FREE/BARGAIN - Non-Fiction - 2015

[itisbomb]

The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
by Clay Risen

is $1.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Century-B...1213025&sr=8-1

Synopsis
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, it seems preordained-as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.†? But there was nothing predestined about the victory: a phalanx of powerful senators, pledging to "fight to the death†? for segregation, launched the longest filibuster in American history to defeat it.

The journey of the Civil Rights Act was nothing less than a moral and political epic, a sweeping tale of undaunted activism, political courage, historic speeches, backroom deal-making and finally, hand-to-hand legislative combat. The larger-than-life cast of characters ranges from Senate lions like Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond to NAACP lobbyist Charles Mitchell, called "the 101st senator†? for his Capitol Hill clout, and industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who helped mobilize a powerful religious coalition for the bill. Looming over all was the figure of Lyndon Johnson, who deployed all his legendary skills to steer the controversial act through Congress.

This critical turning point in American history has never been thoroughly explored in a full-length narrative. Now, New York Times editor and acclaimed author Clay Risen delivers the full story, in all its complexity and drama.

[murg]

Originally Posted by itisbomb

The Penguin History of the World: 6th edition

"It's cold. It snowed. And snowed. Still cold."

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by murg

"It's cold. It snowed. And snowed. Still cold."

Buncha monkeys standing around with cameras... still cold.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by 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

Sweet. Thanks very much. Also at Amazon Canada for $CDN 2.63
http://www.amazon.ca/Penguin-History.../dp/B00ADNPDEM

[GtrsRGr8]

Yeah, it's a little weird, I know.

SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics. By Bill Meara. Rated 4.6 stars, from 27 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $5.54; digital list price $2.99; Kindle price now $0.00. HBR Press, publisher. 208 pages. http://www.amazon.com/SolderSmoke-Gl...8HXB30HBSZ0MXJ.

Book Description
SolderSmoke is the story of a secret, after-hours life in electronics. Bill Meara started out as a normal kid, from a normal American town. But around the age of 12 he got interested in electronics, and he has never been the same.

To make matters worse, when he got older he became a diplomat. His work has taken him to Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, the Spanish Basque Country, the Dominican Republic, the Azores islands of Portugal, London, and, most recently, Rome. In almost all of these places his addiction to electronics caused him to seek out like-minded radio fiends, to stay up late into the night working on strange projects, and to build embarrassingly large antennas above innocent foreign neighborhoods. SolderSmoke takes you into the basement workshops and electronics parts stores of these exotic foreign places, and lets you experience the life of an expatriate geek. If you are looking for restaurant or hotel recommendations, look elsewhere. But if you need to know where to get an RF choke re-wound in Santo Domingo, SolderSmoke is the book for you.

SolderSmoke is no ordinary memoir. It is a technical memoir. Each chapter contains descriptions of Bill’s struggles to understand (really understand) radio-electronic theory. Why does P=IE? Do holes really flow through transistors? What is a radio wave? How does a frequency mixer produce sum and difference frequencies? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, this book is for you.

Finally, SolderSmoke is about brotherhood. International, cross-border brotherhood. Through the SolderSmoke podcast we have discovered that all around the world, in countries as different as Sudan and Switzerland, there are geeks just like us, guys with essentially the same story, guys who got interested in radio and electronics as teenagers, and who have stuck with it ever since. Our technical addiction gives us something in common, something that transcends national differences. And our electronics gives us the means to communicate. United by a common interest in radio, and drawn closer together by means of the internet, we form an “International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards.”

[GtrsRGr8]

I don't recall ever seeing a real sale by the University of Chicago Press! Yes, of course, you would see a couple of marked down ebooks here, a marked down ebook there. And, you could grab a 20% discount quite often if you knew where to look. But no real sale like other ebook publishers have.

Well, UCP has a big sale going on right now--big in the number of books (I estimate that there are about 175-200), and big in discount (averaging probably 80-85%). There are actually a couple of free titles!

If you are not familiar with UCP's books, they are mainly for the academic-minded person (the ones that we get free each month are much more suitable for the general reader than the average UCP book). Probably all of the books in this sale are non-fiction, with the main exception of ancient literature like Greek plays.

I found several books that I had been wanting for some time, but couldn't bring myself to buy them at regular prices, plus a bunch more that, after I perused them, I "had to have." Even with the big discounts, I know that I have busted my ebook budget for the next millennium. ha

I don't know how long the sale will last. Apparently, it just started because I started seeing the markdowns yesterday (Wednesday).

I thought that the best way for you to see the markdowns would be to give you the Amazon webpage with the ebooks sorted by price, low to high. Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_pr...price-asc-rank.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Yeah, it's a little weird, I know.

SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics. By Bill Meara. Rated 4.6 stars, from 27 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $5.54; digital list price $2.99; Kindle price now $0.00. HBR Press, publisher. 208 pages. http://www.amazon.com/SolderSmoke-Gl...8HXB30HBSZ0MXJ.

Book Description
SolderSmoke is the story of a secret, after-hours life in electronics. Bill Meara started out as a normal kid, from a normal American town. But around the age of 12 he got interested in electronics, and he has never been the same.

To make matters worse, when he got older he became a diplomat. His work has taken him to Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, the Spanish Basque Country, the Dominican Republic, the Azores islands of Portugal, London, and, most recently, Rome. In almost all of these places his addiction to electronics caused him to seek out like-minded radio fiends, to stay up late into the night working on strange projects, and to build embarrassingly large antennas above innocent foreign neighborhoods. SolderSmoke takes you into the basement workshops and electronics parts stores of these exotic foreign places, and lets you experience the life of an expatriate geek. If you are looking for restaurant or hotel recommendations, look elsewhere. But if you need to know where to get an RF choke re-wound in Santo Domingo, SolderSmoke is the book for you.

SolderSmoke is no ordinary memoir. It is a technical memoir. Each chapter contains descriptions of Bill’s struggles to understand (really understand) radio-electronic theory. Why does P=IE? Do holes really flow through transistors? What is a radio wave? How does a frequency mixer produce sum and difference frequencies? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, this book is for you.

Finally, SolderSmoke is about brotherhood. International, cross-border brotherhood. Through the SolderSmoke podcast we have discovered that all around the world, in countries as different as Sudan and Switzerland, there are geeks just like us, guys with essentially the same story, guys who got interested in radio and electronics as teenagers, and who have stuck with it ever since. Our technical addiction gives us something in common, something that transcends national differences. And our electronics gives us the means to communicate. United by a common interest in radio, and drawn closer together by means of the internet, we form an “International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards.”

Being an electronics professional, how could I pass this one up? Thanks!

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I don't recall ever seeing a real sale by the University of Chicago Press!

I thought that the best way for you to see the markdowns would be to give you the Amazon webpage with the ebooks sorted by price, low to high. Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_pr...price-asc-rank.

Thanks for that.

Here's the UK Amazon URL
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_pg_...qid=1441289680

Same but title does not contain 'short'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_adv...oks-Submit.y=0

For example

"Fair Not Flat" - Edward J. McCaffery (192pp) is reduced from $13.80 to $2.96 (proposal for a consumption/ expenditures tax instead of an income tax). Everything runs like a 401K and you pay tax only if you don't save or you spend your savings.

[Little.Egret]

210 Unanchor travel guides are free

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...title=unanchor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=searc...title=unanchor
http://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-a...title=unanchor

Watch the birdie, here's just the London ones


http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...nanchor+london

London Unanchor Travel Guide - London's Historic City Wall Walk (1-2 days) by Rebecca Shaw

I have this, it's well done

London Unanchor Travel Guide - London's South Bank - Off the Beaten Track 1-Day Tour

London Unanchor Travel Guide - London's Villages - A 3-day itinerary exploring Hampstead, Marylebone and Notting Hill

London Unanchor Travel Guide - London for Free :: Three-Day Tour

London Unanchor Travel Guide - Low Cost, Luxury London - 3 Day Itinerary

London Unanchor Travel Guide - The 007 James Bond Day Tour of London

London Unanchor Travel Guide - London 1-Day Literary Highlights

London Unanchor Travel Guide - An Insider's Guide to the Best of London in 3-days



New York

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...nchor+New+York

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Being an electronics professional, how could I pass this one up? Thanks!

Great. Didn't know that you were an electronics professional (of course, I know what very, very few other Mobilereaders do for a living, either). I was afraid that there might be no one, even among the throng of lurkers, who would have an interest in that one!

I'm sure that the reason that I felt almost compelled to post that book was the fact that as a kid of about 7-9 years old, I just loved electronics. It was still somewhat the vacuum tube age, although transistors were commonplace by then, too (I didn't care much for vacuum tubes, though). Radio Shack was definitely my favorite store--I loved the place! One of the stages that I went through. I would have loved reading a book, then, like this one.

Thanks for your comment.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

210 Unanchor travel guides are free
. . . .

Wow. Great find! Thanks.

I wasn't familiar with this series. I looked over some of the titles, and all of them had very good or better ratings. Some travel guides series have a great name, but their ratings are not all that great or, at least, uneven. I won't mention any names--like "Lonely Planet." ha

I'm going to download all of them. I haven't done much traveling in the past decade, but hope to do more in the future. The problem with travel guides, maybe more than any other subgenre, is that they become out of date quickly. For example, a restaurant that the book recommends may be in business one year, but out of business or in a different location the next year. That makes the digital format almost ideal, though, because changes can be made easily, and a new edition published and available for sale "in no time."

[Cinisajoy]

The Corpus Christi guide is good on those travel guides.
Gr8, one of my many jobs was video game repair. I love Radio Shack too. Note these were in a game room not home video games.
I am now a domestic engineer.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

. . . .
I love Radio Shack too.
. . . .

I didn't like going in Radio Shack much after that spell where I was interested in electronics, especially in the last 3 or 4 decades. In part, that was due to a change in interests.

But in the last couple of decades or more it was also because the stores changed. They got away from selling parts and such for electronics and mainly were another electronics retailer among the gazillions already out there. And Radio Shack wasn't competitive in that business, for whatever reason. That's why the majority of them closed up the first of this year (or maybe it was last year). Ours, where I live, stayed open, but they seem to have fully converted to a cell phone/service retailer. One among the gazillions of those already out there.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I didn't like going in Radio Shack much after that spell where I was interested in electronics, especially in the last 3 or 4 decades. In part, that was due to a change in interests.

But in the last couple of decades or more it was also because the stores changed. They got away from selling parts and such for electronics and mainly were another electronics retailer among the gazillions already out there. And Radio Shack wasn't competitive in that business, for whatever reason. That's why the majority of them closed up the first of this year (or maybe it was last year). Ours, where I live, stayed open, but they seem to have fully converted to a cell phone/service retailer. One among the gazillions of those already out there.

Ours still have all the little parts.
Haven't shopped there much since early 1990.
I have dozens of interests.

[Froide]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I didn't like going in Radio Shack much after that spell where I was interested in electronics, especially in the last 3 or 4 decades. In part, that was due to a change in interests.

But in the last couple of decades or more it was also because the stores changed. They got away from selling parts and such for electronics and mainly were another electronics retailer among the gazillions already out there. And Radio Shack wasn't competitive in that business, for whatever reason. That's why the majority of them closed up the first of this year (or maybe it was last year). Ours, where I live, stayed open, but they seem to have fully converted to a cell phone/service retailer. One among the gazillions of those already out there.

Yep. RadioShack lost its way, strategically, and everything from its wares, its staff's expertise, its customers' interests, and its market position and performance reflects that. Makes me sad; as a child, I liked to accompany Dad there and to Lafayette (his first-pick electronics store), to pick up electronics parts and hear him discuss the arcane language spoken by people who worked and shopped there (typically males). Visits with Dad to auto parts stores were similar, but for me less interesting, experiences.