posted
Railforum users may be interested to know that Borders bookstores around the country are currently selling off remaindered hardcover copies of the mainstream nonfiction book The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by Gary Krist (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007) at the stores' "Bargain Books" tables and bookcases, for the unusually low price of $3.99, down from the original list price of $26.00. (Although Barnes & Noble stores generally carry many of the same remaindered titles as Borders, I haven't seen The White Cascade remaindered at any Barnes & Nobles. Conceivably this book might also be available as a remainder at various independent bookstores around the country, though not necessarily for such a rock-bottom price.)
The book concerns, of course, the GN's well-known Wellington, Washington winter weather debacle of February-March 1910. While I haven't read the book yet and therefore can't vouch for the accuracy of its treatment of specifically railroad matters, it appears to have been scrupulously researched and annotated, and critically well received. Although author Gary Krist is primarily a fiction writer and magazine journalist, he appears (as evidenced in his Author's Note, p. xiii) to have been determined to apply strict scholarly standards to the project.
I get the impression that Borders sometimes assigns extremely low prices to certain remaindered books not because they're very bad or very unpopular, but because they contain information that some person or persons in Borders management believe to be particularly important to get into the public's hands. This seems to be especially frequent with books that concern ecology, aboriginal cultures, and enlightened views on transportation. While we on this forum don't belong to the segment of the public that's in dire need of basic education on railroad topics, we can still be grateful to Borders management for making this book available to us at a nearly give-away price.
(By the way, while you're at Borders, you might want to look in the Politics and Government section for a $10.00 hardcover copy of Edwin Black's 2006 book Internal Combustion, which contains fascinating information on transportation competitive equity, rail transit, and the Milwaukee Road electrification, among other topics.)
posted