Read 700 Free eBooks Made Available by the University of California Press

in Books, e-books, History, Literature | January 12th, 2014

The University of California Press e‑books collection holds books published by UCP (and a select few printed by other academic presses) between 1982–2004. The general public currently has access to 770 books through this initiative. The collection is dynamic, with new titles being added over time.

Readers looking to see what the collection holds can browse by subject. The curators of the site have kindly provided a second browsing page that shows only the publicly accessible books, omitting any frustrating off-limits titles.

The collection’s strengths are in history (particularly American history and the history of California and the West); religion; literary studies; and international studies (with strong selections of Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, and French Studies titles).

A quick browse yields a multitude of interesting possibilities for future reading: Shelley Streeby’s 2002 book about sensational literature and dime novels in the nineteenth-century United States; Luise White’s intriguing-looking Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (2000); and Karen Lystra’s 2004 re-examination of Mark Twain’s final years. (The image above comes from another Twain text by Randall Knoper.) Two other noteworthy texts include Roland Barthes’ Incidents and Hugh Kenner’s Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings.

Sadly, you can’t download the books to an e‑reader or tablet. Happily, there is a “bookbag” function that you can use to store your titles, if you need to leave the site and come back.

As always, we’d encourage you to visit our collection of 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices, where we recently added texts by Vladimir Nabokov, Philip K. Dick and others. Also find free courses in our list of 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

Rebecca Onion is a writer and academic living in Philadelphia. She runs Slate.com’s history blog, The Vault. Follow her on Twitter:@rebeccaonion.

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What Books, Movies, Songs & Paintings Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

in Art, Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2014

Every year, Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain highlights major works that would have entered the public domain had the copyright law that prevailed until 1978 still remained in effect today. That law (established in 1909) allowed works to remain under copyright for a maximum of 56 years — which means that 2014 would have welcomed into the public domain works first published in 1957. Some highlights (from the longer list) include:

Books

Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat
Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
Ian Fleming, From Russia, with Love

Movies

12 Angry Men (Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, Ed Begley, and more)
A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones)
Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley)
The Seventh Seal (written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas)

Music

“That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue” (Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Norman Petty)
“Great Balls of Fire” (Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer)
“Wake Up, Little Susie” (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant)
Elvis Presley’s hits: “All Shook Up” (Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley) and “Jailhouse Rock” (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
The musical “West Side Story” (music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents)

Art

Dali’s “Celestial Ride” and “Music: the Red Orchestra”
Edward Hopper’s “Western Motel”
Picasso’s “Las Meninas” set of paintings

Under the current copyright regime, you’ll have to wait another 39 years — until 2053 — before these works hit the commons.

You can find a longer list of 1957 works still under copyright on Duke’s website.

Note: If you’re wondering how many works of art entered the public domain in 2014, the answer is simple: 0. As the Duke site notes, “Not a single published work” is entering the public domain in 2014. “In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019.”

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The International Children’s Digital Library Offers Free eBooks for Kids in Over 40 Languages

in Books, Education, English Language, K-12, Language Lessons | December 29th, 2013

For all of the free literature and essays available online, a surprisingly small amount is geared toward children. Even less is aimed at children who speak foreign languages.

The International Children’s Digital Library offers children ages 3–13 free access to the best available children’s literature in more than 40 languages. Librarians find and digitize books published around the world and present them in their original languages.

The site acts as a meta learning tool. It is designed to be easy for children to use by themselves—by simply clicking “Read Books,” a list of favorite titles pops up—but kids can learn how to search too, by their own age, types of characters, genre, book length, language and geographical region.

The homepage features recommended and popular titles, like Tyrone the Horrible, written in Spanish. Where translation rights exist, the library works with volunteer translators to provide additional language versions.

The library is a project of the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab and there is a research component to the project. Working with children in New Zealand, Honduras, Germany, and the United States, researchers are looking at how children perceive other cultures outside their own.

The library’s broader mission is to make it possible for children all over the world to learn to use a library system and read a range of quality literature. The interface aims as much at international children as it does immigrant children in American cities and rural areas.

Books are available for free and without an account. An account, however, allows a child to create their own bookshelf of favorites that can be shared with other users. A guide for teachers includes a training manual and tips for how to use the library to teach creative writing, library search skills and foreign languages.

You will find the International Children’s Digital Library in our collection 200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites & More.

More digitized children’s books can be found at the Library of Congress.

Adults, don’t miss our other collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.

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Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

Chief Judge Rubén Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois has ruled that the characters and story lines used in 50 Sherlock Holmes texts published by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives contemporary authors the ability to write their own Sherlock Holmes mystery stories and keep contributing to a rich tradition of detective fiction. It would also seemingly put pre-1923 texts firmly in the public domain. (You can find The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and other related stories in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books collections. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the editor of The Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes, who filed the civil suit, praised the judge’s decision, saying “People want to celebrate Holmes and Watson, and now they can do that without fear.” Now it’s time for them to write something that can hold a candle to what Conan Doyle created those many years ago.

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via Arts Beat

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New Art Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses Features All 265,000 Words Written by Hand on Big Wooden Poles

in Art, Books, Literature | December 18th, 2013

This week, Stephen Gertz, the editor of Book Tryst, has on display an Incredible Art Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Here’s how he describes the ambitious project:

James Joyce completed his novel, Ulysses, on October 30, 1921. Ninety years later, on October 30, 2011, Charlene Matthews, the Los Angeles-based book artist and bookbinder recently the subject of a profile in Studios magazine, began work on an extraordinary edition of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach’s true first edition with all its typos included.

Two years later, on October 30, 2013, she completed it: the entire text of Ulysses — all of its approximately 265,000 words in eighteen episodes — transcribed by hand onto thirty-eight seven-foot tall, two-inch diameter poles: Ulysses as a landscape to physically move through; the novel as literary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with language as fragrant, hallucinatory bark, and trunks reaching toward the sky.

Head over to Booktryst to look over a gallery of images and learn more about Matthews’ grand undertaking. And if you’d like a nice introduction to Ulysses, please see some of the instructive material we’ve listed below.

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Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Podcast

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The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Virginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Never Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

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Mike Tyson Lists the Philosophy & History Books He’s Reading These Days

in Books, History, Philosophy, Sports | December 16th, 2013

Last year, Mike Tyson staged a one-man Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee, called “Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth.” In November, the boxing legend published an autobiography by the same title. And now comes this: a short letter in The Wall Street Journal where Iron Mike lists the philosophy and history texts he’s reading these days. The list includes:

The Quotable Kierkegaard, edited by Gordon Marino, “a collection of awesome quotes from that great Danish philosopher.”

[Note: Nietzsche is his favorite philosopher. Says Tyson, “He’s just insane. You have to have an IQ of at least 300 to truly understand him.”

Alexander the Great: The Macedonian Who Conquered the World by Sean Patrick.

Why? Because “Alexander kept pushing forward. He didn’t want to have to go home and be dominated by his mother.” The same impulse drove Tyson to box his way out of Brownsville, Brooklyn. That’s all covered in his autobiography.

What else is Tyson reading? Love letters. He mentions Napoleon’s love letters to Josephine, and Virginia Woolf’s letter to her husband before committing suicide. Tyson then quips “I don’t really do any light reading, just deep, deep stuff. I’m not a light kind of guy.”

Get more at The Wall Street Journal.

H/T Partially Examined Life

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Gustave Doré’s Exquisite Engravings of Cervantes’ Don Quixote

in Art, Books, Literature | December 10th, 2013

In a now defunct listing from Bauman Rare Books for an 1868 edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote with illustrations by Gustave Doré, we find the following unattributed quotation: “in every English-speaking home where they can spell the word ‘art,’ you will find Doré editions.” It’s odd that the homes should be “English-speaking” when Doré’s illustrations were originally an 1860 French commission, but the quote at least demonstrates the enormous popularity of Doré’s Quixote. His renderings were so influential they determined the look of Quixote and Sancho Panza in many subsequent illustrated versions, stage and film productions, and readers’ imaginations.

Perhaps the most successful illustrator of the 19^th century, the dapper Doré was also at work on a momentous commission—this time from an English publisher—to illustrate the Bible. He went on to editions of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Poe’s The Raven, and many other famous works of literature. But his Don Quixote may be the literary commission for which he’s best remembered.

Doré apparently entered a crowded field when he took on Cervantes’ foundational text. For a little context, Bauman Rare Books also quotes a certain scholar surnamed “Ray,” who offers this précis of the edition’s creation:

Don Quixote was a text calculated to test even Doré. He was matching himself against Coypel and Tony Johannot, not to mention the Spanish illustrators of the great Ibarra edition published in Madrid in 1780. He met the challenge superbly… At first he intended only 40 designs, but Cervantes’ book captured his imagination, and he arranged for a major work… Don Quixote and Sancho Panza reached their definitive rendering in Doré’s designs.

Doré ended up completing over 200 illustrations for his edition. You can see a couple of those “definitive,” and exquisite, engravings above and below. The editors of Bibliokept maintain a separate site posting all of the Doré Quixote illustrations. Project Gutenberg has an English full text Quixote with the illustrations scanned in, and the University of Buffalo has an extensive searchable digital collection of Doré illustrations. And if you just have to conform to the tastes of “every English-speaking home where they can spell the word ‘art’ ” and own a Doré Quixote of your own, you can purchase a re-creation of an 1870 edition for only three monthly installments of $125. It’s a “publishing treasure.” Princeton University has more information on the engravings.

via Bibliokept

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Courses That Help Him Change The World

in Books, Education | December 9th, 2013

Stepping down as Microsoft’s chief executive officer in 2000 had given Bill Gates some extra time, which the autodidact immediately expended by attempting to learn… well, everything. Perhaps Gates threw himself at learning to make up for abandoning college for greater pursuits—he attended Harvard but left after two years’ study to pursue his passion for computers. Whatever his reasons, Gates has begun to assiduously learn all he can about the world, and is recording his education process for posterity on his website, The Gates Notes. As the video above explains, Microsoft’s founder has listened to hundreds of hours of university lectures from The Teaching Company; he got hooked after listening to Robert Whaples’ Modern Economic Issues and breezing through Timothy Taylor’s America and the New Global Economy. His number one pick? Big History which is taught by David Christian and, Gates says, “is still my favorite course of all. The course is so broad that it synthesizes the history of everything including the sciences into one framework.”

Wherever Gates travels, he is also eternally accompanied by his reading bag. Surprised that the herald of the digital age is packing paperbacks? Don’t be. “I’m still pretty much an old-school print guy,” Gates writes, “because I like to jot notes in the margins, but I assume I’ll move over to ebooks when annotation features get better.”

Last week, Gates showed WIRED the contents of his decidedly 20^th century mobile library. The books, which Gates replenishes at an impressive rate, encompass an admirable breadth of topics. As befitting the overseer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the majority of Gates’ reading consists of non-fiction (only Gary Shteyngart’s recent novel made the fiction cut this round). History, psychology, science, sound business counsel, sociology, economics, and history all make up the dizzying array of Gates’ everyday reading. Here is a selection from WIRED’s partial list, including Gates’ own comments on the importance of each choice:

-Feynman’s Tips on Physics by Richard Feynman– A short companion book to Richard Feynman’s classic Lectures on Physics. Always worthwhile to return to the feet of the master.

-Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart– I don’t read a lot of fiction, but I thought this was an interesting study of the moral implications of technology. Will technology contribute to everyone’s well-being or just make people more narcissistic?

-The Cartoon Introduction to Statistics by Grady Klein– Bought this to use with one of my kids. Helpful in explaining a complicated subject to a teenager.

-The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal by David McCullough – I read this to prepare for a family vacation to Panama. It’s pure McCullough: epic drama, political intrigue, heartbreaking defeats, and eventual triumph.

-The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker– One of the most important books I’ve read. Steven Pinker demonstrates how the world evolved to be far less violent. Counterintuitive, if you watch the news, but true.

We’ve also used the trusty Control + Scroll function to zoom in and name a few additional titles:

An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in The Second World War by Paul Kennedy

The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz

Why Does College Cost So Much? By Robert Archibald and David Feldman

Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty by Jennifer Clark

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough

The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined by Salman Khan

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

For the original list, head over to WIRED. For more of Gates’ commentary, check out his site, The Gates Notes, here. You can also continue your self-education by visiting our lists of Free Online Courses, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Language Lessons, Free Textbooks, and Free MOOCs.

Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman.

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