Blue Collar Scholar Textbooks : Making Quality Classic Texts For Higher Mathematics Education

Affordable For All ! 

Welcome one and all aspiring to

mathematics to the grand

opening of a textbook publishing 

company like no other-

Blue Collar Scholar! 

   From the delusional idealist who

brought to the internet our sister site,

TULOOMATH– here, for all students,

teachers, researchers and just plain

hobbyists who enjoy the beauty of the

language of nature, we proudly present

a new source for outstanding and

inexpensive higher mathematics

textbooks! 

These textbooks will range in subject

matter from high school algebra and

geometry through all university level

subjects such as calculus, linear and

abstract algebra, ordinary and partial

differential equations, real and

complex analysis, probability and

statistics; point-set, geometric and

algebraic topology 

 and so much more!

Don’t look now- but you’ve arrived at

the site of a revolution.

The quiet revolution I’m talking about is the burgeoning world of online self-publishing-in particular, the self-publishing of academic textbooks. There was a time, not so long ago, when publishing a mathematics textbook required a deal with one of the major publishers-and unless you were a Fields Medal winner at Harvard, you were basically at their mercy even if they decided to bless you with a contract for your text. They dictated length, what they wanted in the book, how many graphics, that section’s too tough for American students, complete ownership of the copyright for a century if the book was successful-on and on and on. And after all that pain and suffering, the resulting text is so expensive, the author can’t even recommend it to his or her own students because they’ll have to take out a loan to purchase it. This is why until recently so many practicing scientists-and mathematicians in particular-would cringe when you suggested writing a textbook. Even if writing such a book in their field was a labor of love for them, the misery of getting it published sucked all the joy out of it.

Sadly, this is part of a larger social regression over the last 30 years in America of making higher education a career necessity that simultaneously, is purely a profit making machine with increasingly restricted access to the children of the non-wealthy. Horrifyingly, with the charter school/academic reform movement, this thinking is even now spreading to grade and secondary schools where quality public schools are rapidly becoming extinct. The result is an entire generation is crippled with lifelong debt and steadily diminishing earning prospects, while the prospects of their children even being able to read, let alone go to college, erodes with each new administration. And this is a crisis on both political sides borne of the increasingly plutocratic nature of our nation.

 (I was truly hoping to keep this preface entirely apolitical. But I realized it’s really impossible to coherently explain the motivations for this project without some digression on the current situation in American society.)

As someone who was trained at The City University of New York, this situation makes me want to put my fist through a wall. The thought of my future descendants’ subsistence farming in Pan-Em  to survive while wondering what magic holds the moon up, if it’s really made of cheese and kneeling to passing Lords and Ladies of America while they snicker is a nightmare I wake up consistently from now.

  Education should be a right every citizen should have a realistic chance at-and if our government is being paid off to ensure only children of the privileged have that right, then it’s up to us to create alternatives.

I decided that I was going to do what little I could to ensure that future didn’t come to pass. And the best way to do that was to create methods of self-education available to all people via the web and low cost purchases. Since my area of interest is mathematics and the physical sciences, I’d focus on that.

 My first, rather shallow attempt was when, as a graduate student, I began the blog Tables, Chairs And Beermugs -the title being an ode to Hilbert’s famous quote and referring to the rather ubiquitous subject matter of the blog. Despite the planned diverse nature of the blog’s content, my health problems and distractions of my personal life prevented me from making the blog as successful as it could have been. Part of the problem was lack of focus in the posts. I’m now turning back to it and focusing its’ subject matter on purely mathematical matters: Textbook reviews, academic commentary and research topics. I hope this will not only improve the blog’s quality, but allow it to attract more of an audience on the virtual data torrents. But even so, it wouldn’t make a dent in my stated goals. 

The second, much more significant attempt by me to make a contribution to this revolution was the massive WordPress website, Tuloomath , to which I dedicated a year and a half of my precious life with no formal computer science training building. 

     The website’s purpose is clear in the

name, which is an acronym for the

following mouthful: The Universal

Lyceum Of Online Mathematics. A

lyceum is a library or repository of

information. That’s precisely what this

was intended to be-a complete one

-stop link collection for quality free

sources of study-lecture notes and

online textbook drafts-on the internet

for impoverished students of

mathematics at all levels from

secondary school algebra and

geometry to university PhD research

topics.

 

 Sadly, the response, while

positive from users, hasn’t gotten the

traffic I’d desired. Obviously, to be

effective, such a site needs to be

constantly revised as nothing is more

ephemeral then links to posted lecture

notes on the World Wide Web.

( I haven’t abandoned the site by any stretch of the imagination. After a number of setback,I plan a major revision by Fall 2020.)

But even if this website eventually

becomes a beating heart in the web

academic body, it’s sadly only partially

a solution to the inability of most

impoverished students and scholars  to

buy more than a handful of

quality mathematics textbooks.

This Homepage you’ve arrived at is the

beginning of the major third stage of

my contribution to the revolution.

One of our immediate goals will be the

republication of many classic

textbooks that have been out of print

for years or decades in very

inexpensive editions. Our long term

aspiration is for the company is to

eventually publish original paperback

works at the same low prices. 

 

When I finally took the plunge and

decided to begin a publishing

company, I had very clear directives

and intentions for it and these grew

out of what I attempted for both my

blog and the website linked earlier.

In our increasingly plutocratic, vastly

unequal and education-privileged

country, it’s becoming an absolute

necessity for non-aristocratic students

and self-learners to have affordable

learning resources, primarily

textbooks.

As public education is slowly and

systematically degraded and the

remaining state funds directed to

private schools in America, self-

education is going to once again

become the only possible means for

the lower classes to achieve any level of

higher education. As tragic as this is,

it’s becoming very clear to anyone

paying attention that low-cost

textbooks need to be available to

prevent our world from becoming the

feudal nightmare described above.

 Once I made the decision, I was

absolutely obsessed with getting this

done as soon as possible.

 

As far as inexpensive university level

science textbooks, particularly in

physics and mathematics, this niche is,

of course, far from empty. The

publishing colossus Dover Books has,

of course, for decades been the sole

provider of quality, low cost reprinted

paperbacks and has to serve as the

model for anyone attempting to

penetrate this market. As a former

student of very limited resources who

relied heavily on Dover books for my

educational tools, I can honestly say

for the most part, they’ve done a

spectacular job of making great

sources available again.

  Anyone beginning a publishing

company even attempting to

realistically compete with Dover is

delusional and doomed to failure, pure

and simple. Fortunately, I believe this

market is both vastly large and

sparsely inhabited with publishers.

Dover has really been the only major

player. As a result. I believe there is

more than enough room for new

publishers to grow to significant profit

levels using this model without even

beginning to make a dent in Dover’s

bottom line.

Monopolies are not what capitalism is

supposed to be about and supplying

buyers with choices is very important,

both morally and economically.

The existence of alternatives to Dover

without actively competing with it can

only help this market as long as those

alternatives are attempting to bring

something novel and helpful to those

academic purchasers.

  I wouldn’t blame you if you want to

skip the self-indulgent diatribe by the

founder and get right to the textbooks.

But I hope you will read our mission

statement here to let you know a bit

more about how this company came to

be and what we hope to achieve in the

future. 

If not, onward to our

storefront and our currently

available titles!!!