FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[issybird]

Athene Palace: Hitler's "New Order" Comes to Rumania by R.G. Waldeck is down to $2.99 everywhere, from $12.99 to $19.99 depending on the store. (Free at KU).

"The most vivid report, long or short, I have ever seen on Romania . . . brilliantly written and mercilessly barbed . . . unusually skillful and readable." —The New York Times

On the day that Paris fell to the Nazis, R. G. Waldeck was checking into the swankiest hotel in Bucharest, the Athene Palace. A cosmopolitan center during the war, the hotel was populated by Italian and German oilmen hoping to secure new business opportunities in Romania, international spies cloaked in fake identities, and Nazi officers whom Waldeck discovered to be intelligent but utterly bloodless. A German Jew and a reporter for Newsweek, Waldeck became a close observer of the Nazi invasion. As King Carol first tried to placate the Nazis, then abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Waldeck was dressing for dinners with diplomats and cozying up to Nazi officers to get insight and information. From her unique vantage, she watched as Romania, a country with a pro-totalitarian elite and a deep strain of anti-Semitism, suffered civil unrest, a German invasion, and an earthquake, before turning against the Nazis.

[Quoth]

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/reflections-48
Reflections
Reflections is a witty and insightful collection of essays, talks and interviews by beloved fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones, spanning thirty years of her life and work.

Drawing on her experiences studying under Tolkien and C.S Lewis at Oxford, Jones explores fantasy literature with sharp intelligence and humour.

Reduced to 99p

[salty-horse]

The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. In this sweeping and original history, renowned historian Marc Morris separates the truth from the legend and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.

[bookmarked]

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt is on sale for $1.99 at

Amazon
Kobo

Updated with an introduction by Joe Manganiello and extensive new content for the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, the fascinating and authoritative history of Dungeons & Dragons that “tracks D&D’s turbulent rise, fall, and survival, from its heyday in the 1980s…to the 21st century” (The Wall Street Journal), by award-winning journalist David M. Ewalt.

Even if you’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, you probably know someone who has: the game has had a profound influence on our culture, and 2014 marks the intriguing role-playing phenomenon’s 40th anniversary. Released decades before the Internet and social media, Dungeons & Dragons inspired one of the original nerd subcultures and is still revered by more than 30 million fans. Now, the authoritative history and magic of the game are revealed by an award-winning journalist and lifelong D&D player.

In Of Dice and Men, David Ewaltdescribes the development of Dungeons & Dragons from the game’s origins on the battlefields of ancient Europe through the hysteria that linked it to satanic rituals and teen suicides to its apotheosis as father of the modern video-game industry. As he chronicles the surprising history of the game’s origins (a history largely unknown even to hardcore players) and examines D&D’s lasting impact, Ewalt weaves laser-sharp subculture analysis with his own present-day gaming experiences, “writing about the world of fantasy role-playing junkies with intelligence, dexterity, and even wisdom” (Ken Jennings). An enticing blend of history, journalism, narrative, and memoir, Of Dice and Men sheds light on America’s most popular form of collaborative entertainment.

[DNSB]

If anyone is interested in Linux administration, etc., there is a Humble Bundle for you:

Humble Bundle: Linux for Seasoned Admins by O'Reilly

Offer is at least for Canada and the US.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If anyone is interested in Linux administration, etc., there is a Humble Bundle for you:

Humble Bundle: Linux for Seasoned Admins by O'Reilly

Offer is at least for Canada and the US.

Also available in the UK and, I suspect, anywhere.

[Quoth]

Though O'Reilly are now using AI to produce textbooks!

Edit: This HumbleBundle is in Euro in Ireland.
€669.55 Value • Pay What You Want (Minimum €16.71?)

Probably €669.55 is the retail price. I stopped buying computer books long ago. Programming and Linux stuff is usually free at good quality somewhere. You need to buy the books for Cisco and a lesser extend Microsoft to pass their exams.

[salty-horse]

Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre is £2 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. This is her story.

In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.

Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to waive anonymity and not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.

Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.

[salty-horse]

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy is £1 in the UK (Amazon only but price-matchable on Kobo)

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

[salty-horse]

These four books by James Randi are available for free on Amazon, Apple, and B&N.
https://web.randi.org/e-books.html

An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
Flim-Flam!
The Faith Healers
The Truth about Uri Geller

I've only read Flim-Flam and recommend it.

[Alastair_S]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Truth about Uri Geller

You never saw Geller bend a wooden spoon.

[salty-horse]

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable. The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.

[Quoth]

Randi, a latter day Houdini, because Houdini was also dedicated to exposing charlatans using his stage magician expertise.

[sufue]

I went through a James Michener phase in my teens, and read an awful lot of his fictionalized (but sometimes with historical notes at the end) historical novels: Hawaii, Caribbean, The Source, Texas, etc. etc. But somehow I never came across Iberia back then. Maybe it was because it seems to be regarded as non-fiction, rather than a fictionalized historical novel. And I didn't really do non-fiction at that age, since I felt like I got enough non-fiction reading in school .

In any case, Iberia is on sale right now in the US for $1.99, and I'm going to grab it.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DACZ97O
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/iberia

Spoiler:

Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. Iberia is Michener’s enduring nonfiction tribute to his cherished second home. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he came to know, where the congeniality of living souls is thrust against the dark weight of history. Wild, contradictory, passionately beautiful, this is Spain as experienced by a master writer.

[salty-horse]

Love Triangle by Matt Parker is £1 in the UK (Amazon only but price-matchable on KoboKobo)

Explore the life-changing magic of trigonometry with Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician and No. 1 bestselling author of Humble Pi

Why can no two people ever see the same rainbow? What happens when you pull a pop song apart into pure sine waves and play it back on a piano? Why does the wake behind a duck always form an angle of exactly 39 degrees? And what did mathematicians have to do with the great pig stampede of 2012? The answer to each of these questions can be found in the triangle.

In Love Triangle, stand-up comedian, ex-maths teacher and Sunday Times number one bestselling author Matt Parker is on a mission to prove why we should all show a lot more love for triangles, along with the useful trigonometry and geometry they enable. To make his point, he uses triangles to create his own digital avatar, survive a harrowing motorcycle ride, cut a sandwich into three equal parts, and measure tall buildings while wearing silly shoes. But soon these hare-brained experiments begin to reveal a genuinely important truth: triangles are the hidden pattern beneath the surface of the contemporary world, used in everything from GPS to CGI via Spotify streaming, the play button and your best mate’s triangle tattoo.

Join Matt Parker as he demonstrates why there’s more to triangles than Pythagoras and SOHCAHTOA. Triangles are everything and everything is triangles.