When buying books online, I’ve frequently used a web service that searches several vendors. BestBookBuys.com checks the standard new and used booksellers and gives the lowest price, including shipping, that each seller offers. I just found a more useful search tool. Bookfinder.com aggregates the prices not of specific sellers but of specific books. In other words, BestBookBuys might tell me that Amazon has used copies starting at price x and Alibris has a used copies starting at price y. Bookfinder, on the other hand, lists each copy that is for sale, giving a description and usually an ISBN or edition number. Thus, Bookfinder might reveal that Amazon has one cheap copy that is quite worn and also an out-of-date edition and that Alibris has a copy that is only slightly more expensive but that is also the right edition. Both services do include shipping costs when comparing book prices.
In the future, I’ll probably use Bookfinder.com for most of my book purchases.
Classes for the fall semester start today. I am taking
- Hi 535 African-American History,
- Hi 611 Forces in American History, and
- Hi 690 Thesis Research.
I learned a new word tonight, courtesy of Perry Miller:
tergiversate: 1. To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate. 2. To change sides; apostatize.
“When God promises to abide by stated terms, His word, of course, is to be trusted; but then, what is man that he dare accuse Omnipotence of tergiversation?”[]
Occasionally I’ve made posts about articles that I’ve read that others may find interesting or useful. Now I’ve created a page that automatically lists articles that I’ve chosen. If you would like to see them, you can either check the page or subscribe to the RSS feed.
This Saturday Abby, Kellen, Anna Beth, P.J., and I went to The Really Good, Really Big, Really Cheap Book Sale. For a couple weeks leading up to the sale, we joked about what we would do to beat each other best books. But on the actual day of the sale, we banded together. We even shared books amicably, though Kellen and I did pretend to quarrel over Theodore Rex, much to the embarrassment of our fiancées.
According to the Greenville Literacy Association, the sale featured some one hundred thousand books. Many of them were romance novels and self-help books, but among the rest we each found some good deals. For the price of one hardback and one paperback book, I acquired the following:
- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
- Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly
- Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan
- Plutarch’s Lives
- Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America and Errand into the Wilderness
- Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
- David MacCullough, Truman
- Six or seven John Steinbeck novels, including mint copies of East of Eden and Of Mice and Men
- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
- Several miscellaneous history books
- Quite a few miscellaneous classics, including Moby Dick, Tom Jones, Bleak House, A Farewell to Arms, and Gulag Archipelago
- A couple miscellaneous novels
The others found their own treasures as well. P.J., who bought by far the most books, got the library of Russian literature that he has always wanted. Kellen walked away with a select works of philosophy and literary criticism and, inexplicably, with four copies of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Abby and Anna Beth both bought works of literature—and cookbooks.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad morning’s work.
Earlier this year, my alma mater earned accreditation from the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS), a accreditation agency that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Thus graduates should have an easier time both being accepted at other institutions and tranferring credits to them. However, it doesn’t seem to be quite so simple.
There are six regional accreditation agencies. There are also a number of national or professional accreditation agencies. The regional accreditation agencies seem to be the most widely regarded in higher education. TRACS is a national agency. I have heard of cases of BJU graduates who have been turned down by other schools that specifically pointed out that BJU was nationally and not regionally accredited. How representative those cases are I don’t know, but there does seem to be reason for concern.
Today Inside Higher Ed ran an article about accreditation and transfering credits. According to IHE, both Congress and the U.S. Department of Education are debating whether to forbid institutions from discriminating on the basis of the source of accreditation. In other words, a school that was deciding whether to transfer a student’s credits could not base its decision on whether the sending school was nationally or regionally accredited.
At the core of this policy debate is the assumption that the type of accreditation held by the institution where a student was enrolled should not be the controlling influence on the decision to award credit by the receiving institution.
The write of the article makes several arguments against the proposed legislation. He argues that overworked admissions departments need a clear, objective criterion to make transfer decisions. He further argues that the federal government should not become involved in this matter.
Opponents of the proposed legislation and regulations argue that the federal government should have no role in determining credit transfer decisions that historically—and appropriately—have been the responsibility of the faculty and, in some instances, states and their governing systems.
On the one hand, I agree that the federal government should not intrude itself into the decisions of private and state institutions. On the other hand, such legislation might help students who want to go on after completing degrees at nationally accredited institutions. (I doubt that it would help me, though, because most PhD programs in history don’t accept any transfer credits from MA programs elsewhere.) Perhaps those of you with more clearly thought out political and economic philosophies can add your opinions.
The AHA’s Perspectives has announced that the AHA has created an online directory of history journals. With a quick search by keyword or subject matter, I was able to find several more journals to submit papers for potential publication. I was already aware of the top journals that I would like to publish in, but prudence suggests that I have a backup plan in case of a rejection letter.
The AHA also has valuable resources for graduate students, which I am slowly making my way through.
I have embarked on three quests: first, to arrange all the details attendant to married life; second, to write a master’s thesis; and third, to be accepted in a PhD program in history. Those three quests will provide the subject matter for this blog, since I haven’t been writing much recently.
