Free and Bargain Non-Fiction in June 2014

[BelleZora]

This looks interesting and it is free today: Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time by Clifford Irving, first published in 1969 by McGraw-Hill.

The Chicago Tribune called Fake! "The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time."

FAKE! is an incredible tale of three rogues who swindled oil tycoons, movie stars, top art galleries and great museums, and almost caused the collapse of the international art world.

It was the inspiration for filmmaker Orson Welles' last major movie, "F For Fake," now a cult classic.

Where? - London, Paris, New York, Texas, Tokyo, and the decadent, sunny Mediterranean island of Ibiza, now the disco capital of Europe.

Who? -- Elmyr de Hory: an elegant Jewish aristocrat whom World War II had stripped of everything but his genius at imitating Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Renoir, and other great painters of the 20th century.

Fernand Legros: a ruthless Egyptian who decreed that museums, art galleries and millionaire collectors should finance his love of luxury and pretty boys.
Reál Lessard: an Adonis-like Canadian youth who began as Fernand's protegé and in the end out-dueled the master in cunning.

"A delightfully vicious book, a joy to read and contemplate." -- Pablo Picasso

"A story to remember and revel in." -- St. Louis Globe-Democrat

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J273UUO

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

This looks interesting and it is free today: Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time by Clifford Irving, first published in 1969 by McGraw-Hill.

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J273UUO

Thanks. Looks like a fascinating read.

I've wondered something before, and reading the book description for this book has made me wonder it now as well. What I've wondered is why someone, like Elmyr de Hory, one of the three subjects of the book, who painted so well that they could fool experts into thinking that they had genuine paintings of the master artists, could not himself paint original paintings of their own and become famous artists in their own right, rich, etc.

There is only one thing of which I can think. My thought is that becoming a recognized master painter usually, if not always, took many, many years; many artists, in fact, did not become famous until after they died. Perhaps this de Hory fellow did not want to wait many, many years to get rich and this was his way of "getting rich quick."

Maybe some of you have some additional ideas. And, bringing things "full circle," maybe this post will pique someone's interest, in addition to mine, in reading the book to find out if de Hory revealed the answer to that question and if the book tells us what he said.

[BelleZora]

I've wondered the same thing in the past and came to the same conclusions. Many artists died in poverty yet now their paintings are worth a fortune. This book looks so interesting. Too bad there are about 200 books ahead of it on the TBR pile.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

I've wondered the same thing in the past and came to the same conclusions. Many artists died in poverty yet now their paintings are worth a fortune. This book looks so interesting. Too bad there are about 200 books ahead of it on the TBR pile.

Just 200? How do you do it? haha

[itisbomb]

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer
by Jeffrey Liker

is $1.99 at

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...d_i=1000677541

B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/toyo...=9780071435635

Below is the blurb:
How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry

In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.

Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota's principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:

Eliminating wasted time and resources
Building quality into workplace systems
Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology
Producing in small quantities
Turning every employee into a qualitycontrol inspector

[pendragginp]

What I also find interesting is that having researched and written this book about fakes, Clifford Irving then went on to try to write and pass off a faked autobiography of Howard Hughes. And Hughes was still living! Did Irving not THINK that the man might stand up and say 'Uh - nope, not mine"?? Even given the fact that Hughes was a recluse and had admittedly become very strange, he had been a businessman and was unlikely to let something like this go by! Even if Irving thought Hughes might be dead - come on!

[sufue]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thanks. Looks like a fascinating read.

I've wondered something before, and reading the book description for this book has made me wonder it now as well. What I've wondered is why someone, like Elmyr de Hory, one of the three subjects of the book, who painted so well that they could fool experts into thinking that they had genuine paintings of the master artists, could not himself paint original paintings of their own and become famous artists in their own right, rich, etc.

There is only one thing of which I can think. My thought is that becoming a recognized master painter usually, if not always, took many, many years; many artists, in fact, did not become famous until after they died. Perhaps this de Hory fellow did not want to wait many, many years to get rich and this was his way of "getting rich quick."

Maybe some of you have some additional ideas. And, bringing things "full circle," maybe this post will pique someone's interest, in addition to mine, in reading the book to find out if de Hory revealed the answer to that question and if the book tells us what he said.

I haven't read the book either, so I don't know if the author reveals his take on this, but I've wondered the same thing sometimes, and I think that perhaps there is a creative element to it as well. I'm a technical type, and I can write technical reports, proposals, and all sorts of factual stuff with ease, but the couple of times I have tried to write fiction, it has not gone well at all.

Part of it may be that I have had training for technical writing, but have not had any training in writing fiction. Training aside, though, it still seemed a lot more challenging to me to try to create a story line, come up with believable characters, create un-stilted sounding conversation, etc. etc. etc., than it is to write a report which simply derives from fact.

And I can easily see that extending into the visual arts as well - I can imagine that it might be possible to sort of "factually" copy paintings, or even emulate someone's style accurately, while still being rather harder to come up with your own creative artworks.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by pendragginp

What I also find interesting is that having researched and written this book about fakes, Clifford Irving then went on to try to write and pass off a faked autobiography of Howard Hughes. And Hughes was still living! Did Irving not THINK that the man might stand up and say 'Uh - nope, not mine"?? Even given the fact that Hughes was a recluse and had admittedly become very strange, he had been a businessman and was unlikely to let something like this go by! Even if Irving thought Hughes might be dead - come on!

Interesting. I didn't know anything about Clifford Irving. I suppose, in a way, he or someone like him would be in the best position to write about fakes, though.

Since I didn't know anything about Clifford Irving before, I didn't know about the biography (I do remember at least one effort to fake a legal will of Howard Hughes'). Was the biography written after Hughes had become crazy (and I do mean crazy)? If so, that might explain why he would not have challenged the so-called biography. Just a guess. But, still, you would think that someone who knew him--I was going to say "friend," but I'm not sure that he had any friends, later in life, at least--would have challenged it. It's piqued my interest.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by sufue

. . . .
And I can easily see that extending into the visual arts as well - I can imagine that it might be possible to sort of "factually" copy paintings, or even emulate someone's style accurately, while still being rather harder to come up with your own creative artworks.

Good idea, I hadn't thought of that.

I'm hard pressed to come up with an example of this at this moment, but there occasionally have been people who impersonated other singers, for example, and I've heard people say that this impersonator "out did" the original, famous one. Why didn't he or she make it big themselves? Maybe a lack of creativity or originality caused by timidness. The ones that did make it big kept on going in spite of disapproval (think: Elvis Presley).

I know that we have gone This is my last post on the matter.

[pendragginp]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Interesting. I didn't know anything about Clifford Irving. I suppose, in a way, he or someone like him would be in the best position to write about fakes, though.

Since I didn't know anything about Clifford Irving before, I didn't know about the biography (I do remember at least one effort to fake a legal will of Howard Hughes'). Was the biography written after Hughes had become crazy (and I do mean crazy)? If so, that might explain why he would not have challenged the so-called biography. Just a guess. But, still, you would think that someone who knew him--I was going to say "friend," but I'm not sure that he had any friends, later in life, at least--would have challenged it. It's piqued my interest.

Irving faked the Hughes autobiography after he wrote Fake! And Hughes did come forward and say he had never worked with the writer and the whole thing was bogus. He was (I think) avoiding a subpoena about TWA business or some such, so he gave an interview over the phone with newsmen who had known him.

Irving went to prison.

[GtrsRGr8]

Crossing the Bridge: Succeeding in a Community College & Beyond. By Jayne Bowers. Rated 5 stars from 15 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $5.99; digital list price $3.99; Kindle price now $0.00. http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Bridg...ege+%26+Beyond.

Book Description
A practical guide to student success in a community college including topics ranging from self-assessment and financial aid to study skills and time management. Student stories, tips, and testimonials supplement the author’s guidelines that are based on 30+ years of teaching two-year college students.

[BelleZora]

Free Texas history first published in hardcover by Naval Institute Press in 2008: Slaughter at Goliad: The Mexican Massacre of 400 Texas Volunteers by Jay A. Stout.

Texas lost many volunteers during its hard-won fight for independence from Mexico, but one harrowing episode stands out. Following a one-sided battle on the prairie near Coleto Creek, 250 mostly American prisoners were marched back to the presidio at Goliad where they were joined by more than 200 others. Subsequently, on orders from President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, they were brutally slaughtered on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836. The loss of so many fighting men in a single day was, at the time, one of the largest in U.S. history.

Silver medal winner, Sons of the Republic of Texas, La Bahia Award

"This detail-rich analysis lays out the unvarnished story--and what it led to." --American History Magazine

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KSXB940

[GtrsRGr8]

I'd sure like to have this one, but my budget's busted from some other ebook purchases. I think that I could have "found" the funds, though, if this had a Whispersync companion . . . .

Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain. By Harriet Tuckey. Print list price $26.95; digital list price $21.50; Kindle price now $1.99. http://www.amazon.com/Everest-Champi...r+the+Mountain.

Book Description
Already awarded a prize by the Biographer’s Club, Harriet Tuckey’s book is both the history of what went into the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953 and a biography of her father, Dr Griffith Pugh, whose role was absolutely pivotal, yet mostly untold. As the expedition’s physiological consultant, Pugh designed almost every aspect of the survival strategy for the expedition, the acclimatization program, the oxygen- and fluid-intake regime, the diet, the clothing and the high altitude boots. Without him and his work, the ascent of Everest would have been impossible.

[itisbomb]

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust
by Edith H. Bear

is $1.99 at

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Officers-...+officers+wife

B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nazi...=9780062190048

Below is the blurb:
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.

In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.

Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust -- complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

[GtrsRGr8]

Although I've read only a little bit in this book, it seems to be jam-packed with really great information!

The author has found a plethora of high-quality fun and/or educational stuff that families--or even individuals--can do that are free or nearly free. And even the ebook is free right now. If you love a bargain (and you probably do or you wouldn't be on this thread), this is one ebook that you've "got" to get.

Make the Moments Count - 121 Adventurous, Unique and Affordable Family and Kids Activities. By Blake Dresden. Rated 5 stars, but from only 1 review (the book was published just last week). Digital list price $2.99; Kindle price now $0.00. http://www.amazon.com/Make-Moments-C...ids+Activities.

Book Description
Boredom set in? Itching to do some new and exciting activities with your kids? Are you finding activities you want to do are too expensive? Want to learn about REALISTIC ways to keep costs down by living resourcefully? We've brought our 'A' game on this one folks!

Not every activity has to cost big money. If the economic downturn taught us anything, it's that we can change the way we approach spending by focusing on cost-effective deals, fun freebies and overlooked activities that won't break the budget. Spending less today leads to a healthy financial future.

In the guide Make the Moments Count - 121 Adventurous, Unique and Affordable Family and Kids Activities, you'll get easy-to-follow instructions on EXACTLY how you can spend a fun couple hours, a day, or a weekend by spending very little (or nothing at all!)

Specifically, you'll be presented with material from the following chapters:

-Educational Experiences
-Appreciative Actions
-Athletic Activities
-Water Works
-Entertaining Events
-Book Bonanza
-Indoor Ideas
-Crafts Corner
-Neighborhood Nuances
-Recipe Results
-Outstanding Outdoors

It's not that these ideas are being pulled out of thin air. It just so happens that many are overlooked, undervalued, or new to the scene.

You'll become resourceful, you'll become savvy, and you'll always be-a-savin'!