FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[sufue]

On Tyranny is $2.99 in the US right now...

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N4M1BQY
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/on-tyranny-1

Originally Posted by sufue

My husband and I recently finished watching Timothy Snyder's The Making of Modern Ukraine course online, and enjoyed it so much that I added Snyder to my eReaderIQ list. And now his On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is on sale for £0.99 at Kindle UK as part of today's Daily Deal.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N9OJ2DX


Oh, and if you think you might want to watch the course, there's info here and/or you can just go straight to YouTube and search on "Snyder Making of Modern Ukraine" and it will pop right up. There are 20-ish lectures of 45 - 50 minutes each, and we learned a ton in each and every one.

[sufue]

There Is Nothing for You Here is £0.99 at Kindle UK right now as part of today's Daily Deal: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08NWT7LZ7

Originally Posted by sufue

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill is $1.99 as part of today's Kindle Daily Deal in the US, matched at Kobo US. I especially like the recommendation from Timothy Snyder - my husband and I watched his Making of Modern Ukraine course, available from Yale on You Tube, and learned a ton.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NWT7LZ7
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...for-you-here-4

[issybird]

For shoppers in the UK, Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson is currently £1.99, regularly £6.99.

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and on several best of the year lists.

Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/devil-land-1?

[isarl]

It’s All Love: Reflections for Your Heart & Soul, by Jenna Ortega, is on sale for $2, at least from the usual North American suspects:
Amazon US, CA
Kobo US, CA

You may be familiar with Jenna Ortega as the star and titular character of the recent Addams Family adaptation, Wednesday.

An empowering collection written by Jenna Ortega, the award-winning actress starring in the hit Netflix series WEDNESDAY. These deeply personal stories and quotes are accompanied by beautiful illustrations that explore Jenna's struggles with depression, experiences falling in—and out of—love, the loss of close family members, and growing up Latina in Hollywood.

You are not alone.
We are in this together.

This collection from actress Jenna Ortega is filled with her own original quotes and affirmations that will inspire you to lean into faith and love and family during life's most difficult, and most joyous, moments.

Jenna has had to balance her acting career, her private life, and public expectations from a young age, and she’s learned that the only way to get through it all is to wake up every morning and affirm her commitment to herself, her faith, her mental health, and her family. In this honest and moving debut, she shares openly and intimately what it means to live this life of self-appreciation.

Jenna's vulnerability in her writing will remind readers that there’s power within us all and we are not alone in our struggles.

[hildea]

Free:
Our History Has Always Been Contraband
In Defense of Black Studies
Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books...een-contraband

"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We’re ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." —Colin Kaepernick

Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum.

Featuring writings by: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Saidiya Hartman, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and many others.

Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. This volume also includes original essays by editors Kaepernick, Kelley, and Taylor, elucidating how we got here, and pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson detailing how we can fight back.

To read Our History Has Always Been Contraband is to be an outlaw for liberation. These writings illuminate the ways we can collectively work toward freedom for all—through abolition, feminism, racial justice, economic empowerment, self-determination, desegregation, decolonization, reparations, queer liberation, cultural and artistic expression, and beyond.

[isarl]

Ken Forkish's Evolutions in Bread: Artisan Pan Breads and Dutch-Oven Loaves at Home is currently $2 from Kobo and Amazon in the US.

Mr. Forkish's previous book, Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, won an IACP cookbook award and, for my part, taught me several improvements to my technique. I haven't dug in yet to be able to say this with much confidence, but the impression I get is that Evolutions in Bread seems to put more of an emphasis on sandwich style breads as compared to the more lean doughs in FWSY.

[sufue]

Two DK travel guides are $1.99 each right now in the US...just in time for the summer travel season...

DK Eyewitness Rome
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XX5SYXJ
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dk-eyewitness-rome-3

Barcelona Like a Local
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B58FP85D
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/bar...like-a-local-1

[sufue]

Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, by Maggie Haberman, is on sale in the UK today, in a rather timely fashion. It's £0.99 as part of today's Daily Deal. I've had an eye out for this one, and eReaderIQ has yet to see it drop below $15.99 in the US, so glad to see it on sale in the UK....

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09SBNN6MQ

Spoiler:

*THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

*A Financial Times Book of the Year*

*Economist Book of the Year*

‘A political epic’ – Guardian

‘This is the book Trump fears most.’ – Axios

Few journalists have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few better understand the polarizing 45th president or his motivations. In this astonishing, illuminating book, Haberman reveals all about Trump the man, the president and the phenomenon.

Interviews with hundreds of sources and with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture for decades, laying the groundwork to galvanize support for a successful run for high office.

Chronicling Trump’s entire career, from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency and potential comeback, Confidence Man is a magnificent, disturbing reckoning of the president who pushed American democracy to the brink.

[sufue]

I've raved - in a good sense - about Timothy Snyder before, and now another book of his is on sale at Kindle UK for £0.99 as part of today's Daily Deal.

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin is being marketed as the book to read to help understand Eastern Europe, and it's probably true - since reading the blurb sounds a lot like several of the lectures in his Yale course that is available on You Tube, and which was excellent. (See this previous post for info...)

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005G37SBK

Spoiler:

'A superb work of scholarship, full of riveting detail' Sunday Times

A powerful and revelatory history book about the bloodlands - the lands that lie between Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany - where 14 million people were killed during the years 1933 - 1944.

In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in the bloodlands between Berlin and Moscow.

In a twelve-year-period, in these killing fields - today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Western Russia and the eastern Baltic coast - an average of more than one million citizens were slaughtered every year, due to deliberate policies unrelated to combat.

Here, Timothy Snyder offers a ground-breaking investigation into the motives and methods of Stalin and Hitler. Using scholarly literature and primary sources, he pays special attention to the testimony of the victims, including the letters home, the notes flung from trains, the diaries on corpses.

Bloodlands is a brilliantly researched, profoundly humane, authoritative and original book that forces us to re-examine one of the greatest tragedies in European history and re-think our past.

'An original, wonderful and horrifying book... beautifully written and superbly researched' Anthony Beevor

[sufue]

Still haven't read it, sigh, but River Kings is $1.99 in the US right now...

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0983ZPWVR
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/river-kings-1

Originally Posted by 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

[bookmarked]

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2023 is on sale at Amazon for $1.99 (regularly $12.99). The 2024 edition will be out in November.

[issybird]

Public Schools and the Second World War by David Walsh and Anthony Seldon has been reduced to $2.99 from $12.99. It was on my wishlist AND I just happened to have $3 in my Kindle Rewards credit. I suppose its happening on double points day was the icing on the cake, but I can't get all that excited by an extra 9 points.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BZV4779/

[bookmarked]

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer is on sale for $2.99.
It's also a "Great on Kindle" title, so it comes with a $0.30 credit.

Blurb:

Spoiler:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A sharp, funny grammar guide they’ll actually want to read, from Random House’s longtime copy chief and one of Twitter’s leading language gurus

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • Paste • Shelf Awareness

“Essential (and delightful!)”—People

We all write, all the time: books, blogs, emails. Lots and lots of emails. And we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help.

As Random House’s copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike—not to mention his followers on social media—for deconstructing the English language with playful erudition. Now he distills everything he has learned from the myriad books he has copyedited and overseen into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward.

As authoritative as it is amusing, Dreyer’s English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en dash; the rules and nonrules of grammar, including why it’s OK to begin a sentence with “And” or “But” and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it’s best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including “very,” “rather,” “of course,” and the dreaded “actually.” Dreyer will let you know whether “alright” is all right (sometimes) and even help you brush up on your spelling—though, as he notes, “The problem with mnemonic devices is that I can never remember them.”

And yes: “Only godless savages eschew the series comma.”

Chockful of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people’s prose, and—perhaps best of all—an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

Praise for Dreyer’s English

“Playful, smart, self-conscious, and personal . . . One encounters wisdom and good sense on nearly every page of Dreyer’s English.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Destined to become a classic.”—The Millions

“Dreyer can help you . . . with tips on punctuation and spelling. . . . Even better: He’ll entertain you while he’s at it.”—Newsday

[sufue]

Right now, one of the textbooks from Snyder's class (if you were taking it for real ) is on sale at Kindle UK. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (or Plokhii, per Snyder's syllabus) is £0.99 right now as part of today's Daily Deal.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B012UTQ5NE

Spoiler:

From award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe is the definitive history of Ukraine that helps us understand the country's past and the current crisis

Located at the western edge of the Eurasian steppe, Ukraine has long been the meeting place of empires - Roman to Ottoman, Habsburg to Russian - and they all left their imprint on the landscape, the language and the people living within these shifting borders. In this authoritative book, Serhii Plokhy traces the history of Ukraine from the arrival of the Vikings in the tenth century to the current Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Fascinating and multi-layered, The Gates of Europe is the essential guide to understanding not just Ukraine's past but also its future.

Originally Posted by sufue

My husband and I recently finished watching Timothy Snyder's The Making of Modern Ukraine course online, and enjoyed it so much that I added Snyder to my eReaderIQ list. And now his On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is on sale for £0.99 at Kindle UK as part of today's Daily Deal.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N9OJ2DX


Oh, and if you think you might want to watch the course, there's info here and/or you can just go straight to YouTube and search on "Snyder Making of Modern Ukraine" and it will pop right up. There are 20-ish lectures of 45 - 50 minutes each, and we learned a ton in each and every one.

[salty-horse]

God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou is £0.99 in the UK and similar in Europe (Kobo, Amazon UK)
Was on my wishlist.

Three thousand years ago, in the lands we now call Israel and Palestine, a group of people worshipped a complex pantheon of deities, led by a father god called El. El had seventy children, who were gods in their own right. One of them was a minor storm deity, known as Yahweh. Yahweh had a body, a wife, offspring and colleagues. He fought monsters and mortals. He gorged on food and wine, wrote books, and took walks and naps. But he would become something far larger and far more abstract: the God of the great monotheistic religions.

But as Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou reveals, God’s cultural DNA stretches back centuries before the Bible was written, and persists in the tics and twitches of our own society, whether we are believers or not. The Bible has shaped ideas about God and religion, but also cultural preferences about human existence and experience; our concept of life and death; attitude to sex and gender; habits of eating and drinking; the understanding of history.

Examining God’s body, from his head to his hands, feet and genitals, she shows how the Western idea of God developed. She explores the places and artefacts that shaped our view of this singular God and the ancient religions and societies of the biblical world. And in doing so she analyses not only the origins of our oldest monotheistic religions, but also the origins of Western culture.