FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free thread for a new Humble Bundle:

Humble Book Bundle Hacks presented by O'Reilly contains a selection of the popular computer/tech guide publisher's DIY tools and tips books from their “Hacks” series, for both hardware and software hacking.

There's stuff for working with cars, astronomy, statistics, baseball, etc., as well as all all the expected computer programming guides.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Donovan: America’s Master Spy by Richard Dunlop - $1.99

I cannot comment on the book, because I haven't read it, but "Wild Bill" Donovan was an exceptional man in many ways. It is really a shame that he is not better known to the average American than he is. The value of his clandestine service to the U.S. (and, by extension, to the world) during World War II is probably immeasurable.

If you don't read about him from this book, make a point to read about him somewhere.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I cannot comment on the book, because I haven't read it, but "Wild Bill" Donovan was an exceptional man in many ways. It is really a shame that he is not better known to the average American than he is. The value of his clandestine service to the U.S. (and, by extension, to the world) during World War II is probably immeasurable.

If you don't read about him from this book, make a point to read about him somewhere.

He also won the Medal of Honor, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in WWI.
Apache

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Apache

He also won the Medal of Honor, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in WWI.
Apache

I was not aware of all of the medals that he received from his World War I service, except for one--the one resulting from a charge that he led against the Germans (probably ensconced in a trench) armed with machine guns (I don't understand the purpose of this--it reminds me of the ridiculous bonsai charges of Japanese in World War II, which usually resulted only in heaps of dead Japanese). Many of his men fell, mortally wounded. He, himself, was injured, and bleeding. Finally, after five hours lying in that condition, he was carried away to a field hospital on, if I remember correctly, some kind of canvas mat.

[GtrsRGr8]

There may be no one in MobileReader Land who would be interested in this book. Frankly, I have some difficulty even understanding what it's about. But, if someone could use it, they'll save $94. To be exact, $94.39. That's why I'm posting it.

It's the book Tracing Manuscripts in Time and Space through Paratexts, edited by Giovanni Ciotta and Hang Lin. It is a very recently--July 2016--published book. It is Volume 7 of a series called Studies in Manuscript Cultures.

Here's the book description, from unglue.it. I hope that at least someone has better success in understanding it all than I do!
As records of the link between a manuscript and the texts it contains, paratexts document many aspects of a manuscript’s life: production, transmission, usage, and reception. Comprehensive studies of paratexts are still rare in the field of manuscript studies, and the universal categories of time and space are used to create a common frame for research and comparisons. Contributions in this volume span over three continents and one millennium.

- Darya Ogorodnikova - Exploring Paratexts in Old Mande Manuscripts
- Apiradee Techasiriwan - Locating Tai Lü and Tai Khün Manuscripts in Space and Time through Colophons
- Giovanni Ciotti and Marco Franceschini - Certain Times in Uncertain Places: A Study on Scribal Colophons of Manuscripts Written in Tamil and Tamilian Grantha Scripts
- Hang Lin - Looking Inside the Cover: Reconstructing Space and Time in Some Donglin Manuscripts
- Max Jakob Fölster - ‘Traces in Red’: Chinese Book Collectors’ Seals as a Means to Track the Transmission History of a Manuscript
- Kristina Nikolovska - ‘When the living envied the dead’: Church Slavonic Paratexts and the Apocalyptic Framework of Monk Isaija’s Colophon (1371)
- Vito Lorusso - Locating Greek Manuscripts through Paratexts: Examples from the Library of Cardinal Bessarion and other Manuscript Collections
- Stéphane Ancel - Travelling Books: Changes of Ownership and Location in Ethiopian Manuscript Culture

Is everything a lot clearer now? ha

The book is published by De Gruyter, and is available free through Open Access. I've noticed that De Gruyter is one publisher which is very generous about making their books available through Open Access, and I appreciate them for it.

You might want to read what the Amazon webpage for the book says about it (BTW--the price of $94.39 is that of a Hardback copy (Used-Like New) mentioned on that Amazon webpage.

The benefactor of this Open Access title offers it in all three of our favorite flavors--mobi (think: Kindle); ePub; and PDF. You can send it to your Kindle, download it to your computer, or save it to Dropbox. To do one (or more) of those things, click on "Read It Now" under the thumbnail image of the book, located on this unglue.it webpage, and follow the prompts.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I was not aware of all of the medals that he received from his World War I service, except for one--the one resulting from a charge that he led against the Germans (probably ensconced in a trench) armed with machine guns (I don't understand the purpose of this--it reminds me of the ridiculous bonsai charges of Japanese in World War II, which usually resulted only in heaps of dead Japanese). Many of his men fell, mortally wounded. He, himself, was injured, and bleeding. Finally, after five hours lying in that condition, he was carried away to a field hospital on, if I remember correctly, some kind of canvas mat.

You should look at the history of WWI. 65 million men were mobilized.Over 57% of them died. 37 million casualties. 19.7 million wounded. There were 7.7 million POWs missing in WWI. Massed charges were the rule of the day in WWI.
Apache

[bfisher]

On sale at Amazon.ca this month for $CDN 1.99
Grant Takes Charge by Bruce Catton
https://www.amazon.ca/Grant-Takes-Co.../dp/B015DJ7D4I

His American Heritage History of the Civil War is also on sale for $CDN 2.99
(note: this is NOT his great Centennial history)
https://www.amazon.ca/American-Herit.../dp/B00KW0R3Z8

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by bfisher

On sale at Amazon.ca this month for $CDN 1.99
Grant Takes Charge by Bruce Catton
https://www.amazon.ca/Grant-Takes-Co.../dp/B015DJ7D4I

$1.99 USD in the U.S., also. https://www.amazon.com/Grant-Takes-C.../dp/B015DJ7D4I. If the number of books that a person has written and sold on the subject is any indication, Catton really knows his stuff and is interesting to read.

Originally Posted by bfisher

This American Heritage History of the Civil War is also on sale for $CDN 2.99
(note: this is NOT his great Centennial history)
https://www.amazon.ca/American-Herit.../dp/B00KW0R3Z8

$2.99 USD in the States. https://www.amazon.com/American-Heri...8?tag=mr022-20. Catton co-authors the book. IMHO, the American Heritage History series books are generally good, but not quite top notch most of the time.

[GtrsRGr8]

You may have picked up on the fact that I learn of good Open Access (free) books through a website called unglue.it. There are gazillions of free Open Access books out there now, and that site vets them in order to find good ones, saving me the trouble of going through virtual tall stacks of Open Access books to find one worthy of posting.

The last one that I posted that I found at unglue.it was very esoteric, but it also was expensive at Amazon. The one that I want to post now is less esoteric, but it also doesn't command nearly as high of a price as the previous one (those two characteristics, I've noticed, seem to have that kind of inverse relationship)--it's $9.99 as a Kindle mobi.

This ebook is entitled How Change Happens, by Duncan Green. It has a very recent publication date (2016).

In a nutshell, this looks like a book intended to give information and advice to help guide social and political activists. Here is the book description as given at unglue.it (It is very similar to the one at Amazon.com):
Human society is full of would-be ‘change agents’, a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect.

Striking then, that not many universities have a Department of Change Studies, to which social activists can turn for advice and inspiration. Instead, scholarly discussions of change are fragmented with few conversations crossing disciplinary boundaries, rarely making it onto the radars of those actively seeking change.

This book aims to bridge the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world’s largest social justice NGOs, as well as insights gleaned from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change.

To download the free book from unglue.it, click on the "Read It Now" button underneath the thumbnail image of the book cover at unglue.it. Unfortunately, this particular free book is available only in PDF at unglue.it. However, that webpage gives you information to set up your Kindle in order to send it to your Kindle. Also, you'll have the option to save the file to Dropbox. Alternatively, you can download the ebook (again, only in PDF) from the book's dedicated webpage. Sorry, but I didn't run across any information anywhere about the ebook's DRM status.

[GtrsRGr8]

Unglue.it is featuring Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo, by Roger Moseley, published in 2016.

It's free, through Open Access (that's the only kind of book that unglue.it features). Wondering what a copy would be at Amazon? The least expensive copy is a paperback, shipped, from a third party for a little over $30. It's apparently not available from there, at any price, as a digital book; however, you can get this one from unglue.it free in mobi, ePub, and PDF, and even have things set up for it to be sent to your Kindle, should you wish).

Here's what this book is about, courtesy of unglue.it:
How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.

Unfortunately, it has no reviews, yet, at Amazon or GoodReads.

Get it at unglue.it.

[bfisher]

A few books on sale at Amazon.ca

This Kind of War: The Classic Military History of the Korean War by T.R. Fehrenbach for $CDN 1.99
https://www.amazon.ca/This-Kind-War-.../dp/B00J3EU6IK

The Old Contemptibles: The British Expeditionary Force, 1914 by Robin Neillands for $CDN 2.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Old-Contemptib.../dp/B015T999R6

[ekbell]

For those interested in the broad topic of Food (whether cooking or otherwise) here are the collected Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery

http://www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk/pr...ngs/downloads/

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ekbell

For those interested in the broad topic of Food (whether cooking or otherwise) here are the collected Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery

http://www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk/pr...ngs/downloads/

Look like good books. There are a lot of them, anyway!

No telling how many more treasure chests of free books are "out there," but just haven't gotten discovered (by us, anyway) yet.

[GtrsRGr8]

This ebook meets all of my prerequisites for posting--high (or better) ratings, adequate number of ratings, bargain price, etc. But the reason that it's a must-post in my mind is the fact that the merciful and just actions by Lincoln in the event covered in this book are almost completely unknown to Americans today. Perhaps it is because, in people's minds, Lincoln's part in the prosecution of the horrendous American Civil War eclipse just about everything else that he did. The story in this book deserves to be known to as many Americans as possible, IMHO, however.

Lincoln's Bishop: A President, A Priest, and the Fate of 300 Dakota Sioux Warriors. By Gustav Niebuhr. Rated 4.8 stars, but from only 11 reviews at Amazon at the present moment; rated 3.74, from 39 ratings at the present moment at GoodReads at the present moment. Print list price N/A; regular(?) digital price $14.49; Kindle price now $1.99. HarperOne, publisher, 224 pages. https://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Bish.../dp/B00FJ313UY.

Book Description
In the tradition of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals comes Gustav Niebuhr's compelling history of Abraham Lincoln's decision in 1862 to spare the lives of 265 condemned Sioux men, and the Episcopal bishop who was his moral compass, helping guide the president's conscience.

More than a century ago, during the formative years of the American nation, Protestant churches carried powerful moral authority, giving voice to values such as mercy and compassion, while boldly standing against injustice and immorality. Gustav Niebuhr travels back to this defining period, to explore Abraham Lincoln's decision to spare the lives of 265 Sioux men sentenced to die by a military tribunal in Minnesota for warfare against white settlers—while allowing the hanging of 38 others, the largest single execution on American soil. Popular opinion favored death or expulsion. Only one state leader championed the cause of the Native Americans, Episcopal bishop, Henry Benjamin Whipple.

Though he'd never met an Indian until he was 37 years old, Whipple befriended them before the massacre and understood their plight at the hands of corrupt government officials and businessmen. After their trial, he pleaded with Lincoln to extend mercy and implement true justice. Bringing to life this little known event and this extraordinary man, Niebuhr pays tribute to the once amazing moral force of mainline Protestant churches and the practitioners who guarded America's conscience.

Lincoln's Bishop is illustrated with 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

This ebook meets all of my prerequisites for posting--high (or better) ratings, adequate number of ratings, bargain price, etc. But the reason that it's a must-post in my mind is the fact that the merciful and just actions by Lincoln in the event covered in this book are almost completely unknown to Americans today. Perhaps it is because, in people's minds, Lincoln's part in the prosecution of the horrendous American Civil War eclipse just about everything else that he did. The story in this book deserves to be known to as many Americans as possible, IMHO, however.

Lincoln's Bishop: A President, A Priest, and the Fate of 300 Dakota Sioux Warriors. By Gustav Niebuhr. Rated 4.8 stars, but from only 11 reviews at Amazon at the present moment; rated 3.74, from 39 ratings at the present moment at GoodReads at the present moment. Print list price N/A; regular(?) digital price $14.49; Kindle price now $1.99. HarperOne, publisher, 224 pages. https://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Bish.../dp/B00FJ313UY.

Thanks. Also available at Amazon.ca for $CDN 1.99
https://www.amazon.ca/Lincolns-Bisho.../dp/B00FJ313UY