FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by Sumanuil

No idea. Usually they are EPUBs. But apparently not this month.

Even worse, it's not just a PDF but appears to be a PDF that consists entirely of images of pages. Thanks anyway, I can always read it on a bigger screen.

Andrew

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by issybird

This has been on my TBR for a while and I just started it this evening. When I went to add it to Goodreads, I saw that the current price is only $2.99, its lowest price ever.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQGHJM5L

So far, I find it utterly charming, appealing to both the foodie and the reader. He’s already invoked Calvin Trillin; fans (among them, me) take note.

The title doesn't show in your post, and clicking on the link did not work for me.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by issybird

This has been on my TBR for a while and I just started it this evening. When I went to add it to Goodreads, I saw that the current price is only $2.99, its lowest price ever.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQGHJM5L

So far, I find it utterly charming, appealing to both the foodie and the reader. He’s already invoked Calvin Trillin; fans (among them, me) take note.

Originally Posted by j.p.s

The title doesn't show in your post, and clicking on the link did not work for me.

I think it's this book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQGHJM5L

The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner

[salty-horse]

Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-Smith is $4 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.

In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments—eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment—shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness.

Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself.

[sufue]

I haven't read Robert D. Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts (yet), but I have read and enjoyed his Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, which was on sale a year-and-a-half ago. Now Balkan Ghosts is on sale for $2.99 at Kindle US, and I'm going to give it a try, although I'm not sure when I'll actually get to reading it. The TBR pile is high, but fingers crossed...

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQNYUX6

Spoiler:

A new edition of the classic travelogue exploring the Balkan Peninsula’s political, social, religious, and economic past.

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as “the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date” (Boston Globe), Kaplan’s prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

This new edition of Balkan Ghosts includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000, beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.