Call the ISBN police
Archive: Online bookselling
A couple of surprises from looking up books on Amazon using ISBNs:
Maybe you'd like to buy a copy of the revised Mr. Tompkins books. Enter the ISBN for the hardback and you'll see this:
The New World of Mr Tompkins : George Gamow's Classic Mr Tompkins in Paperback
The paperback is listed as well (and is much cheaper) but doesn't include the “in Paperback.” If you look just below the photo of the dust jacket it does say hardcover. I wonder if a few people have retreated from buying the book (as a present at least) because they wanted the hardcover. (You might say that Mr. Tomkins buyers are apt to be clear thinkers but twenty years of selling to educated people has left me without such faith.)
Or you might be wanting an hardcover copy of Peter Matthiessen's Nine Headed Dragon River. You can't find the American hardcover on Amazon searching by title. But if you enter the ISBN you will discover NINE HEADED DRAGN RIVR (unsurprisingly there are plenty of cheap copies to be had).
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