Spent an hour browsing at Grey Wolf Books in San Leandro, a great barn of a place. Bought a small heap of sf/fantasy paperbacks, concentrating on the top shelf that only we freaks can reach unassisted.
I also found a copy of Thomas’s Calculus and Analytic Geometry at a price low enough that I need no longer refer to my old purple one. (My sister had used it after me, returned it to me with the spine ruined, and got herself a fresh copy.) How many of you remember the purple book? How many still have it?
My most curious find was a dictionary of Latin medical terms – for Estonians. One has to wonder: do such things ever move, or did the shop’s buyer take a wild gamble? If the latter, at how much of a discount?
Heck, I still use it [Thomas] occasionally to look up something. Third edition, third printing, 6/62, a little worse for wear but perfectly functional.
It’s handy for a quick ’n dirty overview or review or loose derivation of some methods.
Or maybe I’m just sentimental. I had the privilege to have a semester of calculus lectures from George Thomas himself.
Little known early IP wars factoid: In ’63 or so some MIT undergrads got busted after hiring a Taiwan printer to make a few hundred pulp copies of Thomas’ CaAG, which they apparently intended to sell cheap to incoming frosh. I think the legit purple books (Addison-Wesley) sold for around $15-$25 at the time. I never laid hands on one of the purloined paperbacks. I think the whole shipment from Taiwan was confiscated but I’m not sure. If any copies of those were still around they’d be real collector’s items.
Grey Wolf is no more.