FREE/BARGAIN - Non-Fiction - 2014

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

Wow! Some good shit there Maynard! I couldn't find the one on the divorce of Henry VIII, but I was kind of going into sensory overload

The First Divorce of Henry VIII As Told in the State Papers by Mrs. Hope

I actually saw those papers - Exhibition at the British Library.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J7UHBOC/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00J7UHBOC/
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00J7UHBOC/

[Little.Egret]

Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars 1638-1651 by Charles Carlton

An excellent book which describes the varied backgrounds of the men making up ECW armies - the raw recruits and the hardened European campaigners - and attempts to look at the struggle through their 17th century eyes.

This is a unique book. The amount of personal anecdote that the author has tracked down and wielded into a coherent book is truly astounding. His attempt to do a "Face of Battle" job on the English Civil War is by and large successful.

Free in UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000P0JN2Q/

[Little.Egret]

The World of Indigenous North America (Routledge Worlds) (646pp) Robert Warrior (Editor)

A comprehensive look at issues that concern indigenous people in North America. Though no single volume can cover every tribe and every issue around this fertile area of inquiry, this book takes on the fields of law, archaeology, literature, socio-linguistics, geography, sciences, and gender studies, among others, in order to make sense of the Indigenous experience.

Covers both Canada's First Nations and the Native American tribes of the United States

A book for every scholar in the field to own and refer to often

Seems to be free in UK and Canada
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OZLPZVY/
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00OZLPZVY/

US etc should check

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OZLPZVY/

[ATDrake]

^

Thanks for that one. It'll be interesting to see what they have to say about our First Nations.

Bargain @ $2.99 for today only (Oct 29th), according to the Open Road Media newsletter, in multiple stores (couponable @ Kobo, price good for Canada & the US, possibly elsewhere as well):

Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938 by the late John Brooks (Wikipedia), who was a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker magazine who specialized in financial topics, according to his wiki entry. This originally came out from Harper & Row in 1969 and stayed in hardcover print right up until 1997.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Business Adventures comes the chronicle of the stock market crash of 1929 and its aftermath

Legend had it that anyone who passed through Golconda, a city in southern India, attained tremendous wealth. But Golconda, now in ruins, ran out of riches, and its glory vanished forever. Some have painted a similar picture of Wall Street between the two world wars. But there is more to the story of the bull market of the 1920s and the ensuing economic devastation that befell the United States.

In fascinating detail, distinguished journalist John Brooks recounts the euphoric financial climb of the twenties as well as the vertiginous crash of 1929. From the heady days of economic prosperity to the sobering time after the collapse, Brooks’s rendering of this tale of vast fortune and then tragic misfortune is both dramatic and percipient. Profiling some of the era’s most famous—and infamous—bankers, traders, and hucksters, Brooks gives a stunning and colorful account of this period of boom and bust.

[bfisher]

Thanks. Same deal at amazon.ca ($CDN 2.99)
http://www.amazon.ca/Once-Golconda-D.../dp/B00MAEVRBA

Also at amazon.com for $US 2.66
http://www.amazon.com/Once-Golconda-.../dp/B00MAEVRBA

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by bfisher

Also at amazon.com for $US 2.66
http://www.amazon.com/Once-Golconda-.../dp/B00MAEVRBA

$US2.99 according to http://www.ereaderiq.com/dp/B00MAEVR...l-street-1920/

Different publisher in UK so no reduction

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Once-Golcond...dp/B00MFNA0LE/ £5.03 GBP

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ 99 cents for US-only from the "HarperCollins e-books" imprint:

There's a whole slew of non-fiction currently marked down, including biographies, military histories, self-help, cookbooks, etc.

You can probably try getting them at the OmniLit 50% rebate Hallowe'en sale mentioned in GeoffR's alert thread and also be eligible for the Buy 10 Get 1 Free deal, or they're cheap enough that you can go to your favourite US store for them.

Here's the Kobo auto-search for the imprint, sorted by price and filtered by category so you can scroll through and spot if there's anything which looks interesting to you.

My personal pick out of the lot is probably going to be Russell Lynes' Snobs: The Classic Guidebook to Your Friends, Your Enemies, Your Colleagues, and Yourself, a satirical pseudo-sociology work which I think I've actually read a long time ago via the library.

And I think I'll also get this biography of chemist Fritz Haber, who received the Nobel Prize for inventing the process by which we synthesize ammonia, which pretty much changed our modern way of life: Master Mind (there's a really good 2-volume French bande déssiné biography of him out there, the name/creator of which unfortunately slips my mind)

[GtrsRGr8]

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. By Modris Eksteins. Rated 4 1/2 stars from 47 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $16.95; digital list price $14.99; Kindle price now $2.99. Mariner Books, publisher. 420 pages. http://www.amazon.com/Rites-Spring-G...the+Modern+Age.

Book Description
Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, RITES OF SPRING probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I -- from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," as Modris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places." In this "bold and fertile book" (Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. RITES OF SPRING is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and toward our future.

[mitford13]

Free on Amazon, from HarperCollins:

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Shangri--...dp/B004HD61L8/

Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2011: Near the end of World War II, a plane carrying 24 members of the United States military, including nine Women’s Army Corps (WAC) members, crashed into the New Guinea jungle during a sightseeing excursion. 21 men and women were killed. The three survivors--a beautiful WAC, a young lieutenant who lost his twin brother in the crash, and a severely injured sergeant--were stranded deep in a jungle valley notorious for its cannibalistic tribes. They had no food, little water, and no way to contact their military base. The story of their survival and the stunning efforts undertaken to save them are the crux of Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff’s remarkable and inspiring narrative. Faced with the potential brutality of the Dani tribe, known throughout the valley for its violence, the trio’s lives were dependent on an unprecedented rescue mission--a dedicated group of paratroopers jumped into the jungle to provide aid and medical care, consequently leaving the survivors and paratroopers alike trapped on the jungle floor. A perilous rescue by plane became their only possible route to freedom. A riveting story of deliverance under the most unlikely circumstances, Lost in Shangri-La deserves its place among the great survival stories of World War II.

[GtrsRGr8]

Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality. By Jonathan Aitken. Rated 4 1/2 stars from 6 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $35.00; digital list price $24.99; Kindle price now $1.99. Bloomsbury USA, publisher. 801 pages! http://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Thatc...nd+Personality.

Book Description
A strong and sometimes divisive figure in British and world politics, Margaret Thatcher was the longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century and the only woman to ever hold the office. Drawing from an abundance of new, previously unpublished material from the Thatcher Archive at Churchill College, Cambridge, Jonathan Aitken's fresh and original biography is a lively and perceptive exploration of the personality that dominated conservative British politics for more than 10 years and her profound and worldwide impact on the historical tapestry of her time. At once positive and critical in its assessment of her governance, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality is crafted from the author's longtime personal relationship with his subject, his eyewitness account of public and private episodes in her life, and more than 100 interviews with the former Prime Minister's political colleagues and close personal friends. Penetrating and insightful, it chronicles one of the most remarkable political lives of our time.

[GtrsRGr8]

Well, it's already Monday here in the continental United States. It definitely seems like Mondays are days which see a lot of markdowns, and often a lot of them are of really good books.

This book is a big one (482 pages) and it has a huge (88%) markdown. And, it seems like it would be a great read. I've bought it, because there's a little bit of Scot? Scotch? in my "blood." Of course, most of us in the United States are mongrels, with a little bit of everything in us. ha

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It. By Arthur Herman. Rated 4 stars from 172 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $16.00; digital list price $9.99; Kindle price now $1.99. Random House, publisher. 482 pages. http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Inve...erything+in+It. I happened to have checked Kobo and it is marked down to $1.99 there, also (http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebo...e-modern-world). Unfortunately, the book is not discountable there, with it being a Random House imprint.

Book Description
Who formed the first modern nation?
Who created the first literate society?
Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism?
The Scots.

Mention of Scotland and the Scots usually conjures up images of kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and golf. But as historian and author Arthur Herman demonstrates, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland earned the respect of the rest of the world for its crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since.

Arthur Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. He lucidly summarizes the ideas, discoveries, and achievements that made this small country facing on the North Atlantic an inspiration and driving force in world history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond.

Victorian historian John Anthony Froude once proclaimed, “No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world’s history as the Scots have done.” And no one who has taken this incredible historical trek, from the Highland glens and the factories and slums of Glasgow to the California Gold Rush and the search for the source of the Nile, will ever view Scotland and the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again. For this is a story not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world and its consequences.

“The point of this book is that being Scottish turns out to be more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it. . . . This is the story of how the Scots created the basic idea of modernity. It will show how that idea transformed their own culture and society in the eighteenth century, and how they carried it with them wherever they went. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves: other nations—Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, and many others—have their place in the making of the modern world. But it is the Scots more than anyone else who have created the lens through which we see the final product. When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism, and modern democracy, and struggle to find our place as individuals in it, we are in effect viewing the world as the Scots did. . . . The story of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is one of hard-earned triumph and heart-rending tragedy, spilled blood and ruined lives, as well as of great achievement.”
—FROM THE PREFACE

From the Hardcover edition.

[Little.Egret]

Albert, Prince Consort by Hector Bolitho

Although it is fairly certain that Albert and Prince Philip would have disliked each other on sight, they have both been guided by the highest sense of duty.

It is this sense of duty, in spite of considerable hostility and dislike of the `foreign ways', that make Albert's life of such interest. If he had accomplished nothing else, his influence on the dealings with the Union States of America, just before his death, would ensure him an important place in British History.

In `Albert, Prince Consort', Hector Bolitho explores the life and personality of Prince Albert, from his birth in Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, his marriage and restraining influence on Queen Victoria and his early death from typhoid.

Hector Bolitho is deservedly renowned for his Royal Biographies.

(Henry) Hector Bolitho (28 May 1897 - 12 September 1974) was a prolific author, novelist and biographer. In total, he had 59 books published

* Spot the mistook, neither Queen Elizabeth nor Queen Victoria were ever the Heiress Apparent but only Heiresses Presumptive. It's not impossible for a female to be British Heiress Apparent but it's never happened. *

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NMBT0H8/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00NMBT0H8/
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00NMBT0H8/

[conan50]

Kindle edition of Simplify is just 99 cents today

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006431ADS/

[avantman42]

A freebie from Endeavour Press:

Frederick the Great by Sir David Fraser

Amazon.com - Amazon UK

And one that is not cheap, but is currently at close to half price, so I think it counts as a bargain:

Official Hist Falklands, Vol 2: War and Diplomacy (Government Official History Series) is currently $28.26/£17.67 (was £32.99)

Amazon.com - Amazon UK

[Little.Egret]

Man of Arms: The Life and Legend of Sir Basil Zaharoff by Anthony Allfrey

Sinister, mysterious, credited with vast influence and great wealth... who was this man who evoked such fierce passions that he was branded the `Merchant of Death', a man who had risen from obscure origins in Asia Minor to control a worldwide empire? His trade was arms, anything that fired, floated, submerged and - later - flew. His life spanned the muzzle-loading musket and the prototype Spitfire.

Anthony Allfrey is also the author of Edward VII and his Jewish Court (no longer free), and a contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DG86X9K/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DG86X9K/
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00DG86X9K/