For books that are not that old, you will often find the info you need on the copyright page - for US publications, the Library of Congress CIP info is there; s

For books that are not that old, you will often find the info you need on the copyright page - for US publications, the Library of Congress CIP info is there; see http://www.loc.gov/publish/cip/ http://www.loc.gov/publish/cip/ . Other countries have similar programmes eg the British Library does the same.