Explanation of What I Am Doing

I just wanted to make a quick post explaining what I am doing with this site.

Mises.org does an amazing job at releasing all of their books for free in PDF form (and now converting many of them to EPUB):

http://mises.org/literature.aspx

I am doing multiple things:

• Fixing any errors in the EPUB version if it exists.
• Creating an EPUB version if it does not exist.
• Releasing a more optimized PDF version if needed (much smaller filesize, cleaned images, the OCR backend will match the EPUBs)
• (Update: August 2012): As of August 2012, before starting anything, I export the book to png files, and then I run them through imagemagick. This cleans up virtually all specks.
• This is a link to the .bat file I have been using. It takes a long time, but it cleans up every single specks, and works better than anything else I have been able to find.
• http://www.mediafire.com/?bzkxxl2qypjgxdh

While reading an EPUB version of the book, I am fixing up any errors that I find, and then release a "Fixed" version of the book. These will have a thorough changelog of what exactly was changed from the original. Usually this just includes small typos such as extra spaces, missing punctuation, accidental split paragraphs, wrong accent marks, etc. The professionals that Mises.org hires do a very good job at converting these books.

For those books which do not have an EPUB version, I am creating one which is as close to 100% accurate as I can. This involves taking the original scans of books (the PDFs released on Mises) and use ABBYY Finereader to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) the book.

Most/All of the PDFs on Mises are run through an OCR program, and then released. This automatic OCR does not do a 100% perfect job. What I do is manually go through each page and fix any errors that I find to create as close to a 100% accurate text backend for the book.

This is then converted into into a basic EPUB version. From there I go through a process of touching up everything: recreate tables in HTML, making sure images transferred, creating chapters, making sure formatting is correct (bold/italics are correct), creating footnotes, creating/fixing CSS, making sure unicode characters transferred (ç, È, Ê, é, £....), fixing little errors, etc.

As of now, I am focusing on older books (less likely to be in the process of being converted officially by Mises.org), and books which have bloated PDF versions (would benefit the most from having a tiny EPUB version).

Please contact me if you:

• Find any errors in my documents or the original versions
• Want me to create an EPUB of a specific book
• Want me to create a certain format of a specific book from my Finereader OCRs (ODT, DOC, TXT, etc.)
• Can't guarantee it will look pretty

Here is a list to my backup of every Mises.org book onto Mediafire:

EPUBs: http://www.mediafire.com/?iszjpz6pd1pya
PDFs: http://www.mediafire.com/?gcmj1km77kvy6

Foreign Language PDFs: http://www.mediafire.com/?somr2pyq3e0oe

The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine: Volume 1 By Thomas Paine

Notes on what needs to be done in EPUB:

• Footnotes pointing back and forth
• Look throughout book and add in blockquotes where needed
• Fix unicode quotes(?)
• Add smallcaps
• Add Dropcaps

Notes on what needs to be done in PDF:

• Add chapters/subchapter bookmarks

EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/?ou9ymt5og4byfkj

PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/?bx37ti3j6b256k6

Original PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/?82wssp6rad8w5dn

The Privatization of Roads And Highways By Walter Block

ISBN-10: 193355004X
ISBN-13: 978-1933550046

The official EPUB version was released a few months after I created my version.

EPUB (v1.05): http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?eykydtee5aq1g45

Original PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mb682lioi1lafbx
Original EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?5ns35404p3is6no

Dying of Money By Jens O. Parsson

 I created the epub from this site:

http://www.delanion.com/main/dom.htm

Which I believe was a backup of the copy which was once on Mises.org.

v.99, I believe everything is correct besides some of the Footnotes... but without an original copy/scan of the book, I just had to make educated guesses.

EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?t0gkx9qekek2tbk

OR

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24424642/Complete%20epubs/%5Bv.99%5DParsson%2CJens.O.-.Dying.of.Money.epub

Lessons For The Young Economist By Robert Murphy

ISBN-10: 1933550880
ISBN-13: 978-1933550886

Fix Notes

Chapter 1:
The Scope And Boundaries of Economic Science:

• Missing .: 2nd paragraph, first sentence

Why Study Economics:

• Missing .: first paragraph, 2nd sentence.

Chapter 2:
After Second Box "Economists Can't Agree on the Right Medicine"

• Missing .: "are either dishonest or sloppy These passions"

Chapter 3:

• Extra space: First Box
• "Murray Roth bard".

Chapter 4: Consumer Goods versus Producer Goods:

• Missing .: End of 2nd paragraph

Chapter 6: How Prices Are Formed in Barter:

• Extra Space: "Alice, Billy, and Christy
• who arrive"
• Made consistent with rest of the book (no space between dash and next word)

Chapter 9:

• Missing space: Right after footnote 2. "profitable.2On"

Chapter 10: How Saving and Investment Increase An Economy's Future Output

• Missing .: End of first paragraph
• Missing .: Second paragraph, first sentence. "This is certainly a possibility For Example, if Bill"

Chapter 11: Example 1: Supply Reduction

• Missing .: First paragraph, 2nd sentence. "thousand barrels per day What effect will this have"

Chapter 12:

• Missing .: "the later money Market interest rates"
• Missing .: "will pay back any borrowed money There are several"
• Missing .: "debts and repayment history These companies sell"

Chapter 13:

• Missing ,: "In short entrepreneurs estimate whether their proposed"

Chapter 15:

• Missing .: "that occur in a system based on private property Indeed the very terminology"
• Missing .: "not mere artifacts of a market economy The socialist planners"

Chaper 16:

• Missing .: "socialist regimes in the 20th century Now it is true"

Chapter 18:

• Missing space: right after footnote 1
• Missing .: "eliminate the arbitrary disadvantages placed on particular sectors of the economy"
• end of paragraph

Chapter 19:

• Missing .: "apply among individuals in a pure market economy The case for free trade"

Chapter 20:

• Missing space: Right after footnote 3
• Missing space: Right after footnote 4
• Extra space: "period— often called the “Noble Experiment”—mobsters"
• Missing .: "as the heroin or cocaine trade is today The infamous"

Chapter 21:

• Missing .: "from an initial barter economy and eventually become money In such a situation"
• Missing .: "valued even before they had achieved their status as money In a pure market"
• Missing .: "no single agency in charge of “the money” No, various people could own gold mines"
• Missing .: "in the same way that the total amount of bicycles isn’t set by a government agency"
• end of paragraph
• Missing .: "very controversial to even define what we mean by “the price of money” Economists have devised"
• Missing .: "all of these activities much more orderly Having an unsound fiat money is"
• Missing .: "in its official mission of price stability But in terms of the whole"

Chapter 22:

• Missing .: "create new money in the economy On the contrary if the government runs"

Chapter 23:

• Extra space: "—whether a consumer or a capital good— entrepreneurs must use"
• Missing .: "making cars that no one wants to buy No, the correct thing to do is allow"

Side Notes:

• Should some of the tables be converted to HTML instead of images?
• This would save on some space, and would leave formatting up to the epub reader. On my Nook some of the tables are very small and hard to read.
• First letter of each chapter has:
  <big><big><big>T</big><big><big>.
• I believe a much better way to do this would be to create a larger font class and apply that (sort of like what is done already in the other ebooks with Dropcap).
• Should the "ind" class just be added into , instead of having (almost) every
  be class "ind"?
• You can still override this with any special needs ("noind")
• Inline formatting isn't very good practice.
• For example:
  <h2 class="right" style="margin-top:30px;"><a id="chap05_1"/>Society Requires Rules</h2>
  
  Why not create a class in the stylesheet called "chaptertitle" with the attributes of class "right" and "margin-top:30px"?
• Another example:
  <p class="noind" style="margin-top:20px;">
  
  This is after almost every single chapter title (or subchapter title) in the first paragraph. Why not create a "firstparagraph" class, which includes margin-top:20px as an attribute?
  Or "marginfifty", "margintwenty", "marginthirty" class (with margin-top: ##px)?
  
  This can then be used multiple times throughout the document, and be able to be changed in just the stylesheet, instead of throughout the entire document.

Fixed EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8p6np1svuot731x

Original EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?0v3ieg82r0um6w5
Original PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?7bggj927yyoobmd

Bourbon For Breakfast By Jeffrey Tucker

ISBN-10: 1933550899
ISBN-13: 978-1933550893

Fix Notes:

• "They impose a profound sense of guilt on your for watering the basil growing in your window box."
• Changed to "you for watering"
• "This would surely to it!"
• Changed to "do it!"
• "when the birds make music of symphonic quality, and when the very air we breath feels air conditioned."
• Changed to "very air we breathe"
• "people like Milton Friedman, who 0believed that a pure paper"
• Got rid of the 0 before "believed"
• "years of wrangling.The first advocates of keeping kids"
• Added missing space between sentences
• "And there’s this nose spray that will help me breath better and play trumpet like a pro,"
• Changed to "breathe"
• "as if the artists owns the image or work,"
• Changed to "artist"
• "It robs those who know the most of the ability of make decisions and innovate."
• changed second "of" to "to".
• "are sometime accused of using exaggerated and hyperbolic language."
• Changed to "sometimes"
• "Now it starts to make sense.You and I—his employers,"
• Missing space between sentences
• "locks, alarm systems, and the like.This is what prevents crimes from taking place."
• Missing space between sentences
• "suddenly stopping on a public road for no reason other than some vague memory than one had to in the past."
• "memory than" changed to "memory that"
• "You too will feel pity on the seventh eights of the human race that does not understand this simple point."
• Changed to "seven eighths"
• "But you say: surely if this were true, it would be common knowledge. Not sure. There are many thing that are true — the"
• Changed "Not sure" to "Not true"
• "Jim and Huck ask what he is talking about. Tom explains that a duty<br/><br /> <br /> “is a tax”</p>"
• Combined that into one paragraph since it was an accidental split.
• " their products and ideas spread.”Indeed it was true:"
• Added a space before "Indeed"
• "Are we really suppose to believe the maniac,"
• Changed to "supposed"
• "Is what Frank is doing privately really that much more shocking than what the Fed does as a matter of its own daily operations?"
• Deleted "is" after Frank.
• Seperated Fortune Cookie pictures from paragraphs proceeding them.

Not sure on this, but pointing it out:

• "and thereby corrects one of the most pervasive political errors of our time (that Nazism and Communism represent opposite ends of an ideological continuum.)."
• Should there be the period inside the parenthesis?
• "(If you don’t understand why this answer would be humiliating, you know even less about sports than I do.)"
• Should the period be inside the parenthesis? This one is slightly different because it is at the end of a paragraph.
• "The treatment of women in the movie is egregious and shocking,"
• This is talking about Mad Men, a TV Show, not a movie.
• When giving the recipe for bread, it uses the '1/4' character. This showed up on my Nook as '?'.  Might change to "1/4"?

Fixed EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8hwl6jx21h2qe2a

Original EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?bnjz38s4z5h9zxv
Original PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?suc1y3at94bcgw1

Chaos Theory By Robert Murphy

ISBN-10: 1933550651
ISBN-13: 978-1933550657

Fix Notes (these errors exist in the PDF as well):

Deleted extra Space after '-':

• "Even such champions of laissez- faire as Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises"
• "For example, it would be very convenient for customers if a deli were open twenty- four hours a day."
• "and would even work in a society populated with self- interested but ultimately rational people."
• "He would probably be unable to get a full- time job,"
• "Under a government system, someone acquitted on a technicality gets off scot- free."
• "Profit- hungry businesses will thereby produce buildings and infrastructure"
• "If these preparations reduced the chance of foreign invasion to only, say, one- half of one percent per year,"

Extra spaces:

Chapter 1 - Footnote 9

• "the agreement would be understood implicit ly."

Chapter 2 - Footnote 15

• "he wouldn’t need any special “wartime powe rs.”"

Fixed EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hptqafotl8ai3p1

Original PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vqkdlr77xc47awc
Original EPUB: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?f5lbvpmwbdzkx3o