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Monday, September 17, 2012

Today's Deals

Today's free MP3 (menu at right) is a nice album, the Green Hill Jazz Sampler, by Beegie Adair & Friends.

Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Secrets of the Cold War: US Army Europe's Intelligence & Counterintelligence Activities Against the Soviets During the Cold War ($1.99), by Leland C. McCaslin.
Book Description
Secrets of the Cold War focuses on a dark period of a silent war and offers a new perspective on the struggle between the superpowers of the world told in the words of those who were there. The author, formerly an expert in counterintelligence in US Army Europe, weaves together exciting true accounts of allies collecting enemy information in the East and fighting spies and terrorists in the West.

Amassing Soviet military information by Allied agents in the East is at the forefront! Learn the bizarre method a British agent uses to obtain the muzzle size of a Russian tank as he risks his life jumping on a moving train in East Germany. A French officer drives into a Soviet tank column and escapes undiscovered by cunning methods. In West Germany, terrorist attacks and spies are rampant. Communists shoot a rocket propelled grenade into a General's occupied limo and terrorists kidnap another General. From the espionage files, an American soldier is nearly recruited in a downtown bar to be a spy and a First Sergeant is lured by sex to be an unknowing participant in spying.

Behind-the-lines images are historic and intriguing. See photographs of a French officer and a Soviet officer relaxing in the East German woods in a temporary unofficial peace; 'James Bond' type cars with their light tricks and their ability to leave their Stasi shadows 'wheel spinning' in the snow will amaze readers.

A Russian translator for the presidential hotline recounts a story about having to lock his doors in the Pentagon, separating himself and his sergeant from the Pentagon Generals when a message comes in from the Soviets. When he called the White House to relay the message to the President and stood by for a possible reply to the Soviet Chairman, he stopped working for the Generals and started working solely for the President.

In another riveting account, a US Berlin tank unit goes on red alert when the Soviets stop a US convoy on the autobahn between West Germany and Berlin. The Berlin Command orders the tanks to rescue them, "If anything gets in your way, either run over it or blow it away!" Young US Berlin train commanders recount their encounters with their Soviet counterparts aboard the Berlin Duty Train. In an unusual train incident, one male Soviet Officer places a love note in a young US female Train Commander's pocket, touching her leg. The note is in the book.

Containing a host of first-person accounts that lift the lid on previously untold clandestine activities, this is a major contribution to Cold War history, and exciting reading for all those who have an interest in the real-life world of military intelligence, counterintelligence and espionage.

Bruar's Rest ($1.61 / £0.99 UK), by Jess Smith, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $4.66).
Book Description
Bruar's Rest is an epic tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of World War One. The story opens in the Highlands at the beginning of the twentieth century. The gypsy wife of wild drunkard Rory Stewart dies giving birth to their second son. Many years pass, and Rory and his sons are rootless travelers on the roads of Scotland. One night, during a winter storm, they save another traveler family from freezing to death in a blizzard. Bruar Stewart and one of the girls he rescues, the hot-blooded and beautiful Megan, fall in love. But the First World War is declared, tearing their lives apart. Bruar is reported missing in action, and Megan sets off on a long and perilous journey to find him...An epic tale of love and loyalty by the author of the spellbinding autobiographical trilogy, Jessie's Journey.

Kiss That Frog!: 12 Great Ways to Turn Negatives into Positives in Your Life and Work ($11.99 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), by Brian Tracy and Christina Tracy Stein, is the Nook Daily Find (I've reported the lower price to Amazon; if enough do, it may drop by evening). You should have his audioboook, Eat That Frog!, which was free at the beginning of the month.
Book Description
Just like the lonely princess in the fairy tale who was reluctant to lock lips with a warty frog and transform him into a handsome prince, something stops many of us short of attaining our dreams. Our negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes can threaten to keep us from achieving all that we’re capable of. Here bestselling author and speaker Brian Tracy and his daughter, therapist Christina Tracy Stein, provide a set of practical, proven strategies anyone can use to turn those negative frogs into positive princes.

Tracy and Stein present a step-by-step plan that addresses the root causes of negativity, helps you uncover blocks that have become mental obstacles, and shows how you can transform them into stepping-stones to achieve your fullest potential. The book distills, in an accessible and immediately useful form, what Tracy has presented in more than 5,000 talks and seminars with more than five million people in fifty-eight countries and what Stein has learned through thousands of hours of counseling people from all walks of life.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” the authors quote Shakespeare. The many powerful techniques and exercises in this book will help you change your mindset so that you discover something worthwhile in every person and experience, however difficult and challenging they might seem at first. You’ll learn how to develop unshakable self-confidence, become your best self, and begin living an extraordinary life.

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America ($3.99 Kindle, B&N), by Thomas Frank, is the Nook Daily Find: Election 2012, price matched on Kindle.
Book Description
One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash” — the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?” — how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism — the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What’s the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.

Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Three Little Kittens ($1.99), by Paul Galdone, a full-Color Children's Books with Kindle Text Pop-Up. Although it can be views on any Kindle device or app, the popup will read the text when using Kindle Fire or select Kindle Reading Apps.
Book Description
Three little kittens, they lost their mittens, and they began to cry. The three little kittens may be a bit careless, but they always manage to correct their mistakes in this favorite Mother Goose rhyme.

Grade Level: K and up