Just a quick comment in case I’m the “Jim” you were referring to … and not Jim Bennett. I’m up in Canada, which has just gotten Kindle service. My friends who enjoy fiction are thrilled. The non-fiction selection, as you point out, is *much* more restricted. I think this will change over time … and not just for the Kindle … but for the moment, fans of history and science will have to wait. There’s Kindle for PC and Kindle for iPhone/iTouch should you want to wait on buying a particular e-book reader. Older books (sometimes available as .PDF or .txt files) can be downloaded to a Kindle via a PC, which would expand your reading choices. My guess is that within a year or two, we may see more consolidation of the e-book publishing and reader market. And personally I make a lot of use of used book online stores … such as alibris.com and abebooks.com. Shipping is rather expensive but the books themselves are often very affordable.

My book review selections are often driven by who will send me a review copy! Or authors who I’ve already written about. They are rarely mainstream, I think. And haven’t followed much of a pattern in the last few years because of work obligations. I do try to pass along recommendations or cautions about the books that cross my desk.

The ins-and-outs of Kindle in Mexico seem to be discussed here:

http://www.amazon.com/Using-kindle-in-mexico/forum/Fx3P49EL3AOYQ1V/Tx9KSO3YDUE62C/1

Best wishes, James

I am considering ordering the new Kindle from Amazon. It has a quite a few niceties but the most important one for me is the 3G international connectivity because that, allegedly, will mean that I will be able to purchase ebooks online directly from the kindle and download them right away and I won’t need to drive to Laredo, Tx. to pick up my amazon orders anymore (it’s kind of expensive sometimes when we go and my wife starts shopping around like crazy and it is so hard to stop her then).

One of the problems I have here in Monterrey,Mexico is that it is so difficult to find books in English at local book stores, I mean just books in English, never mind books about the anglosphere or the kind of books you guys usually recommend here in chicagoboyz. There are good book stores with lots of books in English in Mexico City, because there are many americans living there, but is too far to drive from Mty, more than 10 hrs.

So the amazon Kindle is supposed to help me get the books and save me time and money I spend on my trips to Laredo (much to my darling’s chagrin). Okay, so far, so good.

But the thought of not finding many books like the ones you mentioned here and others in ebook format, kind of turns me off a little.

I checked every one of the books you suggested and all of them are either paperback or hardcover and I failed to see any ebook edition. I tried to find them as kindle books and I got nothing. Or do I need to find them at a different section of amazon.com? Excuse my ignorance on that.

Also, should I get the kindle or not? I don’t want to be reading only Moby Dick and Chesterton’s stuff. I read that Stephen King is publishing for the Kindle too, but that’s not exactly right up my alley either.

The Steppes book is important for understanding the important episode of Anglosphere history that is the 19th and 20th Century Conquest of the Plains. It was the addition of such a huge area of grain and meat production (and the big populations it created) to the formal and informal Anglosphere (the latter including the Pampas) that made such a difference in the World Wars. Imagine a WWI alignment fought in 1850. Even the initial steps of conquest of the central midwest made a big difference in the American Civil War.

The problem of extending urbanized agricultural civilization onto grassy plains inhabited by warlike horse nomads was one that was not solved for thousands of years, and it wasn’t until industrially-supported settlement and warfare came that the problem was solved and those resources made available to civilization. And it was we, pretty much, who solved it.

And of course the geopolitical writings of the Germans during this period were dripping with envy at what we had got, and resentment that they had not got it. Getting their hands on the Eurasian steppe was what German geopolitical aims up to 1945 were all about.