Free GLBT Non-Fiction E-book from the University of Chicago Press

[ein_myria]

"The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government" by David K. Johnson (2004)
Details: Go to the University of Chicago Press Website

“David Johnson’s engrossing study of the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Cold War, complete with a comprehensive picture of the gay culture that flourished in Washington, is an important addition to a subject all too often ignored.”—Dallas Morning News

Comments
Hi, this is my first post to this community. *wave* I just wanted to share this rare free non-fiction find. Apparently this is a free e-book for the month of June. It does require Adobe Digital Editions. (For ipad users such as myself, this means downloading the Bluefire reader app & signing up with an adobe ID. For PC users this means downloading some software.)

Update: Eek, apparently some of our community members are experiencing trouble with the PC ADE software (see comments for instructions). (DRM, you cause more trouble than you are worth. :/)

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

Oh, cool. I flagged the email from them but didn't even look to see what the book was. Thanks!

[copracat]

Hi, just a note about the format. Users here may know a lot more about this than I do. Adobe Digital Editions just told me it owned a bunch of documents on my harddrive and was locking them from use on other computers. This list of documents included Cory Doctorow's Content (delicious irony!), books I have downloaded for free elsewhere without any DRM applied, such as from steampunkmagazine.com, some fan works and pdf files that the program could only identify as untitled and unknown author at which point I realised Adobe Digital Editions probably didn't know what it was doing.

I am slightly confused!

But thanks heaps for the link to this book.

[jumpuphigh]

Oh, . Do you use Calibre? If so, you can add a plug-in that will de-DRM all those books for you.

[copracat]

Thanks, I do. I'll track that down. The thing is, as far as I can tell, none of them were DRMed in the first place. Certainly not Doctorow's books nor the fan fiction pdfs.

ADE appears to have made a post-publication random DRM addition decision.

[jumpuphigh]

That's just so weird. I've never had that happen to me but I don't use it for anything except opening files that had DRM to begin with and then, just usually to download them. I put everything into Calibre.

[copracat]

It must have scanned my hard drive to find the files it's decided it owns. Which it clearly doesn't own at all. They're still readable in their own formats but it's made an annot file for them. What a tedious program and one that is not reader friendly, either.

[jumpuphigh]

I'd really rather not have to ever use it but unfortunately, there are occasionally books that I want that I can't get without using it. Now, I want to see if I can trigger it to try to own some books of mine that it doesn't own.

[jumpuphigh]

Oh, you know what? I don't think I ever authorized my computer. I bet that might be the difference. (And I'm not going to cause why screw with success?)

ETA: Nope. That's not it. I authorized the computer.

[copracat]

It gave me a message that if I authorised my computer, it wouldn't lock them. Presumably because I could give my password on other computers and it would know it was me. I thought I had said no, I won't continue thanks, but must have clicked on the button that meant go ahead. So it did warn me and I did try to cancel rather than authorise or go ahead without authorisation. Eh. These things happen. It's not like I can't download the Doctorow books and the fan fiction and Steampunk magazine again what with them still freely availably on the internet.

[jumpuphigh]

The script to de-DRM ADE stuff through Calibre is super-easy to use. Some of the other ones (for Barnes & Noble especially) are a little more swear-worthy but the ADE one was really just plug-in and go.

[copracat]

Thank you for that advice! Worked a treat.

[jumpuphigh]

I am very glad to hear it.

[ein_myria]

Whoops, sorry for the trouble. I did not realize that the PC software would do that.

[kaiz]

Same thing happened to me! :/

[copracat]

Upthread jumpuphigh has some advice for us.

[elf]

Wha ...? How ....?

Does it edit the epub/pdf files somehow?

[copracat]

No, they seem to be themselves and I can open them as I have previously. However, it's created an 'annot' file for some of them.

The DRMed file I downloaded was, pre-conversion in Calibre, only vieweable in Adobe Digital Edition and looked like random characters in my usual pdf viewer.

[ein_myria]

I'm guessing this is the part that's messing up:

-----------
After activation, any books, magazines, or other documents you previously bought with Adobe Acrobat® or Reader® software are migrated to Adobe Digital Editions. This is usually a relatively quick process. Adobe Digital Editions opens each item and reverifies its license to the user. If you don't have DRM-protected items, you don't need to be online during the migration. If you have a large number of items (for example, more than 100), then this process may take a while, but you will see a progress bar indicating the state of the migration as it proceeds.
-----------

[elf]

previously bought with Adobe Acrobat® or Reader® software

Hm, looks like they might mean "any filetypes associated with ADE or Acrobat, that the software finds while crawling through your ebook folders."

BECAUSE GAH YOU CANNOT BUY BOOKS WITH ACROBAT OR READER. I wonder what it'd do with the 2500+, 8gb collection of PDFs in my "ebook" folder. (Most of which are scans in various stages of conversion. Many of the rest are comic books.)

This goes under "one more reason to just never fucking deal with DRM software."

[copracat]

Yeah, I got that message which is why I tried to cancel (DRM loathing plus button clicking failure led me forward!)

But these particular files were not bought with anything. No idea why it chose a small number of not-DRM, not-purchased-but-downloaded-freely-from-the-owners pdfs.

[ein_myria]

Maybe this is a bug for the software that really needs to be reported to the developers? It will save other unsuspecting readers elsewhere, to be sure.

[brewsternorth]

...why in the world did UCP go for this ornate Adobe Digital Editions whojimmy as opposed to just making the thing available as a (watermarked) PDF? I am disappoint. Particularly as that title sounds Relevant to my Interests (have a fiction on the back-burner which relates to LGBT communities and Cold War paranoia).

[elf]

They do all their ebooks through ADE. Because *anyone* could open a watermarked PDF! They want to make sure you're not sending out free copies to friends next month or next year!

And ADE means they don't have to come up with something different when they offer the title for free instead of selling it.