Nah, 25 cents in 1939 is 6 dollars today. There are 200 new books on Target.com right now for less than 6 dollars. Their own article has a grocery store spinner with $4.99 books and under.

Your library and project gutenburg have a bunch of books you can read for free on your phone or web browser. Or the kindle/Kobo ecosystem. And with the web, you can reserve physical copies of paperbacks or expensive new hardcover books at the library and have them waiting for you to pick up.

We live in an era of unprecedented super abundance of good reading.

This "i just found something unfair" style journalism is very frustrating because they only consider evidence that you are powerless.

You are not powerless. You can read great stuff and don't have to pay a lot. Go get it!