More discount books

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics (hc) by Jon Chait for $3.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (hc) by Vincent Bugliosi for $3.

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (pb) by John Cornwell for $4.

The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius (hc) by Joyce Chaplin for $8.

I'd already and reviewed The Big Con but I didn't have a copy.

Although Bugliosi's book is a former library book, I doubt it's been checked out more than once, if that - it still has that new book smell. There are several copies of it at my local library, and I don't think those ever get checked out, either. It must be something about the title that intimidates readers, I suppose.

I'd previously read Cornwell's Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact and thought it was excellent so I couldn't pass up on seeing Cornwell writing about familiar territory in Hitler's Pope.

With Chaplin's book, it's been at the book store in the discount section sitting there for a while now (a few months) but I hadn't felt all that inclined to read it. The tipping point, I think, was watching too much Glenn Beck and listening to too many Republicans say stuff like this, which led me to want to read about a time when our great statesmen were informed by the findings of science and were revered for it. Plus, the book seemed like a good follow-up to The Invention of Air (which I excerpted here.)