FREE/BARGAIN - Non-Fiction - 2015

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Actually, almost as soon as I saw your post, I realized my error. I'm mathematically challenged, so the way that I look at it is that the GB pound is not worth as much as an USD, so there would have to be more of them to equal the USD.

You have it back to front; the UK Pound is worth more than the USD. There are usually somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6 US$ to £1.

[Little.Egret]

Charles River Editors

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: The History and Legacy of the Roman Empire's Greatest Military Defeat

Ancient Alexandria: The History and Legacy of Egypt's Most Famous City






See all

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...=charles+river


http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=searc...=charles+river
http://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-a...=charles+river

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by murg

BookDepository has different prices depending on where you VPN in from.

All shipping to Australia goes by air nowadays. The shipping from the UK to Australia is pretty quick, usually 1 to 2 weeks. My guess is that there is a lot more capacity on the UK-US route, so shipping should be quicker. They may even have a warehouse in the US by now.

Good to know, thanks.

I am trying really to curtail the purchase of dead-tree books, mainly because of space constraints brought about by having too many dead-tree books already. But occasionally it makes sense, for one reason or another, to buy one. I'll keep BD on my radar.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

[B]Charles River Editors

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: The History and Legacy of the Roman Empire's Greatest Military Defeat
. . . .

This battle, while terribly sad and tragic, is also fascinating. German tribes almost completely wiped out a Roman expeditionary force, including a contingent of three legions of soldiers.

The defeat shook the psyche of the Roman people, probably much as the events of 9/11 shook the psyche of Americans. What I think about most when I read or hear "The Battle of Teutoburg Forest" is not anything about the battle itself, but the effects that it had on emperor Augustus. It is said that after this battle he would often get up in the middle of the night and cry out, "Quinctilius Varus [the commander of the Roman force] give me back my legions!"

[mostekm]

Well written and somewhat entertaining study about how it come to blows between English and Prussians/Germans from half of 19th century to WWI.

http://www.amazon.com/Englanders-Hun.../dp/B00C8UNDVS

currently at 2.99 USD

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You have it back to front; the UK Pound is worth more than the USD. There are usually somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6 US$ to £1.

Well, I was correct in half of my post--I am mathematically challenged! ha

I finally get it. I think. And I do know how to do the math, strangely enough. Currently, the exchange rate is .65 GBP to 1 USD. To figure how much the GBP is worth compared to the USD (i.e., how many dollars it will buy), you divide 1 by .65, which gives you the figure of $1.54, which is within the range that you mentioned.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by mostekm

Well written and somewhat entertaining study about how it come to blows between English and Prussians/Germans from half of 19th century to WWI.

http://www.amazon.com/Englanders-Hun.../dp/B00C8UNDVS

currently at 2.99 USD

Great find, thanks. Are you new to posting? If so, welcome.

[GtrsRGr8]

Amazon has a large number (but a fraction of the total available) of Oxford University Press' A Very Short Introduction series marked down for only 99 cents each! I think each one of these has a regular digital price of $5.19.

What are the A Very Short Introductions? Well, think of them as the Charles River Editors book(let)s on steroids. For one thing, they are not all that short--the ones that I spot-checked were all well over 100 pages long.

Because it's late in the night here, please allow me just to give you the Amazon webpage where you can find all of the marked down ones (as well as all of the rest), instead of giving you links to all of them individually or even listing all of the titles. The books are sorted by price, low to high.

Now here's something else important. Several of the ebooks have Whispersync narration available! The ones that I spot-checked were all $3.99. That's just for the narration, not the whole deal. To find out the total price, just add 99 cents to whatever the price is for the Whispersync narration for the ebook. Oh, and for some reason you won't have the option to filter out via the menu on the left side, as you usually do, the hits that have the Whispersync companions. So, either look just below the "Buy Now with 1-Click" button for "Whispersync for Voice-ready" or do a search (Ctrl + F in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer--I don't know about the other browsers)--using "Whispersync" as the search term should be good enough.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Amazon has a large number (but a fraction of the total available) of Oxford University Press' A Very Short Introduction series marked down for only 99 cents each! I think each one of these has a regular digital price of $5.19.

What are the A Very Short Introductions? Well, think of them as the Charles River Editors book(let)s on steroids. For one thing, they are not all that short--the ones that I spot-checked were all well over 100 pages long.

They are a good series. I have a number of the philosophical ones (Plato and Aristotle) which are excellent.

[mostekm]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Great find, thanks. Are you new to posting? If so, welcome.

Thank you. I am here quite a time. Mostly lurking though.

[bfisher]

Currently on sale at Amazon Canada

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell is $CDN 1.99
http://www.amazon.ca/Great-War-Moder.../dp/B00CQ23BEC

It's an excellent book.
Product Description
Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a literate, literary, and unapologetic account of the Great War, the war that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world.
This brilliant work illuminates the trauma and tragedy of modern warfare in fresh, revelatory ways. Exploring the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for those writers who--with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning--most effectively memorialized World War I as an historical experience. Dispensing with literary theory and elevated rhetoric, Fussell grounds literary texts in the mud and trenches of World War I and shows how these poems, diaries, novels, and letters reflected the massive changes--in every area, including language itself--brought about by the cataclysm of the Great War. For generations of readers, this work has represented and embodied a model of accessible scholarship, huge ambition, hard-minded research, and haunting detail.
Restored and updated, this new edition includes an introduction by historian Jay Winter that takes into account the legacy and literary career of Paul Fussell, who died in May 2012.


Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester is $CDN 2.99
http://www.amazon.ca/Atlantic-Battle.../dp/B003VIWNTE


A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook for $CDN 2.99
http://www.amazon.ca/Small-Town-Near.../dp/0199679258

I've been meaning to read this for some time.

Product Description
The Silesian town of Bedzin lies a mere twenty-five miles from Auschwitz; through the linked ghettos of Bedzin and its neighbouring town, some 85,000 Jews passed on their way to slave labour or the gas chambers.

The principal civilian administrator of Bedzin, Udo Klausa, was a happily married family man. He was also responsible for implementing Nazi policies towards the Jews in his area - inhumane processes that were the precursors of genocide. Yet he later claimed, like so many other Germans after the war, that he had 'known nothing about it'; and that he had personally tried to save a Jew before he himself managed to leave for military service. A Small Town Near Auschwitz re-creates Udo
Klausa's story. Using a wealth of personal letters, memoirs, testimonies, interviews and other sources, Mary Fulbrook pieces together his role in the unfolding stigmatization and degradation of the Jews under his authoritiy, as well as the heroic attempts at resistance on the part of some of the victims of Nazi
racial policies in this area. She also gives us a fascinating insight into the inner conflicts of a Nazi functionary who, throughout, considered himself a 'decent' man. And she explores the conflicting memories and evasions of his life after the war.

But the book is much more than a portrayal of an individual man. Udo Klausa's case is so important because it is in many ways so typical. Behind Klausa's story is the larger story of how countless local functionaries across the Third Reich facilitated the murderous plans of a relatively small number among the Nazi elite - and of how those plans could never have been realized, on the same scale, without the diligent cooperation of these generally very ordinary administrators. As Fulbrook shows,
men like Klausa 'knew' and yet mostly suppressed this knowledge, performing their day jobs without apparent recognition of their own role in the system, or any sense of personal wrongdoing or remorse - either before or after 1945.

This account is no ordinary historical reconstruction. For Fulbrook did not discover Udo Klausa amongst the archives. She has known the Klausa family all her life. She had no inkling of her subject's true role in the Third Reich until a few years ago, a discovery that led directly to this inescapably personal professional history.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by bfisher

Currently on sale at Amazon Canada

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell is $CDN 1.99
http://www.amazon.ca/Great-War-Moder.../dp/B00CQ23BEC
<snip>

For us in the U.S.:
The Great War and Modern Memory. Marked down to $1.99 USD.


Atlantic: Great Sea Battles &c., &c.. Marked down to $2.99 USD. Simon Winchester is a good historian.

A Small Town &c., &c.. Marked down to $2.99 USD.

[AnemicOak]

On the Narrow Road to the Deep North by Lesley Downer - FREE

In 1689 Matsuo Basho, Japan’s greatest poet, set out on his last and longest journey, to the remote northern provinces.

His moving account, rich in strange and sometimes comic encounters along the road, is the most famous and much loved work in Japanese literature.

Three hundred years later, inspired by Basho’s writing and her passion for Japan, Lesley Downer set off in his footsteps.

Walking and hitchhiking towards the Sacred Mountains with their legendary hermit priests, meeting people who had never seen a Westerner and dining on flowers and sautéed grasshoppers, she discovered — a world which many Japanese believe vanished centuries ago.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

On the Narrow Road to the Deep North by Lesley Downer - FREE

Thanks so much, it looks good. Also at Amazon Canada:
http://www.amazon.ca/Narrow-Road-Dee.../dp/B012WUWASK

[itisbomb]

The Penguin History of the World: 6th edition
by J. M. Roberts & Odd Arne Westad

is $1.99 at

Kobo https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/eb...y-of-the-world
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Histor...y+of+the+world

Synopsis
This is a completely new and updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World.

For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West.

About the authors:
J.M. Roberts, CBE, published The Penguin History of the World in 1976 to immediate acclaim. His other major books include The Paris Commune from the Right, The Triumph of the West (which was also a successful television series), The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in 2003.

Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Decisive Encounters, a standard history of the Chinese civil war. He also served as general co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Cold War.

Reviews
'A work of outstanding breadth of scholarship and penetrating judgements. There is nothing better of its kind' Jonathan Sumption, Sunday Telegraph

'A stupendous achievement' A.J.P. Taylor

'A brilliant book ... the most outstanding history of the world yet written' J.H. Plumb