Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 76

I’m only a couple phone calls out from having an apartment lined up and I’m interviewing for a year-long gig doing exactly what I was lab grown for early tomorrow. Pretty much as soon as that’s done I’ve gotta finish moving stuff to the stopgap that is my parents’ garage, but thankfully I managed to preempt that crunch by handling books last week.

Still on the long road home, but I took this picture for my own records before leaving.

Everything up to the boxes at right (plus another half box of processing supplies plus some unpictured maps) survived my relatively thorough weeding passes. It’s a huge relief to feel like everything is worthy of its space and weight costs again; been ages since I felt like things were on pace with actual usage.

No idea how much I’ll end putting back in storage, but before that decision comes due I have a lot of collating and reorganization to catch up on. Might even finally get around to whipping up a catalog spreadsheet, but I daren’t speculate on how much free time I’ll have more than a couple hours in advance.

Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 78

Or Untitled Wednesday Library Sequence, I guess, pending your mode of consumption and opinion on the matter.

In mind of @bubbloquacious et al., another old math thing, where ‘old’ is taken generously to mean ‘from 1963’ and ‘math thing’ indicates ‘George B. Thomas, Jr.‘s Calculus and Analytic Geometry, published by Addison-Wesley, in the third edition’.

The How

I truly have no idea how I came by this, but I’ve had it since at least early high school. My maternal grandmother sometimes gave me books after working estate sales; my best guess is she gave it to me as some kind of ill-conceived nerd trinket.

NB: The name Stewart Teague is crossed out and replaced by Gerald Ockert, who got this used from Michigan State’s bookstore. In the back of the book was a schedule for school teachers seeking M.Ss and M.A.Ts dated ‘65–‘67, which I presume he finished because this PDF contains his name twice, the second time preceded by Dr., having moved from Portland public schools to a state posting. Since that document is for awards from a traffic organization, I have to assume he’s the same Gerald Ocker who published on traffic patterns at Texas A&M in ‘87, which would explain the relocation closer to my grandmother. Huh.

The Text

Nothing especially unique. Math textbook. Pretty, at least, and at least kind of does what it’s supposed to; I poked through the first chapters in my early teens and got like a month’s leg up on eventual calculus classes, then promptly fell back onto pace. The early exposition is a little different than current textbooks, but it’s still calculus.

The Object

Addison-Wesley did a lot of similar academic publishing, all of which are exactly the right size and shape and color to ping a little cluster of neurons somewhere in a dusty antechamber of my brain. Chunky. Magazine-like paper. Nice blocky printing and a smattering of illustration styles, but nowhere near the variety of a more recent counterpart. The use of serif subheadings is interesting, but otherwise it’s comfy and familiar to poke through.

Incidentally, the slightly off-square glued fabric of the cover is a thing that used to bother me about a lot of similar books, but I’ve done more than my fair share of fabric lamination — mostly linen like this — in recent years and now I think it’s very charming, actually. Relatable. Adhering and stretching fabric is just like that, as it turns out.

The Why, Though?

Eh. No real reason. This is the part where I usually say something about trig/log/exponent tables, though; those still count as a reason if I’m reaching.

I will say this is the earliest example of double-lined table borders in my collection, which I guess is something.