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Friday, July 30, 2010

Bargain Book Roundup, Part IV

The bargain book roundup for this month continues, this time with non-fiction and humor. These change price frequently and drastically, to check the prices at Amazon before one-clicking. Several that were under $2 last week are anywhere from $10 to $15 this week (so didn't make the roundup).

Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade ($2.15), by Rachel Louise Snyder

Book Description
Rachel Louise Snyder reports from the far reaches of the multi-billion-dollar denim industry in search of the people who make your clothes. From a cotton picker in Azerbaijan to a Cambodian seamstress, a denim maker in Italy to a fashion designer in New York, Snyder captures the human, environmental, and political forces at work in a complex and often absurd world. Neither polemic nor prescription, Fugitive Denim captures what it means to work in the twenty-first century.

Mike Bloomberg ($2.60), by Joyce Purnick

Book Description
Michael Bloomberg is not only New York City's 108th mayor; he is a business genius and self-made billionaire. He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success-and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.

Hope Leslie: Catharine Maria Sedgwick ($3.79), edited by Mary Kelley

Book Description
Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie (1827) portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in building the republic. A counterpoint to the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, it challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and cross-cultural friendship, and claims for women their rightful place in history. At the center of novel are two friends. Hope Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society, fights for justice for the Indians and asserts the independence of women. Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief, braves her father's wrath to save a white man and risks her freedom to reunite Hope with her long-lost sister, captured as a child by the Pequots and now married to Magawisca's brother. Amply plotted, with unforgettable characters, Hope Leslie is a rich, compelling, deeply satisfying novel.

Forget You Had a Daughter ($4.28), by Michael Tierney

Book Description
Having lived a successful life in Bangkok that included friends, two teaching jobs, and her own apartment, Sandra Gregory recounts how her life took a terrible turn in 1993 and how she experienced a journey from prison to renewal. While recuperating from dysentery and dengue fever, Gregory ran out of money. With mounting medical bills to pay, she met a heroin addict who offered her $1,000 to smuggle his personal supply of heroin to Japan. It was just enough to pay her medical bills and buy a ticket home, but Gregory was arrested at Bangkok airport before she even boarded the plane. Detailing the four and a half years she spent in the notorious Lard Yao prison, dubbed the "Bangkok Hilton," Gregory describes scenes of horrific brutality and suffering before being transferred to a British jail to serve the rest of her 22-year sentence. She tells of her daily fight for survival, of many women who died with no medical care or loved ones around them, and of her acceptance of her guilt and ultimate redemption.

How to Raise a Jewish Dog ($3.99), by Rabbis of Boca Raton Theological Seminary

Book Description
Questions to Ask a Breeder: 1. What kind of job is this, growing dogs? 2. Are these dogs nice? I mean of course they are. But if not, is this refundable? 3. Is this a stable business? Do you make a decent living? 4. Does the insurance kill you or is it okay? 5. Dogs are animals ? does this mean you qualify for some kind of Federal ranch subsidies? 6. What do I say to people who want to know how I can spend $1500 and up on a dog when there are so many dogs to be rescued from the pound?

The (make-believe) Rabbis of the (fictional) Boca Raton Theological Seminary have developed the essential dog training program for raising a Jewish dog. For the first time, the same dynamic blend of passive-aggressiveness and smothering indulgence, that unique alloy of infantilization and disingenuous manipulation that created generations of high-achieving Jewish boys and girls, can be applied to create a generation of high-achieving Jewish doggies. Written (for real) by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, co-authors of the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane and Yiddish with George and Laura, this essential "guide" is sure to be a complete howl.


Fun with Phone Solicitors: 50 Ways to Get Even ($1.99), by Robert Harris

Book Description
They wake you up Saturday morning, waste your time, and interrupt meals and precious couch time. They're phone solicitors-the only group more despised than lawyers. Now here's your chance to strike back-hustle the hustlers, annoy the annoying-and have a blast with these fifty foolproof ways to get even. Drive 'em nuts with:
  • The Receptionist Ruse: Pretend to transfer your tormentor and then press sever
  • The Verbatim Variation: Repeat everything the caller says in a singsong tone.
  • The Drop-the-phone Drill: The more drops you can get before the solicitor hangs up, the higher your score!
Creative! Relieves stress! Fun for the whole family!

How to Stay Single Forever ($1.99), by Jenny Lombard

Book Description
With this handbook today's independant woman can easily avoid meaningful relationships with aplomb. The 101 strategies are fully explained, may be used alone or in combination and include tips such as using baby talk in bed and be brutally honest.

Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me ($4.99), by Ben Karlin

Book Description
The Emmy award-winning former executive producer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report has assembled a stellar lineup of men who have one thing in common: all have been dumped...and are willing to share their pain and the lessons learned.

Relationships end. And in almost all of them, even the most callow among us take something away. This is a book about that something, whether it be major life lessons, like "If you lie, you will get caught," simple truths like, "Flowers work," or something wholly unique like, "Watch out for the high strung brother in the military."

This anthology will be comprised of longer and shorter pieces, drawn from an array of impressive celebrities, writers and public figures. Some pieces may be a paragraph in length while others will be full-blown essays. All of them will be about that salient something men take away from a failed relationship. Yes, men learn.

This is not a touchy-feely book. This is not a self-help book. This is a book packed with smart, funny and insightful stories from men you probably thought never got dumped, or if they did, would never admit it.


Meditations for Men Who Do Next to Nothing (and Would Like to Do Even Less) ($1.99), by N. K. Peske & B.J. Pennacchini

Book Description
As all women know, movies are more than entertainment -- they're self-medication. A good flick is like a soothing tonic that, if administered property, (and in combination with something obscenely high in fat grams), can cure everything from a bad hair day to full-fledged identity crisis. Cinematherapy: The Girl's Guide to_ Movies for Every Mood is a hilarious guide to films to suit women's every emotion (and boy do we have lots of them -- as opposed to men, who basically have 'on' and 'off').

Will Work for Fun: Three Simple Steps for Turning Any Hobby or Interest Into Cash ($3.06), by Alan R. Bechtold

Book Description
Will Work for Fun presents a simple three-step process for turning your favorite hobby or interest into a reliable source of income. Why stay trapped in a job you hate, when you could turn your fun into your job? No matter what your interests are, Alan Bechtold will show you how to what you love into a real moneymaking career. Packed with stories, examples, exercises, and links to online resources, Will Work for Fun is the cure for another dull day at the office.

My Feet Aren't Ugly!: A Girl's Guide to Loving Herself from the Inside Out ($2.85), by Debra Beck

Book Description
Do you sometimes feel like other girls are prettier, more trendy, or more popular than you? Do you ever feel bad about yourself?

In this funny, honest book, teen expert and mentor Debra Beck provides in-depth examples and exercises to develop the tools you need for self-confidence. Learn how to have fulfilling relationships, make good decisions for yourself, respect yourself and others, and love yourself for who you are.

In a humorous, breezy style, this book instructs young women about how to feel good about themselves. Beck uses personal anecdotes from her youth, as well as stories about the young women she knows and works with to illustrate her points and provide examples. She covers topics that include resisting peer pressure, being kind to your body, developing healthy habits, personal responsibility, eating disorders, suicide, and physical intimacy.


The School for Scandal ($2.00), by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Book Description
Richard Brinsley Sheridan is arguably the only comic dramatist, apart from Shakespeare, who has succeeded in pleasing changing audiences for more than two hundred years. In The School for Scandal he produced a comedy Shakespearean in range, if differing in its components. Its artificial world of heightened wit and heightened folly delights its audience; but at times it engages them with moments of human pain and happiness, before delivering them back to its brilliant comedy. The remarkable poise with which Sheridan holds these various elements together has seen the play consistently hailed as the comic masterpiece of the century. This entirely new edition, prepared for the New Mermaids series by Professor Ann Blake, reappraises and gives full vale to this classic work of comedy.

Rex: A Mother, Her Autistic Child, and the Music that Transformed Their Lives ($1.41), by Cathleen Lewis

Book Description
he inspiring story of Rex, a boy who is not only blind and autistic, but who also happens to be a musical savant.

How can an 11-year old boy hear a Mozart fantasy for the first time and play it back note-for-note perfectly-but struggle to navigate the familiar surroundings of his own home? Cathleen Lewis says her son Rex's laugh of total abandon is the single most joyous sound anyone could hear, but his tortured aversion to touch and sound breaks her heart and makes her wonder what God could have had in mind. In this book she shares the mystery of Rex and the highs, lows, hopes, dreams, joy, sorrows, and faith she has journeyed through with him.


My Three Fathers ($4.05), by Bill Patten

Book Description
Bill Patten grew up in the heart of privileged society to American parents-a debutante mother, a diplomatic father-stationed in Europe. Weekends away from his English boarding school were often spent at the regal country estates of important policy makers and historical figures of the mid-twentieth century. When Bill was twelve years old, his father, William Patten, died, and his mother remarried the renowned columnist Joe Alsop. Patten was swept into Washington during the Kennedy years, where he bore witness to his stepfather's legendary power-brokering, and watched a very different father figure at work. In 1996, when he was forty-seven years old, Bill Patten learned that his biological father was not William Patten, but the noted English diplomat, Duff Cooper. In this quest to know his triumvirate of fathers, Bill Patten offers an unforgettable memoir. My Three Fathers is a search for identity-and a luscious chronicle of a fascinating, bygone era of American aristocracy.

The Think Big Manifesto: Think You Can't Change Your Life (and the World)? Think Again ($3.87), by Michael Port & Mina Samuels

Book Description
Think Bigger. About Who You Are. And What You Offer the World.

Stand for something before someone stands on you. Revolt against the play-it-safe, don't disturb the peace, cynical and silenced society that, more often than not, buries big thoughts.

Michael Port, bestselling author and creator of ThinkBigRevolution.com, knows it's not always easy to think big. But big thinking must happen now; today, tomorrow, and forevermore.

At this very moment, you are the change you want to see in the world—should you choose to accept personal responsibility. Devour every word of The Think Big Manifesto. It is the handbook to your personal revolution.

You are more than you know. And you can do more with less than you think...

  • Unhook from the guru track
  • Learn how to be comfortable with discomfort
  • Join people doing powerful things
  • Be one of the big thinkers that others rave about
This book, and life, is not a conceptual, theoretical experiment in how to do big things. No, this is just what you need if you're on, or want to be on, the path to doing big things and are willing to invest in your future.

Join or incite a worldwide revolution that inspires others to follow. All it takes is one big thought and the revolution is unleashed. One thought, one person at a time, quickly followed by another—soon big thinking becomes the norm. Your big thoughts enable you to achieve greatness, be remarkable, and create a better world.

Are you a member of the Think Big Revolution? If so, this is your Manifesto.


The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ($4.95), by Stephen R. Covey

Book Description
The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People is a comprehensive program based on developing an awareness of how perceptions and assumptions hinder success---in business as well as presonal relationships. Here's an approach that will help broaden your way of thinking and lead to greater opportunities and effective problem solving. Be Pro-Active: Take the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Begin With an End in Mind: Start with a clear destination to understand where you are now, where you're going and what you value most. Put First Things First: Manage yourself. Organize and execute around priorities. Think Win/Win: See life as a cooperative, not a comprehensive arena where success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others. Seek First to Understand: Understand then be understood to build the skills of empathetic listening that inspires openness and trust. Synergize: Apply the principles of cooperative creativity and value differences. Renewal: Preserving and enhanving your greatest asset, yourself, by renewing the physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional dimensions of your nature. Stephen R. Covey is the most respected motivator in the business world today. Learn to use his 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People--and see how they can change your life.

Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities ($4.48), by Adam Kahane

Book Description
Tough problems usually dont get solved peacefully. They either dont get solved at allthey get stuckor they get solved by force. These frustrating and frightening outcomes occur all the time. Families replay the same argument over and over, or a parent lays down the law. Organizations keep returning to a familiar crisis, or a boss decrees a new strategy. Communities split over a controversial issue, or a politician dictates the answer. Countries negotiate to a stalemate, or they go to war. Either the people involved in a problem cant agree on what the solution is, or the people with powerauthority, money, gunsimpose their solution on everyone else..The way we talk and listen expresses our relationship with the world. When we fall into the trap of telling and of not listening, we close ourselves off from being changed by the world and we limit ourselves to being able to change the world only by force. But when we talk and listen with an open mind and an open heart and an open spirit, we bring forth our better selves and a better world.

First Aid Guide and Home Doctor ($4.28), by MobileReference

Book Description
n illustrated survival guide with step-by-step instructions, a world-wide list of emergency phone numbers, first aid techniques, and detailed description of what-to-do in over 60 medical emergency conditions. Navigate from Table of Contents or search for words or phrases. FREE Basic First Aid, First Aid Techniques, and Bites Chapter in the trial.

The Bartenders Black Book, Updated 9th Edition ($2.78), by Stephen Kittredge Cunningham & Robert M. Parker, Jr.

Book Description
The newest and ninth edition to the Bartenders Black Book franchise adds 143 brand-new recipes that were created by bartenders, professional and laymen, around the world in the last two years. That brings the total beverage count to 3,000, more than double that of any other drink guide. All the sections have been expanded and updated, including Robert M. Parker, Jr. s Vintage Guide and Mr. Cunningham s already vast Martini section. Of course this book still has all its classic features: an index by ingredients, in-depth mixing instructions, metric conversion tables, a list of every possible garnish, sections on hot drinks, frozen drinks, beers, ales, lagers, and malternatives.

Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?: Insanely Annoying Modern Things ($4.99), by Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur

Book Description
An encyclopedic attack on modern culture so hilariously bitter that it actually becomes uplifting. Based on two runaway UK bestsellers, this new American edition has been ingeniously adapted and features exclusive new material for US audiences by Brendan Hay, a former Daily Show headline producer and contributing writer to America: The Book.

If you hate chick lit, Che Guevara merchandise, pop Kabbalah, cosmetic-surgery-gone-wrong-as-tv-programming, DVDs with ads you can't skip, or any of a few hundred other insanely annoying modern things, then this book will finally lend creedence to your frustrations.

Say NOto the awful ideas, terrible people, useless products, and infuriating doublespeak that increasingly dominates our lives. Never before has there been a book so completely full of shit.

Clearly, it isn't just you...


Consumed ($4.02), by Benjamin R. Barber

Book Description
A powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of an overproducing global economy that targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. To explain how and why this has come about, Barber brings together extensive empirical research with an original theoretical framework for understanding our contemporary predicament. He asserts that in place of the Protestant ethic once associated with capitalism-encouraging self-restraint, preparing for the future, protecting and self-sacrificing for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood-we are constantly being seduced into an "infantilist" ethic of consumption.

Debt Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About ($3.10), by Kevin Trudeau

Book Description
Are you getting deeper and deeper into debt while they make bigger and bigger profits? Not after you read...Debt Cure$ "They" Don't Want You To Know About! In this new book, Kevin Trudeau blows the lid off the banking and credit card industries, exposing the greatest rip off of our citizens in this nation's history. The credit card industry is one of the most profitable industries in this country, but they don't want you to know it. You can fight back! You can apply Kevin's solutions to your debt problems, and keep more money in your pocket today. You can learn how to use credit to build wealth! Read Debt Cure$ and cure your debt forever. You will learn:

  • How the credit lending business is rigged against you!
  • How the financial industry wants to keep you in debt!
  • How the banks and credit card companies are making obscene profits off of you and how you can change that!
  • How to reduce or possible totally eliminate your debt!
  • How you could cut your payments in half!
  • How to correct your credit with two magic words!
  • How to improve your credit virtually overnight!
  • How to get free money that you never have to pay back!
  • Find out why the financial industry wants to keep you in debt.
  • Turn bad debt into good credit.
  • Create wealth through financial health.
Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression ($1.02), by William Bonner

Book Description
When the first edition of Financial Reckoning Day was published more than six years ago, many critics felt that maverick financial writers Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin were overly critical of the United States increasing debt and the start of what seemed to be foreshadowing of economic concerns. Fast-forward to 2009, and much of what the authors predicted has come true-high unemployment rates, record setting foreclosures and bankruptcies along with the near global collapse of the financial institutions once thought to be so secure.

With the Second Edition of Financial Reckoning Day, Bonner and Wiggin bring you even more down-to-earth wisdom. This timely guide reveals that the hazards of democratic consumer capitalism and the financial follies of history are not a thing of the past-but an ongoing issue with no end in sight. With this book, you'll gain a better perspective of what's really going on and discover the steps you need to take to survive the difficult times ahead.

  • Bonner and Wiggin are astute observers of the global financial arena and perfectly positioned to offer you solid advice in this field
  • Discusses what's behind all the financial turbulence, what's in store, and what you can do to safeguard your investments
  • Other titles by Bonner: Empire of Debt, Financial Reckoning Day, and Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets
  • Other titles by Wiggin: I.O.U.S.A., Demise of the Dollar, and Financial Reckoning Day
Honest and accurate, the Second Edition of Financial Reckoning Day offers you the best chance to protect your assets and grow your portfolio in these difficult financial times.

Thriving in the New Economy: Lessons from Today's Top Business Minds ($2.14), by Lori Ann LaRocco

Book Description
Survive and thrive in today's economy

These are make-or-break times for business leaders. In today's defining moment, the "New Economy," CEOs and other leaders in a wide variety of industries must face unprecedented conditions.

Thriving in the New Economy gives you a unique look into some of today's best economic and business minds. A series of close profiles, the book offers inspirational personal stories, useful advice, and actionable strategies you can use immediately to skirt financial peril, seize opportunities, and flourish in the New Economy.

  • Profiles include financial publisher Steve Forbes, The Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle, Former National Economic Council Director and Former Special Assistant to the President on Economic Policy Lawrence Lindsey, former FDIC chair Donald Powell, Saks CEO Steve Sadove, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. President Jim Lentz, legendary vulture investor Wilbur Ross and more
  • Looks at how leaders in economics, banking, automobiles, real estate, and retail are not just avoiding the unraveling economy, but actively evolving and growing their businesses
  • \Foreword by H. Wayne Huizenga; Afterword by Rudy Giuliani
If you're looking for the way forward through today's business wilderness, Thriving in the New Economy lets you in on how some leaders use challenges not just to survive but thrive.

The Sages ($2.99), by Charles R. Morris, is one of two identically priced editions. The second one has a subtitle, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets, but also appears to be in topaz format, so I'd pick this mobi formatted edition.

Book Description
Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker. Though their experiences and styles vary-Buffett is the canny stock market investor; Soros is the reader of shifting global tides in trade and currencies; and Volcker is the regulator and governor, sheriff and clean-up crew-they have very much in common. All three men have more than fifty years of deep involvement in markets. All are skeptical of Wall Street frenzies. They believe that markets tend to be right, but usually only over the medium term. They have seen too many cycles of herd-driven, emotion-riding booms and busts to make their views hostage to the sweeping and simplistic assumptions of "efficient-markets" models. With the benefit of his own deep understanding of markets and finance, Morris brilliantly analyzes the records of these men, distilling their wisdom and experience-and argues for the importance of consistent values in navigating the treacherous terrain of today's globalized world.