FREE/BARGAIN - Non-Fiction - 2015

[slex]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I am posting this ebook because it has an interesting premise, and one that I don't think that I've seen broached in any other book before. I personally am interested in reading what the author has to say.

Not Even Trying: The Corruption of Real Science. By Bruce Charlton. No reviews at Amazon at the present time. Digital list(?) $9.99; Kindle price now $2.99. University of Buckingham Press, publisher. 156 pages. http://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Tryin...f+Real+Science.

The book is available online for free at the author's website. He also seems to be a conservative Christian, which might put his work in context.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by slex

The book is available online for free at the author's website. He also seems to be a conservative Christian, which might put his work in context.

Thanks for the info.

I thought, for a second, that I might have wasted $2.99 (and I hate wasting money!), as I had bought the Kindle ebook. However, the text on the author's site appears to be in html, and that is not easily (I know that there are ways to do it) converted to an ebook format. Too, he states at the beginning that it is a draft. I am willing to pay the money to get a finished copy, as the Kindle ebook (I assume) is. But for someone who just would be interested in a cursory read, it's a great way to save $3.

[murg]

Originally Posted by slex

The book is available online for free at the author's website. He also seems to be a conservative Christian, which might put his work in context.

I was wondering if this was the work of a Creationist seeking to discredit his discreditors...

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thanks for the info.

However, the text on the author's site appears to be in html, and that is not easily (I know that there are ways to do it) converted to an ebook format. Too, he states at the beginning that it is a draft.

Mostly you can do it with one copy/paste per chapter and a little editing to removed unwanted headers, footers and sidebars.

Save the result as rtf and convert to your fav ebook format - you don't even need to install Calibre just use
http://convertfiles.com/

[Froide]

This website might do the job http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-epub

[ekbell]

dotEPUB normally does a fairly good job at converting webpages into epubs.

I use it fairly often, the major problem with simple webpages is that it doesn't split the book into separate chapters which can be annoying with book length webpages but otherwise it normally does a good job.

http://dotepub.com btw.

[AnemicOak]

Forgotten Voices of D-Day: A Powerful New History of the Normandy Landings in the Words of Those Who Were There by Roderick Bailey - $1.99
Amazon US | Google

6 June 1944: the day Allied forces crossed the Channel and began fighting their way into Nazi-occupied Northwest Europe. Initiated by airborne units and covered by air and naval bombardment, the Normandy landings were the most ambitious combined airborne and amphibious assault ever attempted. Their success marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

Drawing on thousands of hours of eyewitness testimony recorded by the Imperial War Museum, Forgotten Voices of D-Day tells the compelling story of this turning point in World War 2. Hearing from paratroopers and commandos, glider pilots and landing craft crewmen, airmen and naval personnel, we learn first-hand what it was like as men waited to go in, as they neared the beaches and drop zones, and as they landed and met the enemy. Accounts range from memories of the daring capture of 'Pegasus' bridge by British glider-bourn troops to recollections of brutal fighting as the assault forces stormed the beaches.

Featuring a mass of previously unpublished material, Forgotten Voices of D-Day is a powerful and important new record of a defining moment in modern history.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by slex

He also seems to be a conservative Christian, which might put his work in context.

Originally Posted by murg

I was wondering if this was the work of a Creationist seeking to discredit his discreditors...

I read through the draft and it sounds more unhinged than that. I noticed that most of the bibliography refers to editorials in the journal Medical Hypotheses by the author, Bruce Charlton, who was editor-in-chief at the time (according to Wikipedia). After the journal published some stuff by AIDS denialists, Elsevier told Charlton that published papers needed to be peer-reviewed. Charlton refused and was fired.

The whole thing reminds me of Linus Pauling and his Vitamin C weirdness. Clinical trials demonstrated that Pauling's medical ideas were wrong and instead of accepting the results, he pretty much rode off the rails and started accusing the medical establishment of scientific fraud.

[scottken]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I read through the draft and it sounds more unhinged than that. I noticed that most of the bibliography refers to editorials in the journal Medical Hypotheses by the author, Bruce Charlton, who was editor-in-chief at the time (according to Wikipedia). After the journal published some stuff by AIDS denialists, Elsevier told Charlton that published papers needed to be peer-reviewed. Charlton refused and was fired.

The whole thing reminds me of Linus Pauling and his Vitamin C weirdness. Clinical trials demonstrated that Pauling's medical ideas were wrong and instead of accepting the results, he pretty much rode off the rails and started accusing the medical establishment of scientific fraud.

Yeah, I think I'll take a pass on Bruce Charlton. There's a good history of why Elsevier ended his journal here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/20...ses-editor-br/

Highlights include some of the junk thimerosol-austism papers Charlton published (and with five BABIES now with confirmed measles near Chicago I have no tolerance in my heart for such nonsense). Other goodies included:
" ideas that masturbation is a treatment for nasal congestion, a paper linking high heeled shoes to schizophrenia, a meditation on the nature of navel fluff, and truly offensive speculations about “mongoloids” (i.e., they're "Oriental").

So I think I'll take a pass on such BS. Heck, if I want fantasy science this crazy I'll go read T.D. Lysenko.

[Little.Egret]

Endeavour

An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945 by Anton Gill

The numbers were small, and their cause hopeless.
Scattered across the landscape that was Nazi Germany, the Resistance looked puny: too little, too late. And yet it was made of many heroic men and women who were not afraid to risk their lives to stand up to a regime they knew was wrong.
For those who have never known life under such a regime, it is hard to grasp the daily terror that makes an act of political graffiti a capital offense, that labels resistance "treason."
Now, drawing on archival materials and on interviews with those few resisters who survived, Anton Gill brings their story to light.
Here are union leaders and businessmen, priests and communists, students and factory workers; above all, here are the only people who had any real chance at more than symbolic resistance: those in the Army, the Foreign Office, the Abwehr.
For these, obeying the dictates of conscience meant betraying the demands of government, and every day brought the risk of denunciation and death.

Anton Gill has been a freelance writer since 1984, specialising in European contemporary history but latterly branching out into historical fiction. He is the winner of the H H Wingate Award for non-fiction for his study of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, Not Free The Journey Back From Hell: Conversations with Concentration Camp Survivors


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RDBXUWO/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00RDBXUWO/
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00RDBXUWO/

[bartveld]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Endeavour

An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945 by Anton Gill

Thanks for this one!

[AnemicOak]

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad by Fergus Bordewich - $0.99
Amazon US | Google | Kobo | B&N (not dropped here as of yet)

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change

The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition. The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for the country's soul. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.

Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet Tubman. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the Underground Railroad gave birth to this country's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.

Salem Witch Judge by Eve LaPlante - $0.99
Amazon US | Google | Kobo | B&N (not dropped here yet)

In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.

But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.

In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases by Paul A. Offit M.D. - $0.99
Amazon US | Google | Kobo | B&N (not dropped yet)

Maurice Hilleman's mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister stillborn. As an adult, he said that he felt he had escaped an appointment with death. He made it his life's work to see that others could do the same. Born into the life of a Montana chicken farmer, Hilleman ran off to the University of Chicago to become a microbiologist, and eventually joined Merck, the pharmaceutical company, to pursue his goal of eliminating childhood disease. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases—including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella—practically toothless and nearly forgotten; his measles vaccine alone saves several million lives every year.

Vaccinated is not a biography; Hilleman's experience forms the basis for a rich and lively narrative of two hundred years of medical history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a cast of hundreds, all caught up, intentionally or otherwise, in the story of vaccines. It is an inspiring and triumphant tale, but one with a cautionary aspect, as vaccines come under assault from people blaming vaccines for autism and worse. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts those arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.

[Little.Egret]

Endeavour

Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman by Kendrick A Clements

Woodrow Wilson's visionary temperament and quick-paced leadership made him a uniquely articulate champion of the most essential American values.

His policies, perhaps more so than any other president in the twentieth century, have shaped the world today.

In this comprehensive biography, Kendrick Clements examines the brilliant successes as well as the failures of Wilson's public career as professor, president of Princeton University, governor of New Jersey, and president.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QTK3NSQ/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00QTK3NSQ/
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00QTK3NSQ/

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Endeavour

Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman by Kendrick A Clements
. . . .

Looks good. Got it. Thanks.

You'll have to wait on your karma. You've been making too many good posts lately and the computer told me that I had to spread some around before I gave you anymore.

I do not agree with a lot of Wilson's politics. But he was a wise man in some ways. Although it didn't last, his League of Nations probably was one of them. The successor United Nations probably has been a positive force in the world, and perhaps prevented some wars, and the League of Nations may have done so, too, if it had lasted. Wilson also urged the victorious World War I Allies not to be severe with defeated Germany. They didn't listen, and the resulting bitterness by Germans was a major factor in Hitler coming to power, and the world suffering a War far worse than WWI.

[GtrsRGr8]

This book deals with a period in the history of Harlem (to those who do not live in the United States or are otherwise unfamiliar with it, Harlem is a neighborhood in the Manhattan borough of New York City) known as the "Harlem Renaissance." It occurred in the 1900's.

If you are like me, you were exposed in the mass media to negative portrayals of Harlem by such things as the so-called "Blaxploitation" movies of the 1970's. We didn't know that there was a period of time in the history of Harlem that was much different! I must admit that, even now, my knowledge of this period of time is very weak.

I've run across only a few books (well, actually, none!) on the Harlem Renaissance. It is nice to come across this big one (544 pages), especially with it having a large markdown.

Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance. By Carla Kaplan. Rated 4 1/2 stars, from 69 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $16.99; digital price $11.21; Kindle price now $3.79. HarperCollins Publishers, publisher. 544 pages. http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Anne-Harl...k+Renaissance#.

Book Description
Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan’s cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called “Miss Anne,” who became Harlem Renaissance insiders.

The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion—with Harlem at the epicenter. White men could go uptown to see jazz and modern dance, but women who embraced black culture too enthusiastically could be ostracized.

Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem.

Ethnic and gender studies professor Carla Kaplan brings the interracial history of the Harlem Renaissance to life with vivid prose, extensive research, and period photographs.