Category Archives: Other

Kornacki and Grey, two books cheap

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You probably want to have a look at this book by The Great Kornacki, though I don’t approve of the title: The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism

And this, I have not seen and have no opinion of, but it looks like it might be interesting: Union Pacific: A Western Story by Zane Grey, the author of Riders of the Purple Sage and other frontier America books.


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Beak of the Finch: cheep, er, cheap.

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The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Reiner is right now cheap in Kindle form.

It is a very good account of the incredibly important work on evolution done by the Peter and Rosemary Grant on Daphne Major island in the Galapagos. This is the study that demonstrated real time evolution of birds among the group initially studied by Charles Darwin. Those observations by Darwin helped shape is conception of natural selection, and the more recent work by the Grants is a modern day demonstration that Darwin was right.


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A treasure trove of cheap books

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For some reason there is suddenly a larger than usual number of excellent highly encheapened kindle version books that I know many of my readers will be interested in. Chances are you already have them, but just in case. Some of these prices may only last a while, but all should be 2.99 or less.

The Joy Luck Club: A Novel

Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

A Severed Wasp: A Novel by Engle.

Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography


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Terry Pratchett-Neil Gaiman Book As a Mini-Series

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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman looks like a good book, written way back in 1990. I’ve not read it.

But now, Amazon Prime is coming out with a TV mini-series based on it.

It stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen as the main evil and good characters, and is variously written and/or created by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Here is a trailer.

As an ex-catholic who was raised to believe that things like angles and demons exist, with all the trappings, I suppose I could be either repulsed by or attracted by such fiction. Turns out, I’m attracted. My religious upbringing didn’t traumatize me all that much, and I get more of the jokes.

I may be watching this alone but I will be watching it.


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Eco, James, Longitude, Cheap Books

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In Kindle form, worth checking out if you don’t already have them:

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

A Taste for Death (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries Book 7) by PD James.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel. Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that “the longitude problem” was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land.

Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison’s forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.


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CIA Secrets and Bill Bryson on English

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A lot of people like this book. I found it to be OK. But it is cheap for Kindle, so knock yourself out (but if you live in Minnesota, pronounce the ‘k’ in ‘knock.’): The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

And, the book we have all been waiting to be declassified: The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception

Once a top-secret training manual for CIA field agents in the early Cold War Era of the 1950s, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception is now available to the general public. An amazing historical artifact, this eye-opening handbook offered step-by-step instructions to covert intelligence operatives in all manner of sleight of hand and trickery designed to thwart the Communist enemy. Part of the Company’s infamous MK-ULTRA—a secret mind-control and chemical interrogation research program—this legendary document, the brainchild of John Mulholland, then America’s most famous magician, was believed lost forever. But thanks to former CIA gadgeteer Bob Wallace and renowned spycraft historian H. Keith Melton, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception is now available to everyone, spy and civilian alike.


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