that open flat. Princeton is also very good.

Authors would do us a favor by avoiding Springer - at least until they recover their senses.

Based on what I've read elsewhere, Springer seems to be committed to crap all the way. Unfortunately they still publish some important stuff.

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more

The Poverty Paradox: Review

By Mark Robert Rank The titular paradox is poverty in the USA, the largest and one of the richest countries in the world.   Compared to other rich countries the USA has much more and worse poverty than almost any other.   Professor Rank dissects the causes and has some suggestions, few if any of which would fly with the modern Republican Party. Rank proposes what he calls the structural vulnerability hypothesis.   That means that political policies and economic circumstances punish the poor and make it harder to escape poverty.   Bad schools and bad neighborhoods promote poverty and make it hard to escape.   The US ranks high on the inequality scale and low on the social mobility scale. Rank argues that a major driver of poverty in the US is blame the victim thinking, the idea that if persons are poor, it is their own fault.   Much poverty can be traced to lack of social capital: education, other saleable skills, disability, poor health, or access to ...
Read more