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Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Bargain Book Roundup, Part II

The Jungle Book ($3.19), by Diane Wright Landolf

Book Description
Mother and Fatherwolf aren’t looking for trouble, but when a small man-child toddles by their cave, they decide they can’t leave him alone in the jungle. They take the boy into their pack, name him Mowgli, and raise him as one of their own cubs. Mowgli learns the law of the jungle from the big old brown bear Baloo and Bagheera the black panther, but even they can’t keep an eye on him all the time!

The Clique #3: The Revenge of the Wannabes ($1.99), by Lisi Harrison

Book Description
Weeks before Christmas. Alicia and Olivia are on their way to Manhattan so the Teen People editors can do a story on them about winning the Octavian Country Day uniform design contest. When Massie finally processes that the girls who hijacked her victory are also modeling for Teen People, she is livid. It should have been her. 'Ehmagod, what will everyone think when they find out it wasn't me who was asked to model? I will be SO over.' Massie decides it's time to get revenge. This snake can not lay idle in the weeds for one more second. Kristen and Dylan throw out terrible 'revenge' suggestions and Massie vetoes them all. She will think of something! But first she has to go home and exfoliate. The social minefields of Westchester County's most privileged middle school girls drive the page-turning action of this addictive series, set in New York City's most elite suburban county. The Clique . . . the only thing harder than getting in is staying in.

The Clique #4: Invasion of the Boy Snatchers ($1.99), by Lisi Harrison

Book Description
The holidays are over and Massie's room is chock-full of new things from Santa: jeans, sweater, and a new . . . roommate? Once Claire unpacks, Massie's room feels more crowded than a Zac Posen sample sale. But what's worse, Claire isn't the only person moving into Massie's territory -- Alicia's hot cousin, Nina, shows up from Spain and starts edging in on all the Briarwood boys, including Massie's crush! Will Nina, with her super-tight mall clothes, make every boy in Westchester fall in love with her? Or will Massie toss her out faster than last season's Sevens jeans? The social minefields of Westchester County's most privileged middle school girls drive the page-turning action of this addictive series, set in New York City's most elite suburban county. The Clique . . . the only thing harder than getting in is staying in.

Battlefield of the Mind Devotional: 100 Insights That Will Change the Way You Think ($2.99), by Joyce Meyer

Book Description
This bestselling author and speaker offers a companion devotional to her award-winning message, "Battlefield of the Mind."

Toward the Goal: The Kaka Story ($0.99), by Jeremy V. Jones

Book Description
learnt that it is faith that decides whether something will happen or not.At the age of eight, Kaka already knew what it he wanted in life: to play soccer, and only soccer. He started playing in front of his friends and family, but when he suffered a crippling injury doctors told him he would never play again. Through faith and perseverance Kaka recovered, and today he plays in front of thousands of fans every year. As the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year and winner of the Ballon d'Or, this midfielder for Real Madrid has become one of the most recognized faces on the soccer field.

Budget Celebrations: The Hostess Guide to Year-Round Entertaining on a Dime ($3.99), by Shelley Wolson

Book Description
Preparing to host any type of gathering can be filled with shopping hassles, time pressures and anxiety over the costs. No more! This all-in-one guide is the ultimate resource for stress-free, budget-friendly entertaining for every special occasion.

Jam-packed with simple and exciting ideas to make every holiday festive, this book offers creative ways to celebrate in style year-round, without spending a fortune. Best of all, you'll be able to throw a great party that you can relax and enjoy right along with your family and friends!

From traditional holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas to birthdays, anniversaries and family reunions, this collection of over 250 inspiring photos and easy-to-follow instructions gives you all the information you'll need to have a good time without breaking the bank. Inside you'll find delicious, efficient menus and recipes to amaze all your guests; festive and elegant decorating tips and tricks to set the mood for every occasion; low-cost, crafty ways to bring holiday spirit into your home and involve your family in the process.


Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder ($3.19), by Joanne Fluke, is one of 11 volumes in the Hannah Swensen series that are marked down under $5.

Book Description
Discover the delicious mystery that started it all!

No one cooks up a delectable, suspense-filled mystery quite like Hannah Swensen, Joanne Fluke’s dessert-baking, red-haired heroine whose gingersnaps are as tart as her comebacks, and whose penchant for solving crimes—one delicious clue at a time—has made her a bestselling favorite. And it all began on these pages, with a bakery, a murder, and some suddenly scandalous chocolate-chip crunchies. Featuring a bonus short story and brand new, mouthwatering recipes, this limited edition of the very first Hannah Swensen mystery is sure to have readers coming back for seconds…

Hannah Swenson already has her hands full trying to dodge her mother’s attempts to marry her off while running The Cookie Jar, Lake Eden, Minnesota’s most popular bakery. But once Ron LaSalle, the beloved delivery man from the Cozy Cow Dairy, is found murdered behind her bakery with Hannah’s famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, her life just can’t get any worse. Determined not to let her cookies get a bad reputation, she sets out to track down a killer.

Who would have the sheer audacity—and the motive—to kill the most punctual delivery man Hannah ever had? Topping the list is the high school football coach. What exactly was his wife doing, making the rounds with the milkman? Could Max Turner, owner of Cozy Cow Dairy, have had a secret he didn’t want to share with his top employee? The more Hannah snoops, the more suspects turn up. Why has Lake Eden’s most prominent prodigal son, Benton Woodley, just resurfaced? And what about the mysterious Mr. Harris who seemed interested in buying the property next to the dairy, but then disappeared? This is one murder that’s starting to leave a very bad taste in Hannah’s mouth. And if she doesn’t watch her back, Hannah’s sweet life may get burned to a crisp.

Filled with a healthy sprinkling of humor and a delightful assortment of nuts, CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE MURDER serves up a great new mystery series and introduces a delicious, down-home sleuth that mystery readers will surely savor for years to come.


Napoleon and the Hundred Days ($1.89), by Stephen Coote

Book Description
A masterly blend of history and novelistic narrative about Napoleon's triumphant return from captivity and the critical days before Waterloo.

In Vienna, 1815, as the political aristocrats of Europe assemble to determine the fate of the continent after defeating Napoleon, the news arrived that Napoleon had escaped captivity and was returning to France. Bonaparte-the revolutionary turned emperor and "disturber of the world's peace"-was fast approaching Paris, gathering troops and taking cities without firing a single shot. He had returned, and it would be just one hundred days before he met his enemies in a final, epic battle.

In Napoleon and the Hundred Days, Stephen Coote vividly re-creates the rise and fall of Bonaparte's empire, and brings to life the characters who shaped it: Wellington, Britain's Iron Duke; Josephine, Napoleon's great love; Talleyrand, his duplicitous minister; FouchŽ, the sinister head of the secret police; BlŸcher, the uncouth yet courageous Prussian commander; and, of course, Napoleon himself. Displaying his customary blend of a historian's eye and a novelist's dramatic style, Stephen Coote describes how the path to war became inevitable and how, at the battle at Waterloo, the fatigued but ever arrogant Napoleon met his match. This is a dazzling portrait of the legendary emperor, whose genius, courage, and tenacity won-and lost-him a vast empire.


Siesta Lane: One Cabin, No Running Water, and a Year Living Green ($1.03), by Amy Minato, is one that I picked up.

Book Description
A poet at heart, Amy Minato rejects her life of consumption in Chicago to go back to nature-specifically, to a commune in Oregon, where she rediscovers herself.

Victory for Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis ($1.19), by Philip C. Winslow

Book Description
A rare, firsthand account of life in the West Bank by a UN relief worker and journalist

During the second intifada, Philip C. Winslow worked in the West Bank with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), driving up to 600 miles a week between almost every Palestinian town, village, and refugee camp and every Israeli checkpoint in the occupied territory. He returned just before the onset of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.

In Victory for Us Is to See You Suffer, Winslow captures the human aspects of the conflict during the years of suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals in the West Bank—the daily struggles, fear, and anger of Palestinian farmers and teachers, and the hostility of Israeli soldiers and settlers. On this small territory, punctuated with hundreds of heavily guarded crossings and physical barriers, nervous young Israeli soldiers who believe they are fighting terrorists enforce stringent controls over the movement of Palestinians trying to live on their own land. Working with UNRWA, Winslow negotiated the delivery of humanitarian aid through army checkpoints, often finding himself the target of anger from both Palestinians and Israelis. He returned as a journalist, in the wake of the Hamas victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections, to interview people on both sides of the checkpoints and look at the decades-long destructive cycle through their eyes. From these unique multiple perspectives, Winslow offers an uncensored view of the realities on the ground that have made a just political solution and enduring peace so difficult.


The Great Bird Flu Hoax: The Truth They Don't Want You to Know About the "Next Big Pandemic" ($1.17), by Dr. Joseph Mercola, is a bit surprising a subject from Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

Book Description
The U.S. government is now practically screaming that a new avian super-flu will likely kill millions of Americans. The mainstream media is entirely onboard, as are drug companies and other corporations poised to benefit immensely off the paranoia. But there is NO coming bird flu pandemic. It's an elaborate scheme contrived by the government and big business for reasons that boil down to power and money.

Presenting eye-opening evidence that casts serious doubt on the truthfulness of reports about the virus's ability to transmit, and its mortality rates around the world, renowned physician Dr. Joseph Mercola reveals the secrets about the great bird flu hoax. In compelling fashion he provides you the real facts you need to know to protect you from a far greater ill - corporate and governmental greed.


The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction ($1.17), by Walter Laqueur

Book Description
Recent attacks in Oklahoma City, at the World Trade Towers, and at American embassies in Africa demonstrate the horrifying consequences of a terrorist strike. But as technological advances make weapons of mass destruction frighteningly easy to acquire, a revolution is occurring in the very nature of terrorism--one that may make these attacks look like child's play.

In The New Terrorism Walter Laqueur, one of the foremost experts on terrorism and international strategic affairs, recounts the history of terrorism and, more importantly, examines the future of terrorist activity worldwide. Laqueur traces the chilling trend away from terrorism perpetrated by groups of oppressed nationalists and radicals seeking political change to small clusters of fanatics bent on vengence and simple destruction. Coinciding with this trend is the alarming availability of weapons of mass destruction. Chemical and biological weapons are cheap and relatively easy to make or buy. Even nuclear devices are increasingly feasible options for terrorists. And with the information age, cyber terrorism is just around the corner. Laqueur argues that as a new quasi-religious extreme right rises, with more personal and less ideological motivations than their left-wing counterparts, it is only a matter of time before the attainability of weapons of mass destruction creates a terrifying and unstable scenario.

From militant separatism in Kashmir to state-sponsored extremism in Libya and ecoterrorism in the West, The New Terrorism offers a thorough account of terrorism in all its past and current manifestations. Most importantly, it casts a sober eye to the future, when the inevitable marriage of technology and fanaticism will give us all something new to think about.


This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood ($1.01), by Jack Valenti

Book Description
With the nation at war in the 1940s, twenty-two-year-old Jack Valenti flew fifty-one combat missions as the pilot of a B-25 attack bomber with the 12th Air Force based in Italy. In the 1960s, with the nation reeling from the assassination of a beloved president and becoming embroiled in a far different kind of war in Vietnam, he was in that fateful Dallas motorcade in 1963, flew back to Washington with the new president, and for three years worked in the inner circle of the White House as special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Then, for the next thirty-eight years, with American society and popular culture undergoing a revolutionary transformation, Valenti was the public face of Hollywood in his capacity as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Been there, done that, indeed. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Valenti has led several lives, any one of which could have provided ample material for an unforgettable memoir. As it is, This Time, This Place is the gripping story of a man who saw the terrible face of war while fighting with skill and bravery for his country; who was in the room, listening, participating, and remembering, as political decisions were made that would benefit or devastate countless lives in this country and on the other side of the world; and who championed the interest of the vast and globally influential movie industry with tenacity and vision. The list of boldface names whom Valenti knew and with whom he worked is as varied as it is astonishing in number. Aside
from LBJ, there were Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Robert McNamara, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Roberts, Cary Grant, Lew Wasserman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Warren Beatty, and Bill Clinton, to begin a very long list.

The life of a man who earned both the Distinguished Flying Cross and his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is inherently intriguing, but Valenti’s warm, sometimes rueful, always engaging account gives this memoir a depth of humanity and a taste of life’s unpredictability that will linger long after you turn the final page. From growing up poor but largely oblivious to that fact in a hardscrabble neighborhood of Greek and Italian immigrants in Houston to rising to the highest summits both of national government and Hollywood, This Time, This Place is a candid and clear-eyed reflection of the joys and sorrows, ambitions and disappointments, of a life fully recognizable in its extraordinary variety. It is also a sweeping and important historical record, written by a brilliantly successful man who helped to shape politics and entertainment in the second half of the twentieth century, and who always found himself in the center of the current storm.


Dictionary of Republicanisms: The Indispensable Guide to What They Really Mean When They Say What They Think You Want to Hear ($1.10), by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Book Description
George W. Bush, a self-proclaimed straight-talking Texan, has been roundly lampooned for his weak grasp of the English language: "subliminable," "resignate," and transformationed" being only a few of his malapropisms. As ridiculous as Bush sometimes sounds, we shouldn't underestimate him or the right-wingers who put him in power, because they never say what they mean or mean what they say.

Over the past few decades, the radical right has engaged in a well-funded, self-conscious program of Orwellian doublespeak, transforming American political discourse to suit their political ends. "Private accounts" became "personal accounts." "Massachusetts liberal" was used to slur John Kerry's record. And their "compassionate conservative" tax cuts were neither conservative nor compassionate, unless you happen to be a Republican fat cat.

Sick and tired of their sinister deceptions, celebrated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel set out to explode their verbal gymnastics by asking her readers to suggest satirical definitions of Republican jargon. The result was a grassroots groundswell of hilarious submissions from Americans who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more. She has collected the best in this very funny and very necessary book.


Warbreaker ($2.99), by Brandon Sanderson

Book Description
After bursting onto the fantasy scene with his acclaimed debut novel, Elantris, and following up with his blockbuster Mistborn trilogy, Brandon Sanderson proves again that he is today’s leading master of what Tolkien called “secondary creation,” the invention of whole worlds, complete with magics and myths all their own.

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.


The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos ($2.88), by Michael Lemonick

Book Description
Responsible for the greatest advances in astronomy since Copernicus, William and Caroline Herschel forever transformed our view of the heavens.Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation. Celebrated science writer Michael Lemonick guides readers through the depths of the solar system and into his protagonists' private lives: William developed bizarre theories about inhabitants of the sun; he procured an unheard-of salary for Caroline even while haggling with King George III over the funding for an enormous, forty-foot telescope; the siblings feuded over William's marriage and eventually reconciled. Erudite and accessible, The Georgian Star is a lively portrait of the pair who invented modern astronomy.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

YOU: The Owner's Manual for $1.99

In what is surely another pricing mistake, you can purchase YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition, by Michael F. Roizen & Mehmet Oz, for $1.99 in the Kindle store. This is a book I've been considering buying (in hardback) for some time, so I jumped on it at this price. The reason I think it's a pricing error? You can also buy each of the individual chapters (whose titles don't quite reflect that they are just excerpts) at the same $1.99 each.

Book Description
Our favorite docs, Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen, have returned to the book that started it all. With brand new chapters on the liver and pancreas, a Q&A section, and The Owner's Manual Workout, You: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition is an even more vital guide to the most important person in your life-you.

From the original edition (also $1.99, currently):

Between your full-length mirror and high-school biology class, you probably think you know a lot about the human body. While it's true that we live in an age when we're as obsessed with our bodies as we are with celebrity hairstyles, the reality is that most of us know very little about what chugs, churns, and thumps throughout this miraculous, scientific, and artistic system of anatomy. Yes, you've owned your skin-covered shell for decades, but you probably know more about your cell-phone plan than you do about your own body. When it comes to your longevity and quality of life, understanding your internal systems gives you the power, authority, and ability to live a healthier, younger, and better life.

You: The Owner's Manual challenges your preconceived notions about how the human body works and ages, then takes you on a tour through all of the highways, back roads, and landmarks inside of you. After taking a quiz that tests your body of knowledge, you'll learn about all of your blood-pumping, food-digesting, and keys-remembering systems and organs.

Just as important, you'll get the facts and advice you need to keep your body running long and strong. You'll find out how diseases start and how they affect your body -- as well as advice on how to prevent and beat conditions that threaten your quality of life. Complete with exercise tips, nutritional guidelines, simple lifestyle changes, and alternative approaches, You: The Owner's Manual gives you an easy, comprehensive, and life-changing how-to plan for fending off the gremlins of aging. To top it off, you'll also get the great-tasting and calorie-saving Owner's Manual Diet -- a thirty-recipe eating plan that's designed with only one goal in mind: to help you live a younger life. Welcome to your body. Why don't you come on in and take a look around?


Update: Perhaps it isn't a pricing error. B&N has the same pricing (although only on the newer edition). Then again, under the agency model you would think all stores would have the same price, yet it's full price at Kobo and not even in the Sony store (although the individual chapters are).