Interesting find - Letter from Al Duerig, author of "Rape of Ma Bell"

[Greg G.]

After reading "The Rape of Ma Bell", I ordered several copies from Amazon.com to give away to anybody interested.  Today I took one of the copies, still in the shipping wrap, to work to donate to the employee lounge library.  When I took the shipping wrapper off, I noticed a folded piece of paper in the book.  I thought it would be just a copy of the invoice, but it turned out to be a letter from one of the authors to a friend.  Apparently the book was one of his complimentary copies from the publisher that he had given to a colleague, and somehow made it's way into the used books inventory at Amazon.

No, the book wasn't autographed, that's the first thing I looked for, so there's no physical distinction between that particular copy and any other copy of the book.  

[GG]

Oddly enough, your link is producing a blank page for me, using MacOSX, Safari browser.  I could try to get it on my Win7 machine but I'm pretty paranoid about downloads and attachments on that machine since I use it for programming PBXs for clients. 

If there's an interesting quote in that letter, could you post it as text here?

[old_stuff_hound]

Interesting letter! Thanks for posting.

GG, not sure why it didn't work for you -- it worked for me (OS X Lion, Firefox . I opened it in Preview and then took a screenshot for you. I hope it large enough to read!

[wds]

I pulled this down from the internet.  PDF version of the book Rape of Ma Bell

[DavePEI]

I pulled this down from the internet.  PDF version of the book Rape of Ma Bell

Thanks for posting this. It is the first time I have seen it in PDF format.

Dave

[liteamorn]

I pulled this down from the internet.  PDF version of the book Rape of Ma Bell

Thanks for posting this. It is the first time I have seen it in PDF format.

Dave

Ditto!!

[Greg G.]

I pulled this down from the internet.  PDF version of the book Rape of Ma Bell

Awesome!  I examined the book I found the letter in again this morning when I got to work.  I noticed certain passages were highlighted and there were notes in a couple of places in the margins, so I retrieved it.  Now I have my own "Cliff Notes" version.  I'm going to replace it with a different copy.   

[jludtxs]

it opened for me in Adobe Reader

[Fabius]

Maybe you could track down the letter's recipient (Frank).

[Greg G.]

Maybe you could track down the letter's recipient (Frank).

I googled all over the place for the individuals and also the articles mentioned in the letter, which was a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal on 11-27-92, and also the article Duerig wrote for Public Utilities Fortnightly that inspired the book, which would have been just before 1988 when the book was published.  I couldn't locate any of them.

[Fabius]

The following information on Frank was found. It is from public information records. He still lives in Bethel Park and his phone number is 412-833-5411.