This question is not relevant to game programming, but i did not know where else to place it. This website offers free ebooks from this link [link to potentially illegal content removed-- jpetrie] but unfortunately when i click "download" it just opens up another tab with the same web page.

I'm not at all convinced this site is legally capable of offering those books for download. I'm stripping the link from your post and I suggest that you go to your local bookstore and obtain the books in question legally. They're old enough that you can probably find them for cheap at a used book store.