[tripzilch]

IMO, while it's nice to own a copy of a book that looks good and doesn't fall apart, the awful thing here is not the cosmetics but the fact that the copy is a mangled-up version with errors that have been fixed in editions over a decade ago.

You need to be able to trust a book. I received a misprint of a book I ordered online once, duplicate pages, missed half a chapter. I didn't need that particular chapter for the course I was taking then, and it was a week before the exam so I didn't send it back, it's a really cool book (Computational Geometry) that, like other interesting study books, I would pick up again and browse occasionally, if it weren't for this mess up. It's a shame, really.