FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction

[issybird]

We point out free and bargain Non-Fiction titles to each other. Please don't post any self-published books*, and please do a search before posting to avoid duplicates.

In case no retailer is specifically mentioned in a post, it is safe to assume it's for Amazon US.

Be aware that many freebies are only free for a day, so grab them fast!

*Unless you have read them yourself, think they are excellent, and you're not connected to the author in any way.

Last year's thread.

[Little.Egret]

Cornell University Press, free

By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia by Nancy Shields Kollmann

Cornell University Press

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Russians from all ranks of society were bound together by a culture of honor. Here one of the foremost scholars of early modern Russia explores the intricate and highly stylized codes that made up this culture. Nancy Shields Kollmann describes how these codes were manipulated to construct identity and enforce social norms--and also to defend against insults, to pursue vendettas, and to unsettle communities. She offers evidence for a new view of the relationship of state and society in the Russian empire, and her richly comparative approach enhances knowledge of statebuilding in premodern Europe. By presenting Muscovite state and society in the context of medieval and early modern Europe, she exposes similarities that blur long-standing distinctions between Russian and European history.

Through the prism of honor, Kollmann examines the interaction of the Russian state and its people in regulating social relations and defining an individual's rank. She finds vital information in a collection of transcripts of legal suits brought by elites and peasants alike to avenge insult to honor.

The cases make clear the conservative role honor played in society as well as the ability of men and women to employ this body of ideas to address their relations with one another and with the state. Kollmann demonstrates that the grand princes - and later the tsars - tolerated a surprising degree of local autonomy throughout their rapidly expanding realm. Her work marks a stark contrast with traditional Russian historiography, which exaggerates the power of the state and downplays the volition of society.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6C3ON3/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N6C3ON3/

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01N6C3ON3/

[Little.Egret]

Cornell University Press, free


Research Guide to the Russian and Soviet Censuses (Studies in Soviet history and society) by Ralph S. Clem

Cornell University Press

Taken together, the Russian census of 1897 and the Soviet censuses of 1926, 1959, 1970, and 1979 constitute the largest collection of empirical data available on that country, but until the publication of this book in 1986, the daunting complexity of that material prevented Western scholars from exploiting the censuses fully. This book is both a guide and a detailed index to these censuses. The first part of the book consists of eight essays by specialist on the USSR, six of them dealing with the use of census materials and the availability of data for research on ethnicity and language, marriage and the family, education and literacy, migration and organization, age structure, and occupations. The second part, a comprehensive index for all the published censuses, presents more than six hundred annotated entries for the census tables, a keyword index that enables researchers to find census data by subject, and a list of political-administrative units covered in each census.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N1NQEFJ/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N1NQEFJ/

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01N1NQEFJ/

[Froide]

Happy 2017, everyone!

This month's University of Chicago Press freebie:

Looking for Strangers: The True Story of My Hidden Wartime Childhood
by Dori Katz

184 pages | 5½×8½ | ©2013

“Written in spare, deceptively simple prose, with the emotion just beneath the surface, Looking for Strangers is a powerful, poignant, and painfully honest memoir, and a meditation on laying claim to long suppressed, dimly understood, and conflicted memories and feelings. Looking for Strangers reminds us of the role of chance encounters, individual acts of cruelty and kindness, survival instincts, intelligence, and will during the Third Reich’s reign in Europe”—Jerusalem Post

Get this e-book free!

Enter your e-mail address and click "Get E-book." You will receive an e-mail confirmation with a link to download your free e-book.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Cornell University Press, free

By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia by Nancy Shields Kollmann

Cornell University Press

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Russians from all ranks of society were bound together by a culture of honor
<snip>

Gr8 finds.

Out of curiosity, I checked Amazon to see if there were any additional free Cornell University titles (they may have freebies in open access, too; they would show up elsewhere). There are quite a few. Here is the result of a search, prices lower to higher. Be aware that the search throws in some titles that are not free, so double-check before you click on "buy."

I think that I'll list all of the titles that I see and put them in a separate post, hopefully soon.

[ATDrake]

^

The Cornell University titles are actually just price-matches to their Open Access program, whose full contents are already listed on their dedicated webpage here where you can download them all directly DRM-free as ePub & PDF, and may have already been mentioned in the Open/Free University/Academic Presses thread. ISTR that some of them were also available at different retailers when I checked them last year.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

^

The Cornell University titles are actually just price-matches to their Open Access program, whose full contents are already listed on their dedicated webpage here where you can download them all directly DRM-free as ePub & PDF, and may have already been mentioned in the Open/Free University/Academic Presses thread. ISTR that some of them were also available at different retailers when I checked them last year.

Very good. I had forgotten about that thread, even though I have posted on it quite a bit. Maybe my post above is redundant.

However, I doubt that the list of names of university/academic presses mentioned on the thread come anywhere close to being exhaustive. I think that I've got a bookmark set for a webpage somewhere that at least attempts to list all of them. I'll try to get around to looking for it, and post it on this and/or the thread that you referenced.

But for people to actually check each one of the listed sites, one-by-one, to see if there's anything on one of the listed sites that they'd like to have, my, how daunting that would be! I've got a backlog of free ebooks that I know about, on various websites, that I want to download, and I've been praying that the books or the websites don't disappear before I can get to them! Then, there's an issue that I've run into of where a site did have the tomes in PDF (which I personally like), for example, but they've changed them over to html5, which I know very little about (but it looks like the wave of the future, so I'm going to have to learn how to handle it eventually anyway).

[GtrsRGr8]

BTW--for what it's worth, very few of the websites, that I've checked out, with open source books, price-match at Amazon. Of course, my experience may not be great enough to make generalizations. Too, by the very nature of open source, those books are offered only in digital form. When you go over to Amazon, usually (again, if my experience is any indication) there isn't even a digital version available of the title--only (a) dead-tree version(s). It doesn't quite work to price-match a physical book at Amazon for a digital one elsewhere. That's like comparing apples with oranges.

[GtrsRGr8]

This is the webpage of a directory (OpenDoar (cute name, huh?)) that, I think, tries to list every single open access repository in North America: http://www.opendoar.org/countrylist....#United States.

Want to find out what's in places other than in North America? I recommend that you start your search from this OpenDoar webpage.

[Little.Egret]

Free, first mention in 2017

Haitian Revolution: A History From Beginning to End by Hourly History

The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 in the French colony of Saint Domingue, when a group of slaves rebelled in order to secure their freedom and the end of slavery. In the midst of the French Revolution, slaves took advantage of volatile political, racial, and social circumstances.


Age of Enlightenment: A History From Beginning to End by Hourly History

Philosophies of the Enlightenment gave birth to the disciplines of political science, economic theory, sociology and anthropology, the disciplines that still form the basis of how we understand life in the 21st century. A bold attack on the Church, the State and the Monarchy, the Age of Enlightenment was a direct challenge to the status quo that sought freedom for all.

See all

https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...Hourly+History

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=sear...Hourly+History

https://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-...Hourly+History

[Red Falcon]

3 free english and one spanish Charles River Editors titles:


https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_p...price-asc-rank

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Red Falcon

3 free english and one spanish Charles River Editors titles:


https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_p...price-asc-rank

Thank you.

Mucho gracias.

[ATDrake]

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

Humble Book Bundle Dude Care offered by publisher Callisto contains a nice-looking spread of pop-reference, business & grooming self-help, and cookbooks aimed at guys. If you've ever wondered how to cook with medical marijuana, well, this is your chance to learn. And there are also some promising-looking “lite” guides to philosophy and economics, etc.

[Red Falcon]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thank you.

Mucho gracias.

That's spanish for Thank You, Right.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Red Falcon

That's spanish for Thank You, Right.

Since 3 books were in English and 1 in Spanish, I thought it only appropriate to say thank you in both languages.