The Spread of History E-Books

If you love a good book, you are living in exciting times. The E-Book industry, after years of struggling to provide a quality product, is now vaulting to the forefront of the discussion about new technology. The recently released Amazon Kindle 2 is generating a lot of buzz, and the Sony Reader series is experiencing booming sales and popularity. Newspaper and magazine articles about the death of print may be a bit premature, but there is no doubt that the E-book is finally revolutionizing the way we see books.

I was once a skeptic myself, raising an eyebrow at the attempts to push an electronic avenue for book reading. I scoffed at those who read books on their computers and could never do it myself. The eyestrain and discomfort was simply too much. So someone went and invented E-Ink, which is absolutely wonderful. A few tech tweaks later, and suddenly reading a book on a Kindle or Sony Reader is more comfortable than reading an actual book. You don't have to fight with paper pages that don't want to stay open, you can read in bed more comfortably, and there's no end to where you can read with an e-book reader.

To top off the fantastic technical aspects, there is the aspect of free e-books! That's right! Any book in the public domain is available somewhere online, in many formats. No more dishing at $5-20 for that classic you've been thinking about reading. Download it quickly for free and see if you like it. Expanding your cultural and literary horizons has never been easier.

Now here is some really awesome news: Sony and Google just announced a partnership that has seen 500,000 (yes, half a million, it's not a typo) public domain books become available for free through the Sony E-Book Store. Virtually any obscure text you can think of is available here. All the classics, many government documents, historical books, biographies, science books, it's all there.

Now here is why I'm REALLY excited. As a history student, I now have free access to an unending supply of primary documents and pre-1920 histories. Sure, there are flaws, especially when trying to cite them. But the fact remains, I can find out which books are helpful, which are not. If I need to use a book, but perhaps it's not a direct scan or has a lack of citation information, I can at least know the book is useful and find a hard copy. Some scholars can scoff at this, but students and young historians don't have the money to invest in subscriptions or to travel to distant libraries to do research. Access to historical texts through things like Google Books has broken down a major barrier for many of us.

And with the floodgates open, I am immersing myself in as much as I can find. History buffs once limited by having to carry around dusty, moldy volumes can breathe a sigh of relief. I have something like 150 historical e-books on my Sony PRS-505 and don't even know where to begin.

Talk about an embarrassment of riches.