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Packt, which specializes in fairly technical books, is celebrating publishing their 1,000th book. According to the email I received, you can log into your account or create a new one and "access our library, PacktLib, for free for a week, and choose any of our eBooks to download and keep." I have been having problems logging in (seems their servers are a bit swamped), but I'm going to keep trying over the next two days, to see if I can get a book.
Today's Kindle Daily Deal is Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75 ($2.99), by George J Veith.Book Description
The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us.
Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.
Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else ($2.09 / £1.29 UK), by Geoff Colvin, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $12.99).Book Description
What if everything you know about raw talent, hard work, and great performance is wrong? Few, if any, of the people around you are truly great at what they do. But why aren't they? Why don't they manage businesses like Jack Welch or Andy Grove, play golf like Tiger Woods or play the violin like Itzhak Perlman? Asked to explain why a few people truly excel, most of us offer one of two answers: hard work or a natural talent. However, scientific evidence doesn't support the notion that specific natural talents make great performers.
In one of the most popular Fortune articles in years, Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field – from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch – are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. And not just plain old hard work, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practise, how you analyse the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.
Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-life examples. He shows that the skills of business – negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest – obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved. This new mind-set, combined with Colvin’s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career – and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do.
The Prague Cemetery ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Umberto Eco, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. If I hadn't replaced my paper copy last year, when we had those great $1 Kindle book Special Offers, I'd grab it a this price.Book Description
Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created the world’s most infamous document?
Umberto Eco takes his readers on a remarkable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. Here is Eco at his most exciting, a book immediately hailed as a masterpiece.
Yes We Can: A Biography of President Barack Obama ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Garen Thomas, is the Nook Daily Find: Election 2012, price matched on Kindle, where you can get the companion audiobook for $6.96. Note that this appears to geared towards middle-grade readers, from the reviews and the inclusion of a reading level in the synopsis.Book Description
THIS IS OUR MOMENT
“This is our time—to put people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth—that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”
— President Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech; Chicago, IL; November 4, 2008
Born in the U.S.A., the son of an African father and an American mother, a boy who spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii, Barack Obama is truly a citizen of the world. In kindergarten, he wrote an essay titled, “I Want to Become President,” and now, with his fierce optimism, exuberant sense of purpose and determination, and above all, his belief that change can happen, Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, has made that dream come true.
Garen Thomas takes us through the life of Barack Obama, from his struggle to fit in with his classmates, and concern about not knowing his biological father, through his term as an Illinois senator, and the long campaign for president, to his historic victory.
Grade Level: 3 and up
Today's Kindle Kids Daily Deal is Silly Tilly ($1.99), by Eileen Spinelli and David Slonim (Illustrator). This book features Kindle Text Pop-Up for reading text over vivid, full-color images when using Kindle Fire or select Kindle Reading Apps (Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android); unlike some other Text Popup books, this one won't work on any of the eInk Kindles. Book Description
"Tilly is not an ordinary goose. She takes her baths in apple juice. She wears a pancake as a hat. She tries to ride the farmer’s cat."
But the barnyard animals complain that she’s too silly. When she stops entertaining her friends with her antics, the farm becomes a quiet and unhappy place. David Slonim’s acrylic, pencil, and ballpoint pen illustrations add to the hilarity in this story about a one-of-a-kind silly goose.
Grade Level: 1st and up
