FREE/BARGAIN - Non-Fiction - 2015

[bartveld]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

bartveld, what I do is go to Amazon's Kindle page, and type in "free kindle books ____", filling in the blank with whatever strikes my fancy.

Ah, how basic. I could've (should've) thought of that myself. Thank you.

[Froide]

Originally Posted by bartveld

So is there a system to finding these free books on Amazon or do all of you just happen to bump into them?

In addition to the aforementioned method, it's worthwhile to note that some publishers and booksellers release freebies on a regular schedule, e.g., Open Road Media and its MysteriousPress.com imprint release daily freebies M-F, Kindle for Samsung freebies are released monthly, and Agate Publishing typically releases free digital deals on Sundays and Thursdays. Still other deals are announced via social media, newsletters, and blogs.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by bartveld

So is there a system to finding these free books on Amazon or do all of you just happen to bump into them?

Kindle freebies can be found with this link: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=2245146011. You can search some genres there, and the classics are separate.

And here is another way to search, with more genres to choose from on the left.

[itisbomb]

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives)
by Christopher Hitchens

is $3.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Jeffers...+eminent+lives

Below is the blurb:
In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father—a man conflicted by power who wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as ambassador to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. A masterly writer, Jefferson was an awkward public speaker. A professed proponent of emancipation, he elided the issue of slavery from the Declaration of Independence and continued to own human property. A reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy. With intelligence, insight, eloquence, and wit, Hitchens gives us an artful portrait of a complex, formative figure and his turbulent era.

[itisbomb]

Salem Witch Judge
by Eve LaPlante

is $0.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Salem-Witch-Ju...em+witch+judge

Below is the blurb:
In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.

But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.

In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

[itisbomb]

The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century
by Peter Watson

is $3.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/German-Genius-...=german+genius

Below is the blurb:
The German Genius is a virtuoso cultural history of German ideas and influence, from 1750 to the present day, by acclaimed historian Peter Watson (Making of the Modern Mind, Ideas). From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy, The German Genius is a lively and accessible review of over 250 years of German intellectual history. In the process, it explains the devastating effects of World War II, which transformed a vibrant and brilliantly artistic culture into a vehicle of warfare and destruction, and it shows how the German culture advanced in the war’s aftermath.

[itisbomb]

Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
by Barbara Mertz

is $3.99 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Land-Black...and+black+land

Below is the blurb:
A fascinating, erudite, and witty glimpse of the human side of ancient Egypt—this acclaimed classic work is now revised and updated for a new generation

Displaying the unparalleled descriptive power, unerring eye for fascinating detail, keen insight, and trenchant wit that have made the novels she writes (as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels) perennial New York Times bestsellers, internationally renowned Egyptologist Barbara Mertz brings a long-buried civilization to vivid life. In Red Land, Black Land, she transports us back thousands of years and immerses us in the sights, aromas, and sounds of day-to-day living in the legendary desert realm that was ancient Egypt.

Who were these people whose civilization has inspired myriad films, books, artwork, myths, and dreams, and who built astonishing monuments that still stagger the imagination five thousand years later? What did average Egyptians eat, drink, wear, gossip about, and aspire to? What were their amusements, their beliefs, their attitudes concerning religion, childrearing, nudity, premarital sex? Mertz ushers us into their homes, workplaces, temples, and palaces to give us an intimate view of the everyday worlds of the royal and commoner alike. We observe priests and painters, scribes and pyramid builders, slaves, housewives, and queens—and receive fascinating tips on how to perform tasks essential to ancient Egyptian living, from mummification to making papyrus.

An eye-opening and endlessly entertaining companion volume to Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, Mertz's extraordinary history of ancient Egypt, Red Land, Black Land offers readers a brilliant display of rich description and fascinating edification. It brings us closer than ever before to the people of a great lost culture that was so different from—yet so surprisingly similar to—our own.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by bartveld

So is there a system to finding these free books on Amazon or do all of you just happen to bump into them?

The posts by others, responding to your query, were great. I learned several things helpful things that I didn't know.

Well, you can't bump into an ebook because it is not a physical object. You can bump into a paper book, yes, but ebooks, no. haha

I'll give you now several select websites that I have used in the past and/or use now to find ebook markdowns and other ebook deals. If you don't have much time to allocate for looking for ebook bargains, these would be among those which would let you make the most efficient use of your time, I think. I almost exclusively am interested in nonfiction ebooks, and my choice of the following websites will reflect that.

Full disclosure: I have no financial connection nor quid pro quo with any of the following websites, their owners, etc., etc.

- There may be a thread in some forum on Mobileread which is devoted to this subject. I have never visited it, and don't know where it is, if there is one. It might be a good idea to check for that.

- I've used this Amazon webpage quite a bit in the past. Be sure to notice the short menu on the left hand side, near the top, which has "top 100 paid" and "top 100 free." You will definitely want to use at least the "top 100 free" if you're hunting for freebie bargains. If I had more time, I still would be checking this one daily, myself.

- I check EReaderIQ daily now. Supposedly you can find all markdowns of all ebooks on the Site. They don't say it anywhere, or at least anywhere that I've seen it, but it has markdowns of Amazon ebooks only. Start off by selecting from the menu, in the center near the top of the homepage, which one of the options that you like to use. Subsequent pages will have a menu on the lefthand side on the top of the page, which by using you can limit the search results based on your preferences. You will want to limit your search results quite a bit, or the amount of search results will be unmanageably large. EReaderIQ has a few other tools, also, that you might find helpful.

Here are a few odds & ends that I have found helpful, and I think that you would, also. Some of the websites will post only Amazon ebooks:
- There is a huge number of aggregator websites which daily list, or have one or more lists of, ebook markdowns, some more in the number of deals that they give, some less. I have run across a few which always seem to have one or more ebooks every day which I didn't find anywhere else, and I check these daily. This forum on Mobileread is one of them. Another one is that of "Koland's." You may recognize Koland as being a member of Mobileread; she posts on it from time to time. Her homepage always has some bargains, but I've found the best bargains to be found on a page of hers dedicated to free books.

Those are websites which have ebooks of miscellaneous subjects. There are also many websites which are subject-specific, for example Christianity, which I check daily. I've found some of them to be treasure-troves of great ebook deals. You'll want to find some sites like this dealing with your specific subject interests.

- When I learn the name of a publisher that I didn't know of before, I Google the publisher's name for their website, go there, and sign up for any newsletter that they offer which seems to have promise of telling about markdowns and promotions. Almost all of them do have one or more newsletters that they send out. Sometimes publishers will bury the link to sign up for a newsletter deep in the website, however. It's beyond me why they would let that happen. It takes some pretty extensive looking sometimes to ferret the link out.

Here's a little trick, too. Sometimes publishers' websites will hide freebies that they have on a webpage, which freebies they also don't tell everyone about. Sometimes I'll ferret them out by doing a specific type of Google search. It is in the format of "<search word(s)> site:<website URL>" without the quotation marks. Here's an example to try to find some free downloads on a particular publisher's website: "free download site:simonandschuster.com" without the quotation marks.

- There are other websites which I check sometimes, like Dealighted, which list great deals that visitors to their websites submit. Sometimes these deals are on websites of companies, and sometimes they are on websites which themselves list deals submitted by visitors to their own websites. I have to try different search terms at Dealighted, because the way their search engine works. Search terms that I make sure to try are "book," "books" (it won't find "books" when you search for "book"), "ebook."
* * *

That is information which quickly comes to mind, and they're the biggies. If I think of some other places that I deem important enough, I'll try to post a followup to this post to add them.

[bartveld]

Thank you all for some great suggestions!

[ATDrake]

Free again from the author via KDP Select @ Amazon:

North Sister Protocol and Other Stories by Barry Roberts Greer, whose bio-blurb says that he used to teach at the University of Oregon, actually a collection of essays and personal reminisces and a few pieces of fiction, mostly having to do with mountain climbing, which have mostly been previously print-published in specialty nature & sports-oriented and literary venues which are listed in the blurb.

North Sister Protocol covers 20 years of essays and fiction written for Appalachia, Climbing, Summit, FreeSolo Press, Dog River Review, High Plains Review, and other publications.

The collection includes the first history of American solo mountaineering, and it also traverses the range of human experience in the mountains and affected by mountain wilderness. Essays run from the historical to the satirical and absurd. Stories range from individual climbs to darkly satirical views of civilization. "Everyone here loves your writing," said Appalachian Mountain Club Books editor Gordon Hardy. Greer's prose also received praise from Princeton's William Howarth, Indiana University's Scott Sanders, and Suzanne Clark of the University of Oregon.

[GtrsRGr8]

Before you get scared away by the title of the post above or the title of the book, the book description assures us that the text is jargon-free.

The Whispersync companion to this ebook is only $1.98. I'll let the people on the Audiobooks thread know about this, too.

Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. By Lisa Zunshine. Rated 4 1/2 stars from 12 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $22.95; digital list price $1.99; Kindle price now $0.00. Ohio State University Press. 198 pages. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Read-Ficti...+and+the+Novel.

Book Description
Why We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson’s Clarissa, Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine’s surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Before you get scared away by the title of the post above or the title of the book, the book description assures us that the text is jargon-free.

The Whispersync companion to this ebook is only $1.98. I'll let the people on the Audiobooks thread know about this, too.

Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. By Lisa Zunshine.

Luzme.com says the ebook $1.99

And it's £0.99 in UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Read-Fic...dp/B003YJEXC0/

[ProwlingBoy]

The search option on Google Play is pretty limited, so I don't usually bother looking for freebies or price reductions unless I have a specific book in mind. But I came across this free (in the UK at least) book essentially by accident Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945. Hardly a light read but it might be of interest to someone. On Amazon it's £32.50.

https://play.google.com/store/books/...d=8WPLZYsMaGEC

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. By Lisa Zunshine. Rated 4 1/2 stars from 12 reviews at the present moment. Print list price $22.95; digital list price $1.99; Kindle price now $0.00. Ohio State University Press. 198 pages. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Read-Ficti...+and+the+Novel.

Nice!

[ATDrake]

Free from the small press genre specialty publisher via KDP Select @ Amazon: (linkage for the lot)

Years ago, fellow MR member Blue Tyson highly recommended Sequart's comic book literary analysis essay collections, which I've come to agree are really very nifty and Relevant To My Interests™, when a few of them popped up free, and now they're finally offering a couple more via KDP Select again :

The Devil is in the Details: Examining Matt Murdock and Daredevil, edited by Ryan K. Lindsay with a foreword by long-term Marvel editor Ralph Macchio (Wikipedia).

For half a century, Daredevil has been an outsider and a paradox, a loner, an down-to-earth super-hero, a blind man with super-powers, and the star of some of Marvel’s most celebrated stories.

The Devil is in the Details examines both Daredevil and his alter ego, Matt Murdock, from a variety of critical perspectives. Whether it’s explorations of Daredevil’s troubled history with love, his relationship to Foggy Nelson or Spider-Man, or new takes on his classic runs, this is one book no Daredevil fan or scholar should be without.

Shot in the Face: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Transmetropolitan, edited by Chad Nevett, which also contains bonus interviews with series author Warren Ellis (Wikipedia) & artist Darick Robertson (Wikipedia). Transmet was one of my favourite comic books for ages, and I still wish they'd do Deluxe or Absolute Edition of it, which I would snap up in a heartbeat.

Published in 1997-2002, Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan became famous for its foul-mouthed protagonist, Spider Jerusalem, and his “filthy assistants.” But it’s also a long-form comics masterpiece, a sci-fi comic that succeeded despite the odds, and an examination of journalism and politics — and how they intersect, or fail to do so. This book explores all these topics and more, from multiple points of view. It also includes interviews with both Ellis and Robertson.