Get Magazines and Newspapers You Want as Free Ebooks

In a recent article, "Get Free Magazines and Newspapers Delivered to Your Computer, Nook, or Kindle" (here), I write about using the amazing free software Calibre (more amazing because it is free) to access free (and legal) magazines and newspapers for your Kindle or Nook ebook readers or for your computer.

Now, book-lover Peter Flom (index page) gives me a chance to put that information to the test with his article "Top Magazines for Progressives and Liberals and Other Thinking People" (here). Before I go any further, let me say that you can find free magazines and newspapers of all political persuasions with Calibre.

I have gone through Peter Flom's list, which, I assume, is compiled without consideration of the publications' availability through Calibre (which you can download here), to see just how realistically you can depend upon Calibre's offerings. By the way, in Peter Flom's article, he includes hyperlinks for each of the titles on his list.

Most (I will leave the numbers and percentages to statistician Flom) of his selections are available for free download through Calibre in a variety of formats. (Calibre includes a reader that accommodates just about any ebook format.)

Magazines and newspapers not available for free through Calibre

The publications that are not currently available at all through Calibre are: Hightower Lowdown, Wilson Quarterly, The Progressive, Yes,Funny Times, and National Geographic. His Le Monde Diplomatique (the only foreign language publication he includes) is not available, but Le Monde is, although there probably is not much connection between the two. (I enjoy the Spanish language El País myself . )

Magazines and newspapers available for free through Calibre

These free publications vary from the complete text, such as you would receive if you subscribe to the "dead-tree" or online versions of the magazines and newspapers. Getting free versions through Calibre is a great way to decide whether you do want a longer version. It is also a way to expand your range of reading, to include, say Time and Newsweek , which Peter Flom refers to but does not recommend, or even to check out the differing points of view of National Review and Fox News .

These publications are available either for free or for paid subscriptions: Foreign Affairs, The Economist , New York Review of Books , and (The) Wall Street Journal. That last title illustrates a little problem with Calibre's listings.

There is no consistency in the use of the word the at the beginning of titles. I am trying to refer to the titles as they are listed in alphabetical order by Calibre. That is the reason I referred to National Review rather than The National Review . The Wall Street Journal is for the free listing, while Wall Street Journal is for the paid subscription.

Free publications and subscriptions are available through Calibre for these publications on Peter Flom's list: Mother Jones, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, American Prospect, Utne Reader, The New Republic, New Left Review, and The New Yorker. Spiegel Online International (English) and Spiegel Online (German) are both available.

With the introductory word the missing , New York Times, New York Times Headlines, and New York Times Book Review are available, as are Washington Post and Washington Post Cartoons. That last entry (Washington Post ), by the way, has some questions about its political stance, which you can learn more about here..

A final thought about free magazines and newspapers through Calibre

One word: green! Of course, you save green (as in dollars) but also you save a lot of trees from being killed and a lot of paper from ending up in the landfills.

Check this index to my articles on "How to Read Ebooks for Pleasure and Convenience."