Bad Actor: "General Books" ala "million-books"

More public domain reprint outfits have popped up, good and
bad. "General Books" associated with "million-books" is
bad. And you DON'T get what you pay for, not that I've every
bought a book from them. Check this out, and see why:

"Purchase of this book includes free trial access to
www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for
free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chievous
poison. With the old philosopher agrees the great schoolman, St. Thomas
Aquinas: " The temperate man does not use in any measure things contrary
to soundness or a good condition of life, for this would be a sin
against temperance ;" and the modern philosopher Hobbes: "Temperance is
the habit by which we abstain from all things that tend to our
destruction ; Intemperance the contrary vice." t To which may bo added
the following from the Jewish Catechism: " Q. What is Temperance? A.
Temperance consists in abstaining from all that is forbidden and sinful,
and in the wise and prudent use of what is good and lawful." t
Continuing to employ the word Intemperance to denote the use of
alcoholic intoxicants as a beverage, and so leaving wholly out of the
account any consideration of the intoxication produced by the use of
opinm, and other poisons, of whatever name, we shall be aided in our
view of the long continued history of this evil, and also of the extent
of its prevalence, by noticing the great variety of substances which men
have either fermented or distilled, in order to obtain the alcoholic
poison. Of course the list does not claim to be exhaustive, but it is
believed to be more full and accurate than has ever been given in any
previous work of this character. AiOB. Agave Americana.‹The fermented
sap is called Actli, Ponchra, Pulque. It is used in Mexico, Paragnav,
Peru and Spain. From this a fiery spirit is distilled, called Brandy
Chinguerite, Vino Mercal and Mexical. "Pulque" says Humboldt, " smells
like putrid flesh." Aminata Muscaria.‹This is a mushroom, found in great
abundance in various parts of the Russian empire. From it, by a
disgusting process, an intense .intoxicant is prepared. Morewood quotes
Dr. Langsdorff, a Russian physician, as authority fo..."

This is no good, and they want 38.69 for this OCR'd crap.
OCR is crap! Old books need to be facsimile reprinted, never
OCR'd and then printed, because OCR'ing cannot be relied on all
by itself.

Here's an example of what the above quote should look like:

http://books.google.com/books?id=UBpBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA31

Unfortunately, the above book Alcohol In History, by Richard
Eddy, is currently not offered anywhere as a decent reprint,
so the expensive rare original will have to do, cuz the idea
of reading an entire book online through Google is quazy,
for the such who are as literate and greedy as me.

GOOD publishers of public domain reprints are University of the
Pacific, Fredonia, Cornell, BiblioLife, Amereon, and others I
can't think of at the moment. *Current* editions of Michigan
University books are good, and older editions of the hardcover
versions are good, but the older editions of the softcovers went
out by the thousands with terrible printing, as the careless
practice of printing so the inner edge of the print is buried in
the binding, while leaving a wide margin on the outer edge, is
not acceptable, and if encountering books with such bad printing
should be returned as DEFECTIVE.

It is good if there are any others who buy and read public domain
reprints can comment on these newsgroups on the quality of their
printing.