FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[sufue]

Speeches that Changed the World, edited by Simon Sebag Montefiore, has dropped to $2.99 at Kindle and Kobo US. I imagine one could find the texts of many of these online, but for a little less than $3, this is also a pretty convenient collection.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Speeches-Chan...dp/B00TE8KAGI/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/spe...ed-the-world-3

Spoiler:

Comprehensively updated with many new speeches including Earl Spencer's lament to "The extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana", Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech of 1956 signalling the beginning of the end of Stalinist Russia, Patrick Pearse's rousing funeral oration that fanned the flames of the Easter Rising, Kevin Rudd's historic apology to Australia's mistreated Aborigines and Barack Obama's momentous US election night victory speech.

Alongside these are the finest war cries of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King's prophetic "I have a dream" and "I've seen the promised land" speeches, the inspiring words of JFK and impassioned pleas from Nelson Mandela-the first at his trial in 1964 and the second on his election as president of South Africa in 1994. In addition are historic speeches from Elizabeth I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, Vladimir Lenin, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, General George S. Patton, J Robert Oppenheimer, Mao Zedong, Malcolm X, Richard M. Nixon, Pope John Paul II, Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, Mikhail Gorbachev and many other great historical figures.

Speeches that Changed the World presents over 50 momentous and thought-provoking speeches from throughout history. Complete with a potted biography of each speaker, and telling the story of why each oration was significant and what happened as a result, this is a gripping history of the world told through its greatest and most impassioned speeches.

[Little.Egret]

Charles River Editors

The Khmer Empire: The History and Legacy of One of Southeast Asia’s Most Influential Empires

The Palace of the Soviets: The History of the Proposed Administrative Center for the Soviet Union

West Germany: The History and Legacy of the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War

Machine Learning: An Overview of Artificial Intelligence

https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=sear...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-...+river+editors

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Charles River Editors

The Khmer Empire: The History and Legacy of One of Southeast Asia’s Most Influential Empires


https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=sear...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-...+river+editors

Thanks, as always, for posting these.

There are currently three additional free ones, in English; two or three in Spanish, also.

[MickeyC]

The Aliens Are Coming! By Ben Miller is for sale on Kobo, Kindle and Apple for $1.99
The Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe

by Ben Miller
Synopsis

Actor and bestselling science writer Ben Miller takes readers to the cutting edge of one of the greatest questions of all: Is there life beyond Earth?

For millennia, we have looked up at the stars and wondered whether we are alone in the universe, but in the last few years—as our probes begin to escape the solar system, and our telescopes reveal thousands of Earthlike planets—scientists have taken huge leaps toward an answer. “Forget science fiction,” author Ben Miller writes. “We are living through one of the most extraordinary revolutions in the history of science: the emergent belief of a generation of physicists, biologists, and chemists that we are not alone.”

The Aliens Are Coming! is a refreshingly clear, hugely entertaining guide to the search for alien life. Miller looks everywhere for insight, from the Big Bang’s sea of energy that somehow became living matter, to the equations that tell us Earth is not so rare, to the clues bacteria hold to how life started. And he makes the case that our growing understanding of life itself will help us predict whether it exists elsewhere, what it might look like, and when we might find it.

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...s-are-coming-4

https://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Are-Co.../dp/1615193650

[Little.Egret]

Endeavour, Free

This Shining Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin by Marjorie Bowen

Now chiefly remembered as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin has often been acclaimed as a prophetess of the emancipation of her sex — a woman who did much to smooth the way for subsequent female triumphs.

But Mary’s life beyond her Vindication — published in 1791, eight years before her death, by her friend Joseph Johnson — was plagued by poverty, misery, and despair, with only a few snatched moments of happiness to keep her going.

Born into a family of impoverished gentility, she spent her childhood as a drudge in her own home, subject to a drunken father and largely responsible for her four younger siblings

Upon her death she left behind her two daughters, who, however unintentionally, followed very much in their mother’s footsteps, chasing unorthodox relationships and defying convention.

Marjorie Bowen's total output numbers over 150 volumes with the bulk of her work under the 'Bowen' pseudonym. She also wrote under the names Joseph Shearing, George R. Preedy, John Winch, Robert Paye and Margaret Campbell.

First published in 1937 by Collins under the pseudonym George R. Preedy.


https://www.amazon.com/This-Shining-...dp/B01FM9UC3I/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Shinin...dp/B01FM9UC3I/

https://www.amazon.ca/This-Shining-W...dp/B01FM9UC3I/

[Fluribus]

Ready to ascend into the pantheon of pop music? Get your Auto-Tune ready and set your hooks, kiddies.

John Seabrook The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory for $1.99 at Amazon.com.

[sufue]

The Daily Deal today at Kindle US is 50 history books on sale, some for quite nice prices. I've found several I want - now I just have to decide how much damage I want to do to my TBR pile, and how much I'm willing to spend. Sadly, the title I want the most is called a "textbook", with accompanying high normal price, so even on sale it's $8.99, but most of the books are in the $1.99 to $4.99 range.

link to the sale page: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=s9_acsd..._i=11552285011

Edit: Just thought I'd add a few of the books that caught my eye - there are a lot more:

• In Vino Duplicitas - a tale of a wine forger (which crime I only previously knew existed from Dick Francis's mystery, Proof)
• The Woman Who Smashed Codes, which is a biography of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, one of the early main players in Liza Mundy's The Code Girls, which I have read and really enjoyed, but I'm not much into straight biography, so not sure if I'll bite on this one or not
• A History of the United States in Five Crashes, which seems an interesting way to relate history
• We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria - longlisted for the Carnegie Medal
• Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945 - named a BOTY by both the Economist and the Financial Times - definitely going to get this one, since I had, in fact, largely forgotten about China in WWII
• The Stolen Election: Hayes Versus Tilden—1876 - whose blurb describes it as relevant due to its similarity to the US election of 2000, but (without starting a political discussion) might also be considered by some even more relevant now
• Fifty Things You Need to Know About World History, which at $0.99 (less than most of the books in this sale) looks like the sort of thing I can put on my phone to read when I get stuck in line somewhere, and not have to concentrate too hard
• the classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, also on the inexpensive end at $1.13
• Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans - because my stepson's cousin was, before he retired, an open-wheel racer who won the Indy 500 once, many years ago...

Anyway, there are lots of others, and these are just to my particular taste, so if you like non-fiction, take a look...

[elaysee]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Ready to ascend into the pantheon of pop music? Get your Auto-Tune ready and set your hooks, kiddies.

John Seabrook The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory for $1.99 at Amazon.com.

I read this book and found it explained a lot that puzzled me about recent pop music hits. The way songs are constructed (deliberate word choice) now happens differently than it used to, and puts different elements in the foreground.

There are also capsule bio chapters of some modern megastars, which I tended to skim through, but the chapters on mechanics were often fascinating.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Ready to ascend into the pantheon of pop music? Get your Auto-Tune ready and set your hooks, kiddies.

John Seabrook The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory for $1.99 at Amazon.com.

I happily found that this is a Prime book which Prime members can read for free.

[sufue]

Paradise of Cities: Venice in the Nineteenth Century by John Julius Norwich has dropped to $5.99 at Kindle and Kobo US. This is (according to eReaderIQ) the lowest it has been in a long long time. I've read and enjoyed Norwich's The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean, and recently finished another author's history of Venice that focused more on the time when Venice was the Serene Republic and the major maritime power in the eastern Mediterranean, so I may pick this one up to fill in my knowledge of Venice's later history.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Citi...dp/B000XUBFVA/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/paradise-of-cities

Spoiler:

John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice has been dubbed “indispensable” by none other than Jan Morris. Now, in his second book on the city once known as La Serenissima, Norwich advances the story in this elegant chronicle of a hundred years of Venice’s highs and lows, from its ignominious capture by Napoleon in 1797 to the dawn of the 20th century.

An obligatory stop on the Grand Tour for any cultured Englishman (and, later, Americans), Venice limped into the 19th century–first under the yoke of France, then as an outpost of the Austrian Hapsburgs, stripped of riches yet indelibly the most ravishing city in Italy. Even when subsumed into a unified Italy in 1866, it remained a magnet for aesthetes of all stripes–subject or setting of books by Ruskin and James, a muse to poets and musicians, in its way the most gracious courtesan of all European cities. By refracting images of Venice through the visits of such extravagant (and sometimes debauched) artists as Lord Byron, Richard Wagner, and the inimitable Baron Corvo, Norwich conjures visions of paradise on a lagoon, as enduring as brick and as elusive as the tides.

[Little.Egret]

Charles River Editors, free

Seth: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Egyptian God Who Killed Osiris to Usurp the Throne

Roman Egypt: The History and Legacy of Ancient Egypt as a Province of Rome

Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Life and Legacy of Medieval Europe’s Most Famous Queen

The European Settlement of Australia: The History and Legacy of Early Expeditions and British Settlements on the Australian Continent

The Suez Canal and Panama Canal: The Turbulent History of the Globe’s Two Most Important Canals


https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=sear...+river+editors

https://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-...+river+editors

[GtrsRGr8]

Women in the Ancient Near East, by Marten Stol, is available at Amazon in hardback for a "mere" $140.00. It apparently is not available in any digital form at Amazon.

That's no "deal" or "bargain," of course. Too, this MobileRead website is about digital stuff, and this book ain't even digital. So why am I mentioning it? Because it is free, as a PDF, through Open Access!

Navigate to this webpage. There are actually two editions of the aforementioned ebook (I am assuming that--there are two entries for the ebook, and the PDFs that get downloaded have two different file names); I don't know which one, if either, is the same edition as at Amazon.

I am a big believer in Open Access. If you like to get bargain ebooks, search for OA's. It is the best source of ebook bargains that I know of right now.

[sufue]

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King has dropped to 1.99 at Kindle US. I haven't read this title but have read and loved Brunelleschi's Dome, and also enjoyed Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, both by the same author.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Pari...dp/B00480O9LO/

Spoiler:

The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions-the scandalous Salon des Refuses in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874-set against the rise and dramatic fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire after the Franco-Prussian War. A tale of many artists, it revolves around the lives of two, described as "the two poles of art"-Ernest Meissonier, the most famous and successful painter of the 19th century, hailed for his precision and devotion to history; and Edouard Manet, reviled in his time, who nonetheless heralded the most radical change in the history of art since the Renaissance. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel lives, illuminated by their legendary supporters and critics-Zola, Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Hugo, Degas, and many more-Ross King shows that their contest was not just about Art, it was about competing visions of a rapidly changing world.

With a novelist's skill and the insight of an historian, King recalls a seminal period when Paris was the artistic center of the world, and a revolutionary movement had the power to electrify and divide a nation.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Women in the Ancient Near East, by Marten Stol, is available at Amazon in hardback for a "mere" $140.00. It apparently is not available in any digital form at Amazon.

That's no "deal" or "bargain," of course. Too, this MobileRead website is about digital stuff, and this book ain't even digital. So why am I mentioning it? Because it is free, as a PDF, through Open Access!

Navigate to this webpage. There are actually two editions of the aforementioned ebook (I am assuming that--there are two entries for the ebook, and the PDFs that get downloaded have two different file names); I don't know which one, if either, is the same edition as at Amazon.

I am a big believer in Open Access. If you like to get bargain ebooks, search for OA's. It is the best source of ebook bargains that I know of right now.

The two PDFs are identical byte for byte.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Charles River Editors, free

Seth: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Egyptian God Who Killed Osiris to Usurp the Throne

Roman Egypt: The History and Legacy of Ancient Egypt as a Province of Rome

Missed these, but ordered samples. Egyptian history fascinates me!