More New E-Books

Over the past few months, we have made some of our best-selling books newly available in digital formats. A few weeks ago we talked about six of them. Here are six more! As with the previous selection, all of these are great reads that would be perfect as travel companions.

Written by the president of the St. Louis Zoo, Sailing with Noah is an intensely personal, behind-the-scenes look at modern zoos. Jeffrey P. Bonner, who was trained as an anthropologist and came to the zoo world quite by accident, shares some of the most compelling stories ever told about contemporary zoos. From the day-to-day aspects of caring for some of the world’s most exotic creatures to the role of zoos as field conservation organizations, this book takes the reader on an incredible journey—one that begins within the zoo and continues around the globe. 

As Franklin D. Roosevelt's health deteriorated in the months leading up to the Democratic National Convention of 1944, party leaders confronted a dire situation. Given the inevitability of the president's death during a fourth term, the choice of a running mate was of profound importance. The Democrats needed a man they could trust: Harry Truman. In Choosing Truman Robert H. Ferrell tells an engrossing tale of ruthless ambition, secret meetings, and party politics.Startling in its conclusions, impeccable in its research, this is an engrossing, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the nation's thirty-third president.

Shooting Polaris offers a fascinating account of John Hales's adventures as a government surveyor in the southern Utah desert. Although the book is autobiographical, it is much more: a reflection on nature and work, American history and the movement into the West, the desire to impose order and the contrary impulse for unmediated experience, the idealistic legacy of the sixties, the influence of the Mormon Church, and the often-antagonistic relationship of American capitalism to sound ecological management. Along the way, Hales reveals the art, science, and history of surveying, an endeavor that turns out to be surprisingly profound. 

 

An introductory military history of the American Civil War, Shades of Blue and Gray places the 1861-1865 conflict within the context of evolving warfare. Emphasizing technology and its impact, Herman Hattaway includes valuable material on land and sea mines, minesweepers, hand grenades, automatic weapons, the Confederate submarine, and balloons. The evolution of professionalism in the American military serves as an important theme throughout. Informative and clearly written, enhanced by graceful prose and colorful anecdotes, Shades of Blue and Gray will appeal to all readers.

Sin in the City examines three urban revivals in turn-of-the-century Chicago to show how revivalists negotiated that era’s perceived racial, sexual, and class threats.  Rather than approaching these events merely as the achievements of persuasive men, Thekla Ellen Joiner views them as choreographed rituals reinforcing a moral order defined by ideals of femininity, masculinity, and racial purity. Sin in the City shows that the legacy of the Third Awakening lives on today in the religious right’s sociopolitical activism; crusade for family values; disparagement of feminism; and promotion of spirituality in middle-class, racial, and cultural terms. 

In A Second Home, Sue Thomas examines early education in Missouri, demonstrating how important schools were in taming the frontier. Drawing on oral histories, as well as private diaries and archival research, she offers firsthand accounts of what education was like—including descriptions of the furnishings, teaching methods, and school-day activities in one-room log schools. With its remembrances of simpler times, A Second Home tells of community gatherings and events such as taffy pulls and spelling bees, and offers tales of stern teachers, student pranks, and schoolyard games.

More new e-books are featured on the Press’s Special Offers page for the month of June, along with a selection of our best-selling e-books and a special coupon offer.

You can buy any of these e-books from Amazon, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Chegg, Ebrary, EBSCO, Google, Kobo, OverDrive, Sony, and the Press’s own web page, where you will also find many more e-books available.