Free (Kindle/iTunes) Lost in Shangri-La [Military Disaster Jungle Survival History]

[ATDrake]

Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff (Wikipedia), a professor of journalism at Boston University, is a thrilling historical account of a US military plane crash in the jungles of Dutch New Guinea which resulted in Exactly What It Says In The Title, free courtesy of publisher HarperCollins.

This is a special promotion in the iTunes Canada store's "Get started with great free books" feature, which seems to have replaced the Free eBook of the Week. I hope they rotate it regularly like they do their freebie TV episodes and music and continue to include fresh Francophone selections as well. (I've probably jinxed it now.)

Currently free @ Amazon & iTunes (both available to Canadians).

May or may not show up elsewhere, as this is an iTunes special and while Amazon is price-matching, other venues may not, since Agency pricing no longer seems to apply to keep the official promo freebies spread out through multiple stores.

Description
A New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Winship/PEN New England Award, Lost in Shangri-La is “a truly incredible adventure” (New York Times Book Review) about three brave survivors of a WWII plane crash in the jungle.

On May 13, 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals.

But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend’s shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound.

Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside—a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man—or woman.

Drawn from interviews, declassified U.S. Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a survivor’s diary, a rescuer’s journal, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio—dehydrated, sick, and in pain—traversed the dense jungle to find help; how a brave band of paratroopers risked their own lives to save the survivors; and how a cowboy colonel attempted a previously untested rescue mission to get them out.

By trekking into the New Guinea jungle, visiting remote villages, and rediscovering the crash site, Zuckoff also captures the contemporary natives’ remembrances of the long-ago day when strange creatures fell from the sky. A riveting work of narrative nonfiction that vividly brings to life an odyssey at times terrifying, enlightening, and comic, Lost in Shangri-La is a thrill ride from beginning to end.

This ebook also includes an excerpt from Mitchell Zuckoff’s New York Times bestseller Frozen in Time.

[koland]

Out of curiosity, can anyone in the US see the "great free books" promo in itunes? I can't find it on the web and all I get in iTunes is a blank page (there are three links to it on my home page, all give me a blank page with a header and no clue of what should be there or how to get it to display.

I think I tracked down all the books (just posted last one; ATDrake found the rest) by looking thru the bestseller lists, but I'm not entirely positive I didn't miss one (that no one else can find, either, due to the missing page).

[ATDrake]

There are actually more books, but half of them are French, some of the others are Canadian-only, or iTunes-only, or both, and anyone in Canada can see them here: Get started with great free books/Commencer avec des livres gratuits, so they're kind of low priority in the posting queue for the next few days since this will probably be at least a week-long promo like the Free eBook of the Week that it seems to have replaced.

[koland]

Thanks. They actually (sort of) announced that the selection is by country and more than Just Canada, since it is an IOS8 tie-in. Just a useless one that I can't see....

[ATDrake]

I suspected as much since the other geo-restricted books turned up yesterday and it fits with Apple's usual announcement timings. I'm sure they'll eventually get it fixed for the US store.

ETA: try this link for the US store promotion and see if you can see anything. There's a selection of 8 and some of them are also available for Canada when I check.

ETA 2: Hee. Some of the once in the France store are free in Canada, too! I think I'm going to spend a lot of time checking for stuff tonight.

[koland]

It turns out, of course, that a blank page in iTunes apparently MEANS: upgrade your itunes.

Not that there is every any indication of that.

Because it's an IOS8 promo (something else not mentioned on the three links on the page), you have to have the latest iTunes to see the books. Want to bet it will force me to upgrade my iPad, just to read them?

[ATDrake]

If it's any consolation, I'll do a round-up post of them tonight with individual linkage so that at least you'll be able to see if you can get the titles available to you "normally"?

It turns out that a bunch of them are also free outside their native countries and some of them are price-matched at some Amazon or other, and maybe elsewhere.

[koland]

Thanks. I did get to see the US titles. The CA link takes me to the US list, as well. I'm being lazy and not checking my AU account (and don't have one set up elsewhere, at this point, although it probably isn't so hard to do, now that you can choose "no cc" for payment).

[bookmarked]

I started a thread about the Apple promo before I saw that you were discussing it here. I've listed the 8 US titles there.

Try this URL http://tw.apple.com/greatfreebooks on any device with iTunes installed (iPhone, iPad, PC or Mac with iTunes installed) to see what's available where you are (I think).

I was able to get all of them on my iPod Touch 4, even though I only have iOS 6.

[ATDrake]

Sure, I'll just append the info to that thread later, then.

And it frees up a slot for some other freebies I was planning to post anyway.