This month’s list of Kindle Books Priced At $3.99 Or Less has some great picks, including the following nonfiction titles, all of which are just $1.99 – $2.99 each this month.
Merchants of Doubt (4/5 stars, $2.99)
The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.
Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is “not settled” denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one tobacco executive. These “experts” supplied it.
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.
Sex At Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships (4.5/5 stars, $2.99)
Since Darwin’s day, we’ve been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man’s possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman’s fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.
How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can’t be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethå. While debunking almost everything we “know” about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.
Ryan and Jethå’s central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.
With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethå show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.
In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue And The Meaning Of Life (4.5/5 stars – $1.99)
Steven Kotler was forty years old, single, and facing an existential crisis when he met Lila, a woman devoted to animal rescue. “Love me, love my dogs” was her rule, and Steven took it to heart. Spurred to move by a housing crisis in Los Angeles, Steven, Lila, and their eight dogs-then ten, then twenty, and then they lost count-bought a postage-stamp-size farm in Chimayo, New Mexico. A Small Furry Prayer chronicles their adventures at Rancho de Chihuahua, the sanctuary they created for their special needs pack.
While dog rescue is one of the largest underground movements in America, it is also one of the least understood. An insider look at the “cult and culture” of dog rescue, A Small Furry Prayer weaves personal experience, cultural investigation, and scientific inquiry into a fast-paced, fun-filled narrative that explores what it means to devote one’s life to the furry and the four-legged. Along the way, Kotler combs through every aspect of canine-human relations, from humans’ long history with dogs through brand-new research into the neuroscience of canine companionship, in the end discovering why living in a world made of dog may be the best way to uncover the truth about what it really means to be human.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People (4/5 stars, $1.99)
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems.
With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity — principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
What To Do When There’s Too Much To Do (5/5 stars, $2.99)
Look at your to-do list. It’s ridiculous. You can’t get all that done. You’re already at capacity. And it probably doesn’t even list every single thing you need to do. The last thing you want to do is more. As a skeptical audience member once told author Laura Stack before a presentation, “I don’t want to hear a productivity consultant telling me to do more with less. I want to do less and achieve more.”
This is exactly what Stack offers. You’re never going to save time and increase efficiency by adding more to your bloated list. You need a system: a comprehensive approach that will enable you to organize your life around the tasks that really matter and let go of the ones that don’t. Stack’s innovative, step-by-step Productivity Workflow Formula allows you to spend less time and achieve greater results than you ever thought possible. By following her logical and intuitive process, you can wrestle your schedule into submission. Ultimately, you can recover as much as ninety minutes of your day (or even more) to use as you see fit. Stack shows how to separate the productive wheat from the nonproductive chaff—to home in on the high-value tasks, protect the time to do them, and focus on their execution.
Throughout this book, you’ll learn how to scale back; reduce, reduce, reduce is Stack’s mantra. You’ll find dozens of ways to shrink your to-do list, calendar commitments, distractions, interruptions, information overload, inefficiencies, and energy expenditures. Each reduction will increase your results and save you time.You know you can’t work any harder—if you want to accomplish more, you have to work differently. Let Laura Stack show you how you can keep your sanity, advance your career, and spend more time with your family and friends.
50 Success Classics (4.5/5 stars, $2.99)
From the inspirational rags-to-riches stories of such entrepreneurs as Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffett, and Sam Walton to the life lessons of role models Sir Ernest Shackleton, Eleanor Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela, 50 SUCCESS CLASSICS goes back to the basics to find the classic books on staying true to ourselves and fulfilling our potential.
Practical yet philosophical, sensible yet stimulating, the 50 all-time classic books featured here span biography and business, psychology and ancient philosophy, exploring the rich and fertile ground of books that have helped millions of people achieve prosperity in their work and personal lives.
He’s History, You’re Not: Surviving Divorce After 40 (4.5/5 stars, $2.99)
In He’s History, You’re Not: Surviving Divorce After 40, Erica Manfred shares her own divorce experience, as well as the advice of experts, with specific sections tailored to women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Manfred was left for a younger woman in 2003, and eventually learned to both survive and thrive. After educating herself in the areas many women have barely even thought of when considering divorce, she is the kind of girlfriend a woman needs when facing both menopause and the trauma of divorce. She can help save divorcees lots of anguish, and lots of cash.
HE’S HISTORY, YOU’RE NOT discusses how to:
· Avoid “kiss of death” marriage counselors to determine if reconciliation is possible.
· Find an affordable divorce lawyer who does not snort scornfully at the word “mediation.”
· Survive the first, worst, year.
· Deal with your adult or teen kids (who can be just as devastated as small children).
· Get back to work or find a new career. (Age discrimination does not have to stop you.)
· Use the Internet to date the Viagra generation.
· Restore your self-esteem despite body parts that have succumbed to gravity.
· Forgive the bastard (and yourself) and finally move on…and much more.
Click here to view this month’s full list of Kindle Books Priced At $3.99 Or Less.