FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[sufue]

Edith Hamilton's classic Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes is £1.99 in the UK today as part of today's Daily Deal. FWIW, this says it's the 75th anniversary edition, although I'm never quite sure how that sort of thing translates into e-book...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071S74DXY
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071S74DXY

Spoiler:

This 75th anniversary edition of a classic bestseller is stunningly illustrated and designed to enchant fans of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology at all ages.

Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial bestseller.

For more than seven decades readers have chosen this book above all others to discover the enchanting world of mythology -- from Odysseus's adventure-filled journey to the Norse god Odin's effort to postpone the final day of doom. This deluxe, hardcover edition is fully-illustrated throughout with all-new, specially commissioned art, making it a true collector's item.

[salty-horse]

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn is $5 on Amazon.com
Was on my wishlist.

A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence

Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists.

Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn is $5 on Amazon.com
Was on my wishlist.

Thanks for this.

I was so excited by the possibility that there would be details of the wildlife bloom that resulted from the demilitarized zone in Korea that I rushed to my local library to have a look at a paper copy. Unfortunately, the DMZ is not covered, but there are so many stories that I did not know of that I am going to get the ebook. Based on the reviews, it is well worth $5.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Unfortunately, the DMZ is not covered

The Korean DMZ and its wildlife is mentioned in passing in the chapter about the Buffer Zone in Cyprus.

[Rime]

Email from the University of Chicago :
75% off for a limited time!
Books our customers are loving
From August 15–22, enjoy 75% off all e-books from University of Chicago Press and selected distributed publishers! You can search our site by subject or series; or check out our collection of bestsellers and bargains.

To take advantage of this amazing offer, use code EBOOK75 on our site.

https://press.uchicago.edu/books/subject.html

You need use Adobe DRM, and not all books are available as EPUB

[salty-horse]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is $2 on Amazon.com

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is $2 on Amazon.com

I highly recommend this book.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

The Prodigal Tongue

Buy it, you'll love it

first and perhaps only book on the relative merits of American and British English that is dominated by facts and analysis rather than nationalistic prejudice. For all its scholarship, this is also a funny and rollicking read.’

The Economist, Books of the Year

Only an American would call autumn fall or refer to a perfectly good pavement as a sidewalk… Not so, says Lynne Murphy. The English invented sidewalk in the seventeenth century and in 1693 John Dryden wrote the line, ‘Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills.’

Perhaps we don’t know our own language quite as well as we thought.

Murphy, an American linguist in Britain, dissects the myths surrounding British and American English in a laugh-out-loud exploration of how language works and where it's going.


https://theprodigaltongue.com/


Thoughtful, funny, and approachable... The book's momentum comes from Murphy's witty presentation, but its real power comes from its commitment to inquiry and its profound belief that 'communication involves a million little acts of faith.' --Publishers Weekly

Check ✔ The publisher changed the ASIN so no previous purchase check.

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07ZWKQLZN/

Still recommended, 99p again for September.

[sufue]

I read and enjoyed How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett a while back, so now I'm happy to see her newest book, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain, on sale for $1.99 in the US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081TT1V8M
Kindle US/Smile: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B081TT1V8M
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sev...ut-the-brain-4

Spoiler:

From the author of How Emotions Are Made, a captivating collection of short essays about your brain, in the tradition of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience. Along the way, you'll also learn to dismiss popular myths such as the idea of a "lizard brain" and the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or even between nature and nurture, to determine your behavior.

Sure to intrigue casual readers and scientific veterans alike, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is full of surprises, humor, and important implications for human nature--a gift of a book that you will want to savor again and again.

[salty-horse]

Not sure which forums this belongs to.

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh Amazon.com
This is a collection of humorous/sad/existential illustrated memoir essays by the author of Hyperbole and a Half (You can find a chapter from the new book there). Brosh has been away from the online world for many years, so it was a welcome surprise to learn about this book.

Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.

This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features all-new material with more than 1,600 pieces of art.

[sufue]

I haven't read River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads, by Cat Jarman, but it looks fascinating, and it's on sale for £0.99 at Kindle UK today as part of the Daily Deal. Jarman is a bioarcheologist, and the blurb indicates that she takes a small bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire and traces it to its origins thousands of miles to the east in Gujarat, using the process to illuminate the cultures, trade routes, etc. of the time. Plus I'm a sucker for anything dealing with the Silk Roads - mostly during the Great Game era, but I'm willing to go some centuries earlier too . Oh yeah, and its webpage says it was the Times History Book of the Year in 2021.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0842D1PHJ
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0842D1PHJ

Spoiler:

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF 2021

'Astonishing and compelling' Bernard Cornwell

‘Replete with witches, human sacrifice, Greek fire and funeral orgies… one of the most thrilling works of archaeological detective work I have ever read’ William Dalrymple, FT

Follow bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman – and the cutting-edge forensic techniques central to her research – as she uncovers epic stories of the Viking age and follows a small ‘Carnelian’ bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire to its origins thousands of miles to the east in Gujarat.

‘This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed’ THE TIMES Books of the Year

Dr Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist, specialising in forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now over one thousand years old, she can determine childhood diet, and thereby where a person was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years. And her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking culture.

In 2017, a carnelian bead came into her temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace its path back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Vikings’ route was far more varied than we might think, that with them came people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, and all the way to Britain.

Told as a riveting story of the Vikings and the methods we use to understand them, this is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologised voyagers of the north, and of the global medieval world as we know it.

[ZodWallop]

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything by Kelly Weill is $2.99 at Amazon US. I've had this on my watchlist for a while.

Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a centuries-old delusion: that the earth is flat. More and more people believe that we all live on a pancake-shaped planet, capped by a solid dome and ringed by an impossible wall of ice.

How? Why?

In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing.

At once a definitive history of the movement and an essential look at its unbelievable present, Off the Edge introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters. We meet historical figures like the nineteenth-century grifter who first popularized the theory, as well as the many modern-day Flat Earthers Weill herself gets to know, from moms on vacation to determined creationists to neo-Nazi rappers. We discover what, and who, converts people to Flat Earth belief, and what happens inside the rabbit hole. And we even meet a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon—whose tragic death is as senseless and absurd as the theory he sets out to prove.

In this incisive and powerful story about belief, Kelly Weill explores how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explains what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.

[salty-horse]

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Donald A. Norman is $6 on Amazon.com

Design doesn't have to complicated, which is why this guide to human-centered design shows that usability is just as important as aesthetics.
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door.
The fault, argues this ingenious -- even liberating -- book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization.
The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Donald A. Norman is $6 on Amazon.com

Did you buy the book?

It sounds great. But there's a review from this month advising that the book is a PDF not optimized for ereaders. Is that your experience?

[salty-horse]

I've always wanted to read it but that thing about the PDF scared me.
However, the Amazon preview appears to be HTML, so I don't know if it means anything.

There are also some negative reviews saying this book is way overhyped and too general to be applicable to whatever field they're working on, so YMMV.