Summer Book Giveaway!

It’s time to stock up on your summer reading materials so before you pack for your getaway, let Blog on Books add to your collection with these new titles from Touchstone/Fireside.

In ‘Summer Shift’ by author Lynn Kiele Bonasia, a local tragedy forces a Cape Cod restaurant owner to revisit her own painful memories and to learn the meaning of a fresh start. Set in a bustling beach town, forty-four-year-old Mary Hopkins is given a second chance at love when a man from her past comes back in to her life.

In ‘The Perfect Happiness’, author Santa Montefiore, writes a tender and powerful novel about marriage, passion, and love set against the backdrop of London’s upper-class and the breathtaking South African landscape. In this modern love story, Angelica Lariviere has everything in life she wanted, but when she is introduced to a charming man at a dinner party she begins to question just how happy she really is.

For your free copy, just submit a review (200 words =/-) of a recent title you enjoyed and one of these great summer reads will be on its way to you post-haste. But hurry, winners will be chosen on a first come, first-served basis until all books are gone. Just one more reason to keep checking in with us here at Blog on Books. Happy summer and good luck!

Jeff Bezos: On The Future of Books

Amazon, under threat for the ebook market from everyone from Apple to Barnes & Noble, plans to maintain and grow it’s market share by being responsive to its ebook customers and looking at products in new ways.

Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sat down with Fortune magazine one day after slashing the price on its Kindle reader at the company’s new headquarters in Seattle to discuss the future of ebooks, the ubiquity of the medium, how Amazon is navigating the new frontier of digital publishing and the future growth of the company overall.

Here’s the story.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/29/jeff-bezos’s-mission-compelling-small-publishers-to-think-big/

Video: Who Will Win the E-book War?

Amazon has launched Kindle Apps for iPad and iPhone, conceding victory to Apple on the hardware front. Mashable’s, Jenn Van Grove reviews some of the great avenues E-book readers have to buy their favorite titles.

Mandela: A Biography – Martin Meredith (Public Affairs)

With all the attention bestowed upon South Africa in recent weeks due to the global audience for the World Cup, we thought it to be a good time to spotlight the recent and very comprehensive updated reissue of Martin Meredith’s “Mandela: A Biography.”

Despite an unusually large number of books chronicling the life and struggle of the African continent’s most famous 20th Century leader (including his own 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”), Meredith’s work covers perhaps the widest berth of information available on the lawyer turned revolutionary who finally prevailed on reversing years of injustice in the South African nation. Meredith, a Brit, has written extensively on the plight of the African continent – from the diamond mines to Zimbabwe, from Mugabe to the making of South Africa itself.

In “Mandela: A Biography”, Meredith recounts the history of the man alongside the history of the nation. From tales of the nineteen-century Xhosa-speaking peoples, to the rise of African nationalism, to the development of Johannesburg, and the influence of the Communist party, the story of South Africa and the story of Mandela are inextricably intertwined. No detail is left out in following Mandela from life as a barrister to his emergence as an anti-apartheid revolutionary and the way in which his work went on even as he was exiled to a life sentence in prison through his supporters (and the Free Mandela movement) and his wife Winnie Mandela.

A rich combination of stories make up the chapters of Mandela’s own story, from the work of the African Resistance Movement (ARM) to various trials and protests, the actual plight of the many victims of various apartheid laws and conditions and their effect on everything from migrant workers to black-owned businesses, the imprisonment of desenters, to the final settling of differences between the ANC and the government. Even through accusations of Mandela’s own improprieties and the leader’s own divorce, Meredith covers every significant turn with extensive research and attention to detail.

What emerges is a tale, not just of struggle, but of a revolutionary overturning of rampant injustice; the golden age of a ‘rainbow nation,’ yet one that somehow still did not bring justice to all and over time created an opportunity for the emergence of a new black middle class, (as well as an ultimately re-corrupted ANC) while eventually – post-Mandela – reversing course through policies of self-enrichment that resulted in many of the most impoverished still left behind.

Based on both its breadth and research, as well as a very personalized portrait of the man himself, Meredith’s ‘Mandela’ is a well recommended read.

Q&A with Jonathan Alter (‘The Promise’)

Newsweek correspondent and msnbc contributor Jonathan Alter has authored the new political bestseller, “The Promise” about the first year of the Obama presidency. Blog on Books caught up with Alter to discuss the observations he collected in writing about the new President.

Your last book covered the first 100 days of FDR and now you have this similar look at Barack Obama. What do you see as the similarities of the two men, and what are their major differences?

FDR was famously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1933 as having a “second class intellect and a first class temperament”. Obama has a first class intellect and a first class temperament when it comes to calm and rational decision-making, but we don’t know yet if he has a first class public temperament. (I explore the question in a chapter entitled “Zen Temperament”). When FDR died and his funeral procession moved through Washington, a grieving man fell to his knees. Another man helped him to his feet and asked, “Did you know the president?” The grieving man replied, “No, but he knew me.” That’s Obama’s challenge re FDR–to establish that kind of connection. He hasn’t yet. On a substantive level, both FDR and Obama rightly rejected pleas that they nationalize banks. FDR had a worse economy but an easier political challenge. He got more credit for beginning to end a depression than Obama got for preventing one. Obama got his big domestic bill–health care–through faster than FDR did with Social Security, though the latter was more of a departure. Amazingly, Obama produced much more public investment in his first year than FDR.

Do you think Obama was prepared for the lack of cooperation on the hill as well as the amount of vitriol he has received from the right and even people like the Tea Party movement as he began his first term?

No. Obama told me that the biggest surprise of his presidency was right at the beginning when he offered $300 billion in tax cuts in the stimulus and got no GOP support. “I thought they would have more interest in governing,” he said. He noted in my interview that the whole tea party movement came out of this period. I think he expected the vitriol because it had begun during the campaign.

You talk a lot about Obama vs. the Pentagon. What do you think surprised U.S. military leaders about Obama’s approach to them?

I think the Pentagon was surprised that Obama pushed back as hard as he did when they tried to box him in. He’s not afraid of them. When I asked the president if he was jammed by the Pentagon he said, “I neither confirm nor deny that I was jammed by the Pentagon”. I learned of a highly dramatic scene where he dressed down the brass for doing so. But the military was also surprised by the level of support they got from him on certain issues and by his good rapport with the troops.

Do you think Obama was initially prepared to deal with the enormity and breadth of the crises that faced America during his first year in office?

There was no way to prepare for everything that faced him. He thought before the economy collapsed that governing would be easier than campaigning and was quickly disabused of that notion. But he also had great confidence that he could fit naturally into the role of chief executive and he has.
——–
For more on Jonathan Alter and ‘The Promise’ click here.

E-Readers Price Cuts Across Board

Information Week is reporting that Borders has responded to electronic-reader price cuts from rivals Amazon and Barnes & Noble by bundling a $20 gift card with its Kobo e-reader.

Borders announced the offer on Tuesday, a day after Amazon and B&N said they would drop the price of their devices 27% and 23%, respectively. Besides the gift card, Borders its offering Kobo buyers double “Borders Bucks,” which amounts to a $10 credit toward a future purchase from the bookseller.

While Borders’s offer is less dramatic than competitors, it marks the latest volley in a price war among the three booksellers, who appear to be adopting a strategy of getting their e-readers to as many people as possible in order to see more digital books. A fourth major e-reader seller, Sony, has yet to respond to the latest price cuts. (More)

Uncharted TerriTORI (Video)

It’s not every Hollywood starlet whose name greets you on a Virgin Airways flight into la-la land. But Tori Spelling has come to accept that her life is a spectacle. Her name is her brand, and business is booming. Too bad when your job is to be yourself, you can’t exactly take a break.

See what this Hollywood actress, mother and best-selling author has to say about her current state of affairs in this video for her latest book ‘Uncharted TerriTORI’ here at Blog on Books.

Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Ed. By Thomas Cormen, Charles Leierson, Ronald Rivest, Clifford Stein. (MIT Press)

Algorithms, which perform some sequence of mathematical operations, form the core of computer programming. Intended as a text for computer programming courses, especially undergraduate courses in data structures and graduate courses in algorithms, an “Introduction to Algorithms” provides a comprehensive overview, that will be appreciated technical professionals, as well.

The major topics presented are sorting, data structures, graph algorithms and a variety of selected topics. Computer programmers can draw desired algorithms directly from the text or use the clear explanations of the underlying mathematics to develop custom algorithms. The algorithms are presented in pseudocode that can be adapted to programming languages, such as C++ and Java. The focus is on design rather than implementation.

While a solid background in advanced mathematics and probability theory is needed to fully appreciate the material, non-programmers and IT professionals (such as this reviewer) will appreciate the numerous tips provided for improving the efficiency and thus reducing the cost of developing applications.

Any Computer Science student would find this text an essential resource, even if not specifically required for course work. However, the advanced mathematical principles needed to grasp the material are presented as exercises, intended to be worked through in class, so no solutions are provided, which may frustrate self-studiers and limit its utility as a reference. Although surprisingly well written, a book of this size and complexity is bound to have some errors. See http://mitpress.mit.edu/algorithms for the error list and supplemental information about the book (including solutions to some, but not all exercises, and an explanation of the corny professor jokes sprinkled throughout the text).

75 Years of Penguin Books

Penguin Books is making a big deal of their 75th anniversary, with promotions, PR and even a traveling orange mini car! (see our BEA coverage for more on the car.) You can grab their widget here and stay tuned for more promotion news throughout the year.

Heaven – Walter Iooss (Sports Illustrated)

Long before Victoria’s Secret and well before America’s Top Model, there was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. What began as a way to boost flagging magazine sales during the winter months of 1964 turned into an instant hit and over the last four decades, an eventual institution.

Nobody has made more trips and shot more models for it than S.I.’s top photographer, Walter Iooss. Beginning in the Bahamas in 1972, Iooss has travelled to some of the world’s most exotic locations to photograph both up-and-coming as well as some of the top supermodels the modern world has ever met.

As an exceptional sports photographer (see his book ‘Athlete’ for the best in sports photography), Iooss has demonstrated a remarkable flair for capturing images that have managed to stand the test of time. In ‘Heaven,’ Iooss has assembled the highlights of his favorite trips from 16 different locations (from Mexico and South Africa to the virtual destination-making choices of the Seychelles and the Maldives) where some of Iooss’s shots have put subjects like Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, Carol Alt and Kathy Ireland on the permanent supermodel map. His work continues thru today as he photographs the likes of Brooklyn Decker, Marissa Miller and Bar Refaeli, all in settings that are exotic yet simple and dramatic while fun.

With it’s large scale, coffee table format, complete with collages and journal notes, Iooss’s ‘Heaven’ is a great travelogue, beauty book and photography exhibition all in one. Introduction by Jimmy Buffett – of course.

Next Page »