3 Free eBooks - May 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

National Research Council. Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. December 2012. Available in several downloadable forms here. A new global trends report is published every 4 years following the US Presidential election. It is intended to provide a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications. Is our future going to be characterized by stalled engines, fusion, gini-out-of-the-bottle or nonstate world…or some combination?

Paxton, Sir Joseph. Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants. London: W.S. Orr and Co. 1834-1849. More than 10 volumes available on the Internet Archive here. I can’t resist including at least one eBook with botanical prints. Many of the images are quite recognizable - like the azalea at right.

Dobson, George; Grove, Henry M; Stewart, Hugh; Haenen, F. de. Russia. London, A. and C. Black. 1913. Available from the Internet Archive here. Look at this book for the pictures and realize that it is about that time just before World War I when everything was breaking…no one fathomed just how bad it was going to be or what would be built afterwards on the rubble.