Among the titles at Google eBooks are an assortment of historical pieces, for free

To mark the occasion of the launch of Google eBooks, we browsed over to the new site and searched for e-books there about Spokane, our fair city.

We found more than several interesting historical titles there which happen to be out of copyright and are free to download. They’re great examples of early stage regional boosterism and Great Northwest Marketing, circa the early 1900s.

Such as the pamphlet, “Spokane County As It Is, Solid Facts and Actual Results: For the information of immigrants and others” by C.B. Carlisle. The 30-page pamphlet starts:

Every steamship and railway train coming to the Northwest brings immigrants from all parts of the world, and it is more than likely that this influx of people will continue for years to come and, notwithstanding the avalanche of newspaper correspondence, pamphlets etc., which has been showered on the people of the east, north and south, for the past year or two, to the majority of these, Spokane County or country is still a terra incognita, and thousands of these are athirst for every available scrap of information about it.

Also there: “History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume 1,” by Nelson Wayne Durham. It was published in 1912.

The full selection of both free and priced ebooks is at Books.Google.com.