FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[sufue]

Two titles by John Julius Norwich have dropped to £3.99 at Kindle UK:

A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005OVTXXU

Venice: A Traveller's Reader: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01JZO4SOU

[Dngrsone]

If you need James Herriot in digital form, now's your chance: the three book collection (All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful) is available at Amazon.com for $3.99.

[issybird]

The Confederacy's Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville by Wiley Sword, an account of Confederate General John B. Hood's rise and fall and the last campaigns of the war, is only $1.99 at Amazon. Rated 4.34 stars at Goodreads.

[AnemicOak]

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Li...+chernow+books

Celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation and the first president of the United States. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one volume biography of George Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his adventurous early years, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president. In this groundbreaking work, based on massive research, Chernow shatters forever the stereotype of George Washington as a stolid, unemotional figure and brings to vivid life a dashing, passionate man of fiery opinions and many moods.

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography

[GtrsRGr8]

Crown Publishing Group offers, on their website, free _ "Reader's Guides" for nearly 300 of the books that they publish. These guides are similar to the famous _Cliff Notes_.

Here's the URL: http://crownpublishing.com/readers-guides.

Crown is an imprint of Penguin Random House. I have not yet perused the websites of Crown's sister companies to see if any of them offer such reader's guides. Stay tuned.

[AnemicOak]

David McCullough American History E-book Box Set by David McCullough -- $0.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XVQPYC/

A special eBook boxed set from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, featuring four books on American history.

This e-book box set includes the following American History-themed books by David McCullough:

· John Adams: The magisterial, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the independent, irascible Yankee patriot, one of our nation’s founders and most important figures, who became our second president.

· 1776: The riveting story of George Washington, the men who marched with him, and their British foes in the momentous year of American independence.

· Truman: The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Harry Truman, the complex and courageous man who rose from modest origins to make momentous decisions as president, from dropping the atomic bomb to going to war in Korea.

· Special Bonus: The Course of Human Events: In this Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, David McCullough draws on his personal experience as a historian to acknowledge the crucial importance of writing in history’s enduring impact and influence, and he affirms the significance of history in teaching us about human nature through the ages.

[Conan46]

AnemicOak, those are great books.
Thanks!

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

David McCullough American History E-book Box Set by David McCullough -- $0.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XVQPYC/

A great deal indeed. It always makes me angry, though, when Amazon has an amazing deal where the price is set by the publisher, yet Google, B&N & Kobo are all at the regular price, in this case, $43.99. I could price match at Kobo, and get $42.90 in store credit (not).

[Difflugia]

A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love by Richard Dawkins is $1.99.

This early collection of essays from renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is an enthusiastic declaration, a testament to the power of rigorous scientific examination to reveal the wonders of the world.

In these essays, Dawkins revisits the meme, the unit of cultural information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work, The Selfish Gene. Here also are moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; correspondence with fellow biologist Stephen Jay Gould; commentary on the events of 9/11; and visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Meave Leakey at their African wildlife preserve.

Ending with a vivid note to Dawkins’s ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, ask questions, and live the examined life, A Devil’s Chaplain is a fascinating read by “a man of firm opinions, which he expresses with clarity and punch” (Scientific American).

B&N
Kobo
Amazon

[bfisher]

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton is $CDN 2.99 at amazon.ca today:
https://www.amazon.ca/Seven-Storey-M.../dp/B0085TK8MS

[Fluribus]

Summertime
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
And then the marauders come to kill you
You should have lived in a castle.

Joseph & Frances Gies Life in a Medieval Castle is $1.99 at Amazon.com.

[sufue]

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan is on sale at Kindle and Kobo US for $1.99. I read this back in DTB days and really really enjoyed it. Pollan takes four plants (apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes) and examines the plants and their relationship to us and how they meet various "desires" of humans (for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control, respectively). And he thinks about whether we are affecting the plants or the plants are affecting us. I'm making it sound a lot less cool than it actually is though, so please don't be put off by my description - this really is a an enjoyable book - while reading it, I felt more like I was reading a fiction/page-turner than a non-fiction book.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire...dp/B000FC1H14/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-botany-of-desire

Spoiler:

The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America

In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant—though this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin?

In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds’s most basic yearnings—and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom?

Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature.

Pollan also has another title that has recently dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I haven't read this one, but am looking forward to doing so now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-...dp/B000VMFDR2/

Spoiler:

#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

[Dngrsone]

Reminds me of another author's premise that maize is one of the most successful plants in terms of convincing humans to propagate it as much as possible...

[sufue]

Exactly!

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Reminds me of another author's premise that maize is one of the most successful plants in terms of convincing humans to propagate it as much as possible...

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Reminds me of another author's premise that maize is one of the most successful plants in terms of convincing humans to propagate it as much as possible...

I've seen an article (can't remember where) that described the Apple tree in the same way. the subtext was the question, "Who domesticated who?"