Early on in my graduate career, I had several professors explain to students how to “read” a book for a graduate seminar. The general consensus was to be sure to read the introduction and conclusion, and the first and last paragraph of each chapter. Generally this method completely fails me, as those same professors ask detailed questions that can only be answered if you read the entire book (hmm), but it is a good way to get through a book quickly if you are running out of time. Where am I going with this? Neither Google Books nor Open Library are going to give you too much assistance in this department, but if you have 2 hours until class and run into a classmate who mentions the book for that night’s class – oops you didn’t read it – Google Books will give you some assistance. Interestingly, Digital History is only available as a small overview. The entire introduction to Dr. Cohen’s book Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith is available from Google books (minus one page). I searched for other GMU professors’ books, including Michael O’Malley and Rosemarie Zagarri, and it seems like you can get one cohesive chunk out of Google Books – either the intro, or an entire chapter. It’s something. Older books are another story. On Google Books you have full access to the compilation of Patrick Henry’s papers by William Wirt Henry. The benefit here is that they are searchable: I typed in the search “States’ rights” and received 72 results. This is pretty exciting to history student!
For Open Library, it appears that newer books that do appear just link back to Google Books for the preview. However, the ability to “Buy, Borrow, or Browse” is a nice addition. BookMooch is a great idea I had never heard of. Open Library is useful for searching for a book that you may not want online, but in the end, Google Books at least offers a portion of some books online.
In conclusion, if you’d like to read an entire book for free (that has been published in your lifetime), either go to the library or hide in the corner of a bookstore. The Internet is probably not going to be that much of a help.
