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Turndevelt's Big Book of Forewords

Copyright (c) 2004 David R. Perry

ISBN 0-9753554-0-6

For more information about this title, or to order hard copies, please visit www.davidrperry.com.

******************** This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

The License is included at the end of this file.

******************** Dr. Lewis B. Turndevelt's Big Book of Forewords ********************

Preface

Let me begin by saying that I have a personal and moral objection against book introductions and prefaces. My reasons are numerous, but I will be focusing on just two for the purpose of this unfortunate, but publisher-mandated, preface.

The first is that the only reason they exist is to give would-be book buyers a convenient way to check over a book's contents before making a purchase. To the consumer, I'm sure that this seems like a good and reasonable thing to expect. After all, if someone is going to spend their hard-earned money on a stack of papers, they might like to have at least a false sense that somewhere in the middle of that stack is something of value and importance. Yes, I'm sure that the consumer does in fact feel this way.

Now let me tell you how I, the book author, feel. I think it's stealing. You stand around in the bookstore, killing time before you head off to your "real" entertainment for the evening, consisting of yet another regrettably awful Hollywood movie, and decide that you can at least browse over the preface of a book, hoping to find out what it is about, who this yahoo

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