Three books that will be of interest to my readers, cheap for the Kindle.
As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling
In this intimate, lyrical memoir about her iconic father, Anne Serling reveals the fun-loving dad and family man behind the imposing figure the public saw hosting The Twilight Zone each week. After his unexpected, early death, Anne, just 20, was left stunned. But through talking to his friends, poring over old correspondence, and recording her childhood memories, Anne not only found solace, but gained a deeper understanding of this remarkable man. Now she shares her discoveries, along with personal photos, revealing letters, and scenes of his childhood, war years, and their family’s time together. A tribute to Rod Serling’s legacy as a visionary, storyteller, and humanist, As I Knew Him is also a moving testament to the love between fathers and daughters.
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
“A vital, inspiring book” (O, The Oprah Magazine): a ferociously intimate memoir by a devout woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who became the unexpected leader of the courageous movement that won Saudi women the right to drive.
Manal al-Sharif grew up in Mecca the second daughter of a taxi driver, born the year strict fundamentalism took hold. In her adolescence, she was a religious radical, melting her brother’s boy band cassettes in the oven because music was haram: forbidden by Islamic law. But what a difference an education can make. By her twenties Manal was a computer security engineer, one of few women working in a desert compound built to resemble suburban America. That’s when the Saudi kingdom’s contradictions became too much to bear: she was labeled a slut for chatting with male colleagues, her school-age brother chaperoned her on a business trip, and while she kept a car in the garage, she was forbidden from driving on Saudi streets.
Manal al-Sharif’s memoir is an “eye-opening” (The Christian Science Monitor) account of the making of an accidental activist, a vivid story of a young Muslim woman who stood up to a kingdom of men—and won. Daring to Drive is “a brave, extraordinary, heartbreakingly personal” (Associated Press) celebration of resilience in the face of tyranny and “a testament to how women in Muslim countries are helping change their culture, one step at a time” (New York Journal of Books).
A. Lincoln: A Biography
This is an excellent bio.
Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life.
Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.
Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”
A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.
by Patricia Cornwell in Kindle Form for two bucks.
by Mischener (South African historical novel) also 2.99 in Kindle form.
by biology and fiction writer David Quamman.
by Stephen Hawking for $2.99
by Arthur Clark and Gentry Lee for two bucks.
if you feel like starting (or restarting) the Smiley Series, a story about happier times when Russian Spies were Russian Spies, and so were the British Spies. It is the first in the Smiley series.
by Britta Teckentrup, author of 
and 
.
by Jeff Guinn. It is the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, The Clantons and the McLaurys. But it is also the story of bison hunting, cattle herding, the evolution of party politics, white-native relations in the Southwest, the history of the Texas Rangers, silver mining, and a bunch of other stuff. It was very edifying. I note here that 
. If you have not seen it, you should, it is truly magical. Of course, sometimes the magic works, sometimes ….
.
is also cheap.
by Neil Gaiman, and 
by Neal Stephenson. Both in kindle form, for pretty cheap, I assume for a limited time.
, a collection of short stories (I think the last stories he wrote?
by Ed Yong is now on Kindle for $2.99. I’ve seen it on Kindle for $1.99, told you about it, and maybe you bought it then. But if you didn’t, 
. This book was published quite a while back, so maybe revisionism in history has made it less relevant, but I’ thinking not. Anyway, it is $2.99 in Kindle form, so for pretty cheap you can learn about the Russian Czar who collected and bred giants and dwarfs, made significant advances in dental torture, spent many a lazy Sunday afternoon personally carrying out beheading on behalf of the government, stole to the low countries to secretly learn how to make boats, and who brought Russia into the modern era.
, 
, 
, and 
, so you can get your fill of British White Culture History but all very well written.
and 
. The son, Bob Massie, is a social justice and climate change activist of note, and at the moment is is 