FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[Section8]

Space Odyssey by Michael Benson is $2.99

The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke—“a tremendous explication of a tremendous film….Breathtaking” (TheWashington Post).

Fifty years ago a strikingly original film had its premiere. Still acclaimed as one of the most remarkable and important motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the first contacts between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence. The movie was the product of a singular collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke. Fresh off the success of his cold war satire Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick wanted to make the first truly first-rate science fiction film. Drawing from Clarke’s ideas and with one of the author’s short stories as the initial inspiration, their bold vision benefited from pioneering special effects that still look extraordinary today, even in an age of computer-generated images.

In Space Odyssey, author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Michael Benson “delivers expert inside stuff” (San Francisco Chronicle) from his extensive research of Kubrick’s and Clarke’s archives. He has had the cooperation of Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, and interviewed most of the key people still alive who worked on the film. Drawing also from other previously unpublished interviews, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of the film from its genesis to its legacy, including many previously untold stories. And it features dozens of photos from the making of the film, most never previously published.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074ZP9S44
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/space-odyssey-2

[Paperbackstash]

Has been on sale before, really enjoyed Troublemaker by Leah Remini - 1.99

Amazon https://r.bookbub.com/promotion_site...raffic_source=
Kobo https://r.bookbub.com/promotion_site...raffic_source=

[Sumanuil]

This month's University of Chicago Press free ebook is "The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English"
"In 1939, on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper-class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in The Tiger in the Attic, a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land."

[sufue]

My husband and I watched Yale professor Timothy Snyder's online course, The Making of Modern Ukraine a few months back, and it was fascinating. One of the texts that Snyder used was by Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. (See this previous post for more info on the course and that book.)

And now Plokhy has a new book out on the current Russo-Ukrainian war, titled, rather unsurprisingly, The Russo-Ukrainian War. And it's on sale for about two more hours in the UK for £0.99.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BCQ14FGW
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the...-ukrainian-war

Spoiler:

CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES * TELEGRAPH * PROSPECT

'The best account of the ongoing conflict — its preconditions and its present-day horrors' Prospect

Do you know what is at stake in Ukraine? Urgent, compelling reading from the author of Chernobyl on the defining conflict of our times

On 24 February 2022, Russia stunned the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on the family and friends who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the outbreak of the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider outcomes.

The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a war that has burned since 2014, and that, with Russia's attempt to seize Kyiv, exploded a geo-political order that had been cemented since the end of the Cold War. With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and down in the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the conflict, from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics.

Based on decades of research and his unique insight into the region, he argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's demonstration of unity and strength, has presented a profound challenge to Putin's Great Power ambition, and further polarized the world along a new axis. A riveting, enlightening account, this is present-minded history at its best.

BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER 2023: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * TLS

[salty-horse]

Reposting to SF&F.
Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood
by J. Michael Straczynski is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Marvel’s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.

Joe's early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults—a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized—Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father’s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past.

To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family’s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.

Straczynski’s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.

[salty-horse]

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant is $4 on Amazon.com

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.

The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?

The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world—and is shaping our future.

[Critteranne]

On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down by James Fell is just $1.99.

Check the price before clicking! According to the author, the sale was supposed to be a one-day sale on March 10. He misread the date when he was first notified, so he didn't find out about it until March 11.

[sufue]

Open Road Media has quite a selection of public domain books that are (my experience) decently formatted and readable. (Of course, so does MR's own Patricia Clark Memorial Library - better formatted, really...) And a few years back, Open Road used to have a different one free every week but then that dropped off. Or maybe I just quit noticing them, since they were starting to repeat some .

Just now, though, I noticed one free again in my eReaderIQ list, that went free on March 1, and then when I went looking, I found one more that also went free on March 1. So maybe they are doing a couple a month now? Anyway, here are the two, both non-fiction:

The Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DX7VMBM
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...little-rain-34

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RWJPSY0
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-v...ts-of-woman-28

And for bonus, there's a Open Road public domain fiction short story free right now too, The Vampyre, by John William Polidori. See this post.

[salty-horse]

The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya is $3 on Amazon.com

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann.

Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. A child prodigy, he mastered calculus by the age of eight, and in high school made lasting contributions to mathematics. In Germany, where he helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics, and later at Princeton, von Neumann’s colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet—bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and the design of the atom bomb; he helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory; he created the first ever programmable digital computer; he prophesized the potential of nanotechnology; and, from his deathbed, he expounded on the limits of brains and computers—and how they might be overcome.

Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through a stunningly diverse array of fields, sparking revolutions wherever he went. The Man from the Future is an insightful and thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.

[sufue]

I've enjoyed several of Simon Winchester's books, including especially Outposts, but also, off the top of my head, Krakatoa, and The Map That Changed the World. And so I'm happy to see Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, on sale in the US for $1.99 right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AV68GR2
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-c...e-of-the-world

Spoiler:

The international bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force.

In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale. The quake resulted from a rupture in a part of the San Andreas fault, which lies underneath the earth's surface along the northern coast of California. Lasting little more than a minute, the earthquake wrecked 490 blocks, toppled a total of 25,000 buildings, broke open gas mains, cut off electric power lines throughout the Bay area, and effectively destroyed the gold rush capital that had stood there for a half century.

Perhaps more significant than the tremors and rumbling, which affected a swatch of California more than 200 miles long, were the fires that took over the city for three days, leaving chaos and horror in its wake. The human tragedy included the deaths of upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities -- as well as his unique understanding of geology -- to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California in 1906 but what we have learned since about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place. But his achievement is even greater: he positions the quake's significance along the earth's geological timeline and shows the effect it had on the rest of twentieth-century California and American history.

A Crack in the Edge of the World is the definitive account of the San Francisco earthquake. It is also a fascinating exploration of a legendary event that changed the way we look at the planet on which we live.

[salty-horse]

Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance by Tareq Baconi is $4 on Amazon.com
2018 book. Baconi has been a frequent interviewee recently and this was on my wishlist.

Hamas is a multifaceted liberation organization that rules Gaza and the lives of the two million Palestinians who live there. Demonized as a terrorist group in media and policy debates, it has been subjected to accusations and assumptions that have helped justify extreme military action in the region. In Hamas Contained, Tareq Baconi offers the first history of the group on its own terms.

Drawing on interviews with organization leaders, as well as publications from the group, Baconi maps Hamas’s thirty-year transition from fringe resistance to governance. Questioning the conventional understanding of Hamas, he shows how the movement's ideology ultimately threatens the Palestinian struggle and, inadvertently, its own legitimacy.
Baconi demonstrates how Hamas's armed struggle has failed in the face of a relentless occupation, and he argues that Israel's approach of managing rather than resolving the conflict has neutralized Hamas’s demand for Palestinian sovereignty. This dynamic has perpetuated a deadlock characterized by its brutality—and one that has led to the collective punishment of millions of Palestinian civilians.

[Sumanuil]

This month's University of Chicago Press free ebook is "The Long and the Short of It:
The Science of Life Span and Aging" by Jonathan Silvertown.

“An ideal introduction to the science of aging and mortality. Interwoven with history and poetry, [this] erudite and eloquent book concisely explains the mechanisms underlying the lifespan of organisms ranging from nematode worms and chickweed to humans and redwoods. Considering their fates in terms of genetics and environment, Silvertown explores the questions that have bedeviled our species for as long as we’ve had the language to ask: why do we get old and why do we die?”—New Scientist

[Critteranne]

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is just $4.99 today -- and you get 50 cents credit back because it's a Great on Kindle book!

I recommend this book. It's about the counselor who turned out to be responsible for Go Ask Alice and several other "diaries" that later turned out to be mostly made-up. It contains surprises!

I wrote about "Go Ask Alice" and this book for Medium in the subtly titled article Did You Know "Go Ask Alice" Was Made Up?

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

I wrote about "Go Ask Alice" and this book for Medium in the subtly titled article Did You Know "Go Ask Alice" Was Made Up?

The excellent You're Wrong About podcast covered this with guest Carmen Maria Machado, and the author of this book, Rick Emerson.
https://player.fm/series/youre-wrong...machado-part-1
https://player.fm/series/youre-wrong...machado-part-2
https://player.fm/series/youre-wrong...machado-part-3

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is just $4.99 today -- and you get 50 cents credit back because it's a Great on Kindle book!

I recommend this book. It's about the counselor who turned out to be responsible for Go Ask Alice and several other "diaries" that later turned out to be mostly made-up. It contains surprises!

I wrote about "Go Ask Alice" and this book for Medium in the subtly titled article Did You Know "Go Ask Alice" Was Made Up?

How interesting. I also read Go Ask Alice as a kiddo, and re-read it last year actually - man, it did not age well writing style wise either. I now know it is made-up but had NO idea back then and loaned it to a friend, who also didn't realize that. Picked this one up as I find the cultural stuff with the 80's, 90's, and satanic panic trend particularly interesting recent history. Thanks