Michael Moore—the movie maker and political activist behind such satirical gems as Roger and Me and Fahrenheit 9/11 and the new SiCKO—is the target of a subpoena from the Bush administration in the wake of his visit to Cuba. What a troublemaker. For the SiCKO movie, he took sick 9/11 rescue workers to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in hopes of getting them the same level of free care that the prisoners do. The Bushies are after Moore for allegedly representing himself falsely as a journalist.
Now, for free via the ad-supported Wowio service, you can read Emily Schultz’s Michael Moore: A Biography from ECW Press. Son of a Michigan autoworker, Moore briefly edited Mother Jones Magazine, only to get fired—just one incident in his love-hate relationship with the American liberal establishment, which he’s often scolded for not being gung ho enough. Scultz masterfully analyzes both his life and work. I read the biography—published about two years ago and one of at least several about Moore—almost without interruption on my DT 375 tablet: it was that compelling to me and might be to my fellow political junkies, liberal and conservative alike. Just remember to import Wowio’s PDF into Mobipocket Desktop first, rather than opening up the file, an action which might render the book unusable by Mobi. Let’s hope that Wowio can pick up some of Moore’s own books, such as along with more conservative titles.
Another e-book angle
Now here’s another e-book angle. Moore’s mother was literate even though she came from a working-class family, and her son was a precocious reader. Imagine the benefits Moore could have enjoyed with a TeleRead-style library system and the right teachers. Liberals might say he’d be able to raise even more hell, while conservatives might respond: “Who knows, maybe he’d have gone to Yale and life as a Republican.” I vote for the first possibility.
While Moore is clearly the target of vindictive political prosecution in the case of his Cuban travels—how backwards of the U.S. even to have the travel ban in effect, period!—I’d agree with Schultz’s depiction of Moore as flaws. For example, a librarian friend of mine, Rochelle “Raccoon” Hartman, determined that Fahrenheit 9/11 gave people the impression that they were seeing an editorial from her hometown newspaper in Indiana, when actually the text was from an letter to the editor. That’s a no-no indeed. I’ll enjoy Moore’s satirical movies that mangle timelines, just so he levels with the audience, but the misrepresentation of the letter is a no-no. I hope it won’t serve as another item for the White House’s heel-clickers to use in their efforts to nail him.
America’s Mayor, America’s President?
A second free Wowio book of interest to political junkies, here in the States at least, is America’s Mayor, America’s President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani, a collection of essays edited by Robert Polner, with a preface by Jimmy Breslin, the street-tough New York journalist. Well-credentialled collaborators discuss such topics as “the mayor’s Joe McCarthy-like penchant for the Big Smear…The myths and distortions concerning Giuliani’s Mafia-busting prowess… Rudy’s maddeningly hypocritical crusade for civility… Giuliani’s $12 million command center ‘bunker’ at the World Trade Center.”
The colorful, oft-married Giuliani, is now a Republican presidential candidate, and this book will not please partisans of “America’s Mayor,” if you go by the promo and past. I’ll look forward to reading that one. You can see the Amazon reviews here.
Back to the library angle
Notice? I’m mentioning Wowio books more and more. If anyone knows of similar services with ad-supported books, I’ll welcome hearing of them so I can track their offerings as well. What I like about Wowio, in addition to its wonderful modern classics such as Sophie’s Choice, even if the number of books isn’t huge, is the absence of Draconian DRM. Oter than the usual PDF hassles, I’m good to go. True, I need to wait for a link to show up in my e-mail, but that’s pretty minor compared to the DRM-related hell that I suffer when I try to download books from public libraries.
I won’t blame the libraries as much as the software companies and the publishers. I dearly hope that the publishing industry can figure out some way of, say, replacing the DRM with social DRM at the least—that is, the reproduction of names and identifying information in the book files. No DRM would be even better. But social DRM would at least get the libraries on par with Wowio.
More adventurous
What also strikes me about Wowio is that it’s more adventurous in its selection of e-books. Even at the Fairfax County public library in Northern Virginia, one of my favorites, too much of the e-book collection is the standard best-seller pablum. The Schultz book is a great example of a book living up to Wowio’s motto: “Free books…free minds.”
Also to Wowio’s credit, it seems more accommodating toward the reading tastes of males—while public libraries seem to reflect a female bias, in the choice of genres and subject matter. Instead of going after new markets, they seem too intent on pleasing the usual readers of romances (hey, calm down, ladies: I want to see e-acquisition budgets multiplied for readers of all kinds). And finally, Wowio’s business model seems to be more helpful. With a public library—thanks to restrictions from the publishing industry—only a limited number of readers can generally check out a title at once. No such restriction with Wowio, apparently. The more people see the ads, the better.
Partly because of the awkwardness of PDF—not everyone knows how to get around it with, say, Mobipocket Desktop—Wowio isn’t serving us as well as it could. The company’s books are now impossible to enjoy on most handhelds, at least not without effort. But that will almost surely change; the company is aware of the problems. It will be interesting to see how well the E branches of public libraries can compete with Wowoio when the company gets its act together. I don’t see this as an either-or choice, however, and I highly doubt that Wowio is anti-public library. Ideally, just like libraries and bookstores, the two approaches can complement ech other. Meanwhile, given the miserable job that most public libraries do with e-books, I’m damn glad Wowio is around.
About the Sony Reader post related to Wowio: It’s will be a little late, but is still on the way today.
The ban on travel to Cuba is a lot like DRM. People who really want to go to Cuba have any numbers of ways around the ban, so it ends up being selectively enforced and, in many cases, for political reasons. And, of course, it hasn’t come close to accomplishing its goal of quickening the downfall of Castro’s vile regime.
Are we sure the RIAA didn’t influence Kennedy to widen the Eisenhower arms embargo into a full-fledged embargo? Hmmm.