One of the great perks of working near major universities is being able to collect lots of free books. Not just Reader's Digests, Harlequin bodice-rippers, and Danielle Steel, mind you - but interesting free books. Since books are attracted to the high osmotic tensions of gray matter commonly found at institutions of higher learning, at some point these schools experience Book Gluts. One finds all sorts of literary treasures dumped in cardboard boxes, left on tables with tags saying "free," and sadly, even thrown in Dumpsters alongside yellowing newspapers and empty pad thai cartons.

Personally, I think disposing of unwanted books in Dumpsters is tantamount to heresy, since surely someone somewhere would benefit from the discarded tomes; it's not like our globe has a net surplus of brainpower, you know. If the laws of conservation of energy hold true, then if there is a Book Glut in one location, there must be a corresponding Book Dearth somewhere else...probably in my neighborhood, the Armadillo's Pillow bookstore excepting.

At the end of the hall where I work, an old wooden table [which may have once literally propped up Milton Friedman's coffee, at some point in history] serves as a makeshift trading post/lost-and-found, where students and faculty alike can leave or take assorted scientific journals, books, flyers - even office supplies, winter hats and videotapes. It may be junk, but it's good junk. Recently I picked up a Turkish economic journal with two articles that caught my attention: "Consumer response and communication with fuzzy/focused logic: An Example From The Turkish Shampoo Industry" and "Blade Runner: Existential Theory of the Disaffected Future." Where else on earth would you find this stuff?

What if you don't have access to a trading table? Shh - don't tell anyone, but at the Powells Books location on 57th Street in Hyde Park, there are cardboard boxes left out every afternoon with overstock discards and books the management doesn't feel will sell. They're free for the taking - and while one has to sift through considerable chaff to find the wheat, I've scarfed up some great finds there.

Some goodies I've found lately? Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich, PhD (University of California Press, 2004), Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan by Alex Kerr, and alt.culture by Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wice, a perfunctory encyclopedic look at the 1990's from a pop culture perspective. Each entry in the book has corresponding URLs for further reference, but I'd be surprised if any of the links still work. Useful mainly for archival value, though, and perhaps some of the pages are saved at the Wayback Machine. Twenty years from now, will anyone remember half of this?

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