I interrupt this blog post to bring you the following important announcement.

I just noticed that the Fire 7 Tablet with Alexa, 7″ Display, 8 GB, (with Special Offers) is currently available for the price of four cups of coffee at Starbucks, or, just shy of $30. A functional eReader wth benefits of a tablet. I also use them when I need a tablet for high risk use, like as a remote control device for a robot or something. I have no idea how long this will last.

The “special offer” part is the standard Kindle thing where you get an ad, almost always for a book or something, as the sleep screen on the device. Harmless, saves a few bucks, and who doesn’t like seeing an ad for a book?

And now we return to our regularly scheduled post about cheap books:

Get ’em while they last, these will probably expire soon:

How to Defeat Your Own Clone: And Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution

Whether you’ve dreamed of a future with easy genetic face-lifts and chocolate-flavored broccoli or shivered from nightmares of viral warfare and biologically enhanced Richard Simmons clones, this book will set you straight on the facts behind genetics and cloning—and keep you entertained all the way. Humans, they say, have been practicing genetic engineering for millennia, beginning with early agricultural practices and the domestication of wolves and cattle. But now that scientists have sequenced the human genome, and stem cell research offers potential cures for everything, bioengineers Kurpinski and Johnson want to warn us away from extreme future dystopian scenarios such as eco-collapse and ultraintelligent überclones or a utopian paradise where Money grows on trees. Pigs fly. Your clone may have the same DNA blueprint as you, but it won’t be you…. Your younger, stronger, healthier clone probably could defeat you in a stand-up fight, but having read this book, you’ll be prepared to outsmart it. Kurpinski and Johnson have written a science book that is irreverent, timely, accessible, and, best of all, compulsively readable. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas–business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others– struggle to make their ideas “stick.”

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.”

In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds–from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony– draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures)– the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of “the Mother Teresa Effect”; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga: A Strange and Terrible Saga

“California, Labor Day weekend . . . early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur. . . The Menace is loose again.”

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
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