Reference Books and Guides

Reference Books and Guides is an eclectic collection, both historic and current, from Hammurabi to the Internet, with 41 books, including Bartlett's Quotations, Emily Post's Etiquette, The CIA World Factbook, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Robert's Rules of Order, Internet books by Richard Seltzer, and more. These are the types of books that you turn to when you have a particular question. You just check the part with the answer rather than reading them through from cover-to-cover.

Intended for use with PCs (Windows or Linux) and recent Macs (OS X), these books are in plain-text format, organized for easy access.

You can see the complete table of contents below. Please use the Find function in your browser (under Edit) to look for a specific author or book.

Table of Contents

Quotations

• Familiar Quotations edited by John Bartlett
• Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations
• Many Thoughts of Many Minds -- a treasury of quotations compiled by Louis Klopasch

Encyclopedias and Collections of Facts

• Burrough's Encyclopedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
• Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
• The Nutall Encyclopedia edited by Rev. James Wood, 1907
• The 2007 CIA World Factbook.  With maps, flags, and up-to-date information on every country in the world  this is an interlinked set of hundreds of HTML documents. You should open it with your Web browser.
• Country list
• Other files

Thesaurus

• Roget's Thesaurus, 1911 edition

US Census

• A Historical Record of the Population of the United States, 1994

Practical Advice for Living

• Book of Wise Sayings, Selected Largely from Eastern Sources by W.A. Clouston
• The Eugenic Marriage: A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies by W. Grant Hague
• Fowler's Household Helps
• Proverbs (from the King James Bible)
• Up-to-Date Business, edited by Seymour Eaton

Law

• The Oldest Code of Laws in the world by Hammurabi, King of Babylonia (2285-2242 BC)
• A Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and the Several States of the American Union by John Bouvier, 1856 (from The Constitution Society web site at http://www.constitution.org Included here with permission.
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y
• Constitution of the United States
• Constitution of Massachusetts
• Constitution of Virginia
• Constitution of Pennsylvania
• Constitution of New York

Codes of Conduct and Etiquette

• Book of Etiquette, volume 2, by Lillian Eichler
• The Book of Business Etiquette, 1922
• The Code of Honor (for Dueling) by John Lyde Wilson
• Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post
• George Washington's Rules of Civility by Moncure Conway
• Robert's Rules of Order by Major Henry M. Robert

Guides for Writing and Speaking

• Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Keiser
• How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin
• The Jest Book, selected and arranged by Mark Lemon
• Jokes for All Occasions
• Literary Blunders by Henry Wheatley
• Philosophy of Style by Herbert Spencer
• Practical Argumentation by George Pattee
• Slips of Speech by John Bechtel
• Stops or How to Punctuate by Paul Allardyce
• Stories that Words Tell Us by Elizabeth O'Neill
• Style by Walter Raleigh

How to Make Things

• The Boy Mechanic, volume 1, by Jack Mansfield
• Things to Make by Archibald Williams
• plain text
• pdf version, with illustrations

Internet Guides

• Quick Advice about Internet Business by Richard Seltzer

Take Charge of Your Web Site by Richad Seltzer (originally published by MightyWords, 2001)
You need to get the most out of Web pages that are critical to your business. You suspect that something is wrong—the results just aren't matching expectations. You may be tempted to invest even more on design or on advertising or on both (not realizing that the expensive design you already have could be preventing people from finding your pages naturally). You feel out of control. You don't understand your options, don't understand how details of design can affect traffic. You may not even know what questions to ask. Hence you don't know what to tell the experts to do. Here you'll find one set of lessons that can help solve the problems of four kinds of business people: 1.The independent professional with his or her own Web site.2.The CEO or marketing manager for a startup or a small focused company. 3.The manager or marketing manager of a department or group within a large, diverse company. 4.The Internet technical expert suddenly given broader responsibility.

• Preface
• html version
• Introduction: My Web site was supposed to bring me new business. Help!
• html version
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• Chapter 1: What you can do to fix your existing site
• html version
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• Chapter 2: How to build free Web pages
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• Chapter 3: How to publicize your Web site
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The Social Web: how to build a successful personal or business Web site by Richard Seltzer (1997, 1998).

• From "Flypaper" to Social Web (preface)
• html version
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• Let People Find You -- Putting "Flypaper" to Work (introduction)
• html version
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• Basic Building Blocks of the Social Web (chapter 1)
• html version
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• How to Design Web Pages Without Learning HTML (chapter 2)
• html version
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• The Content Question -- Okay, I have Web space. Now what am I going to put there? (chapter 3)
• html version
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• Who Owns What? (chapter 4)
• html version
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• How to Build a Personal Web Site -- the Broader Implications of Search Engines (chapter 5)
• html version
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• How to publicize your Web site over the Internet (chapter 6)
• html version
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• Making your site global -- taking advantage of free translation at AltaVista (chapter7)
• html version
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The Way of the Web  lessons from the Internet -- how to adapt to the new business environment by Richard Seltzer (1995).

• Epigraph -- "The Way of the Web"
• html version
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• Will the Real Tomorrowland Please Step Forward?" (Introduction)
• html version
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• The Giants Wore Velcro on their Shoulders (Chapter 1)
• html version
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• Wake Up: Tomorrow Happened Yesterday (Chapter 2)
• html version
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• What's the Razor and What's the Razor Blade (Chapter 3)
• html version
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• Curious Technology (Chapter 4)
• html version
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• Building Communities on the Internet (Chapter 5)
• html version
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• And the Blind Shall Lead Them: New Ways to Perceive Cyberspace (Chapter 6)
• html version
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• Anonymity for Fun and Deception: The Other Side of Community (Chapter 7)
• html version
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• Identity, Motivation, and Community (Chapter 8)
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• IntroductionWhy shop Online?
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• Part One covers aspects of online shopping that apply no matter what you want to buy.
• Chapter One covers the basics -- how to find your way to the online stores you want by way of the paths that others have laid out for you.
• html version
• plain text version
• Chapter Two provides the information you need to become an independent shopper, using search engines and price-comparison sites, and auctions.
• html version
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• Chapter Three gives you pointers on advanced techniques, which can help you become a creative shopper -- sharing experiences with and getting advice from other shoppers, and becoming a full member of the online community.
• html version
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• Part 2 covers special cases, where there are major differences in how you shop based on the kinds of things you are looking for:
• Chapter Four -- books, music, and videotapes
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• Chapter Five -- computers and software
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• Chapter Six -- travel
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• Chapter Seven -- food
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• Chapter Eight -- money, including loans, insurance, and investments
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• Chapter Nine -- cars
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• Chapter Ten -- real estate, including houses, apartments, and roommates
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• More shopping ideas and resources (the appendices)
• html version
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• Bio of the author and why he wrote this book
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• Acknowledgements and thank you's
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Web Business Bootcamp: Hands-on Internet lessons for managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals looking for online business success by Richard Seltzer (originally published by Wiley, 2002)

• Epigraph -- A Glimpse of the Future
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Author
• Chapter 1. Welcome to the land of the free
• Chapter 2. The value of anonymity: privacy and masquerade
• Chapter 3. Make your own Web pages on your PC
• Chapter 4. Assemble your pages to form a Web site
• Chapter 5. Let people know that you're there
• Chapter 6. How to improve your Web site
• Chapter 7. Building your audience with online interaction
• Chapter 8. Building relationships with customers: what you can learn from selling at auctions
• Chapter 9. What to do with an audience and what else to do with your content
• Chapter 10. Going global
• Chapter 11. Experimenting with futures
• Chapter 12. The future of business on the Internet