Borrow Kindle Library Books

I can't tell you how excited I am about Amazon.com's announcement that library books can now be checked out to a Kindle or Kindle app!

Borrow Kindle Books from Your Local Library

You can check out a Kindle book from your local library and read it on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle reading app.

When you borrow a Kindle public library book, you'll have access to all the unique features of Kindle books, including real page numbers and Whispersync technology that synchronizes your notes, highlights, and last page read. After a public library book expires, if you check it out again or choose to purchase it from the Kindle store, all of your annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.

Kindle books are available at more than 11,000 libraries in the U.S.

How It Works

You can borrow Kindle books from your local library's website and, with the click of a button, have them delivered to your Kindle device or free reading app.

• Visit the website of a U.S. library that offers digital services from OverDrive.

• Check out a Kindle book (using a valid library card).

• Click on "Get for Kindle" and then sign in to your Amazon.com account to have the book delivered to your Kindle device or reading app.

Note: Public library books can be sent wirelessly to Kindle devices via an active Wi-Fi connection or transferred via USB.

Help

For technical assistance and frequently asked questions, please visit the Help page.

For questions about availability of Kindle library books, loan duration, and terms of use, please contact your local library.

We welcome your feedback at kindle-publiclibraries-feedback@amazon.com.

I'm so excited that I've already put 5 Kindle books on hold with my local library:

• The 19th Wife: A Novel by David Ebershoff
• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen
• The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain
• The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

Yippee!

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We can Come Back

Just got to read a sneak preview of Thomas L Friedman's new book That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We can Come Back:

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat, born in 1805, who visited the United States in 1831 and 1832 with the intention of studying its prisons. In 1835 he published Democracy in America, based on his travels and investigations. Of all the thousands of books written about this country, Tocqueville's remains one of the best, with insights into American society, American values, American institutions, and the American national character that remain valid and relevant 175 years later.

Suppose that Tocqueville, with his intellectual gifts and powers of analysis, had been born in, say, 1970. His aristocratic background would have had no bearing on his career. He probably would have gone to one of France's elite schools but might not have taken part in French politics, as the original Tocqueville did. Nor would he necessarily have joined, and risen in, the country's national bureaucracy, as men of his caliber did for much of the twentieth century but did less frequently at that century's end. Instead, he might well have continued his education abroad. He might have studied history at an English university, spent a few years in Asia, earned a degree from Harvard or Stanford business school, and then done what many people with a cosmopolitan background and analytical gifts did at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first: join an international consulting firm.

Suppose, further, that that firm was commissioned by a large multinational corporation to prepare, under Tocqueville's direction, an assessment of the United States as a place in which to invest and to do business in the second decade of the twenty-first century and beyond. The report that emerged from that assessment would be the work of many hands, filled with charts, graphs, statistics, and PowerPoint presentations. Tocqueville himself would likely write the conclusion, based on his own travels, conversations, and ruminations. We think it might read something like this:

Click here to continue reading a PDF version of the chapter "Shock Therapy" from That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We can Come Back.

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy!