I registered for courses for the summer, but I found I can't get my textbooks in time (I live abroad). On Amazon, the books are about $10 each. All of the US-based sellers don't ship here and the local merchants charge 10 times this price. So, I withdrew all of my courses, and changed to the fall term, thinking that would give me some months time to get something sent here. Now, I find all of the professors have changed their books, now $200 per book. I tried to order regardless and find the books aren't even published yet!
Try Google books. It is browser based. So if you run out of free sample tryouts that day, just switch your browser. There are also several alternatives such as ebooks. I know, it will say not allowed outside of the country. Just use a proxy server like hide my IP. Than you can view the book.
Let me rephrase this. If you get a program like Hide-my-ip it allows you to select an American IP address. Than you can look at the ebooks, because they think you are in America.