Skip to content

¡Atención!: New Books Page

…just finished up a site page devoted to books reviewed and discussed.  It includes capsule descriptions, links to reviews or posts, and links to Amazon. I intend to add a larger “recommended” list, a “current reading/on the way list,” and maybe some other book-related features/links.  Suggestions, both for the recommended lists specifically and in general for book-related features, are welcome. Specific book suggestions might go particularly well in the comment threads under the page.

BTW and full disclosure – if you use said Amazon links, any shopping you do in that session (with a few notable exceptions like Kindle books) will get racked up on yours truly’s Amazon affiliate account, earning yours truly a small percentage commission.  It’s an easy way to support the site and book reviews specifically if you like ‘em, and if you’re doing any on-line shopping anyway.  If you’d rather not support me or the site, well – you’re on your own!

Finally, if you’ve got an affiliate account of your own, feel free to use it when you make your own suggestions. If you’d like to put together your own pages/lists, lemme know, and we can work something out.

Comments 11

  1. Zoltan Newberry wrote:

    Don’t forget my Amazon reviews too!!

    December 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

  2. CK MacLeod wrote:

    Can you link us to them, Z?

    December 11th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

  3. Sully wrote:

    Neat idea CK. Unfortunately I missed seeing this post today before I bought 160 Trillion dollars of Zimbabwe currency as a stocking stuffer for my son the engineer. If I had seen this post before going to make that purchase I might have been swayed to buy the boodle on Amazon instead of EBay and you would have gotten a small cut of the $6.95 I spent.

    If you’re looking for a great gift there’s still a lot of the Zimbabwe cash out there at quite reasonable prices. Don’t pay more than four or five cents U.S. per trillion Zimbabwe or you’ll mess up the market.

    December 11th, 2009 at 7:30 pm

  4. CK MacLeod wrote:

    I’m a fan of Hungarian Pengos from ca. 1945. I’m not sure if the Zimbabwean Hyperinflation is worse. There are usuall Pengos up on eBay. To me the very name “Pengo” sounds like a doomed currency.

    December 11th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

  5. fuster wrote:

    The zloty sounds vibrant?

    December 11th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

  6. Sully wrote:

    @ CK MacLeod:

    The Hungarians may have been pikers or else not much of their currency survived. The biggest Hungarian bill on Ebay is a 50,000 Pengo note. Bunches of Zimbabwe notes ranging up to 100 Trillion are on offer.

    No inflated Deutsche Mark bills on offer. Probably not much of those old time hyperinflation examples survived except in specialist collector hands. Zimbabwe occurred after people knew there was a liquid worldwide market for such stuff.

    December 11th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

  7. Sully wrote:

    @ fuster:

    The zloty sounds vibrant?

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I exchanged a bundle of tattered old issue Pesetas for some quite vibrant professional services once upon a time. My judgement may have been a bit clouded by drink; but I had both my wallet and my shoes when I woke up aboard ship the next morning, so it can be inferred that I wasn’t too impaired.

    December 11th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

  8. CK MacLeod wrote:

    That is a clever idea for stocking stuffer, btw.

    The Hungarians were NOT pikers. I believe they’re still the world-record holders, but the Zimbabweans might be pushing them. You can find 10,000 Billion notes in completed eBay auctions, but that wasn’t the peak. Here’s the Wikipedia entry:

    Hungary went through the worst inflation ever between the end of 1945 and July 1946. In 1944, the highest denomination was 1,000 pengő. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 pengő. The highest denomination in mid-1946 was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő. A special currency the adópengő – or tax pengő – was created for tax and postal payments [1]. The value of the adópengő was adjusted each day, by radio announcement. On 1 January 1946 one adópengő equaled one pengő. By late July, one adópengő equaled 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 2×1021 pengő. When the pengő was replaced in August 1946 by the forint, the total value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation amounted to one-thousandth of one US dollar. [16] It is the most severe known incident of inflation recorded, peaking at 1.3 × 1016 percent per month (prices double every 15 hours) [17] . The overall impact of hyperinflation: On 18 August, 1946 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 4 × 1029 (four hundred octillion (short scale)) pengő became 1 forint.

    One source [2] states that this hyperinflation was purposely started by trained Russian Marxists in order to destroy the Hungarian middle and upper classes. The 1946 currency reform changed the currency to forint. Previously, between 1922 and 1924 inflation in Hungary reached 98%.

    December 11th, 2009 at 8:55 pm

  9. fuster wrote:

    December 12th, 2009 at 8:19 pm

  10. Sully wrote:

    @ fuster:

    Have you lost your voice?

    December 13th, 2009 at 7:19 am

  11. fuster wrote:

    @ Sully:
    Nah, I had a joke about your Peseta-soaked romantic interlude that was light on the inter and heavily ‘luded, and decided to lose that.

    December 13th, 2009 at 9:13 am

Video Links Enhanced by VideoSurf