On August 21, 1998 I added Amazon.Com to the "Retailers" links.  This link is used with Amazon's permission.  In fact, by adding this link to Amazon, I become a proud Associate of Amazon.com.  Jeff Bezos, the Founder & CEO of Amazon.com wants me to let you know he thanks you for shopping with an Amazon.com Associate.  Amazon.Com is unquestionably the leading Internet retailer.  They have the most recognizable name, and they encourage "little guys" like me to help them out.  In an essay I wrote, I quoted from a Sherlock Holmes book, and I thought it would be fun to turn the reference into a link that gave not just the author, title, and publisher, but all kinds of information about the book -- who better than Amazon.Com to provide that content for me?  It makes my site more informative and it also helps Amazon when I link to them.  So I wrote them an email asking if it was OK to link to their site, and if so, what's the best way to go about it.  I didn't really expect a good response -- from a company as big as Amazon I figured I'd get some legal mumbo jumbo and not much help.  Instead, I got a quick response that not only gave me several different link formats I might want to use, but also offered to pay me a percentage of every book bought as a result of following my links with no minimums and no hidden fees!  (Also, they offer HTML coding help in a left-handed way -- they give you a link to follow that will allow you to buy "how-to" books from Amazon! <grin>)   Well, I'm not going to turn this web site into a book retailing company, but on the other hand I'm not going to turn away from the opportunity to let you tap into Amazon's databases of information.  So here's the link to Amazon.  If you follow it and buy lots of books, then I'll get a few pennies.