Two Plus Two Newer Archives - Book Clubs = many cheap books for my spring summer reading

so being low on funds and needing books I decided to hunt around and joined 3 book clubs to fill out my spring & summer reading. first the clubs then the books.

Discovery Channel Book Club I got 3 books for about $20 total with needing to buy 1 more book over the next year at normal prices

I ordered from them
The Enemies of Rome: pretty self explanatory but basically tells the historical accounts of Rome's enemies including Hannibal, Phillip V, Spartacus, Cleopatra, Attila and many others.

Mayflower: is a historical narrative of the Mayflower and Plymouth colony.

Mysteries of the middle ages [ QUOTE ]
After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today. In Mysteries of the Middle Ages, Thomas Cahill offers an electrifying account of how this process was rooted in European Catholicism.

Cahill focuses on three main areas—feminism, science, and art—to show how the new thinking came to be.

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Book of the month club I got 5 books for $15 with needing to buy 4 books over the next two years.

The drawing of Three; Dark Tower book II Read the first book last year and loved it.

Everyman by phillip roth

The Road by cormac McCarthy

both of those were selected just based on the Authors so hopefully they will be good

Classic Feyman selected this because of 2p2 it is a compilation of Surely you're joking mr. feyman!; what do you care what other people think really looking forward to this one.

The Devil in the white city by erik larson saw this in the book store a few weeks ago and it looked good. [ QUOTE ]
The true-life story of a serial killer terrorizing the Windy City’s women during the building of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

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History Book Club 4 books for $16 with no additional commitment.

Doc Holliday [ QUOTE ]
This definitive biography of Doc Holliday looks at the personal side of the legendary gunslinger using local records, forgotten newspapers, and personal accounts

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DEFCON-2 [ QUOTE ]
Drawn from recently declassified documents and scores of archival sources, DEFCON-2 offers a stunning and revealing look at the Cuban Missile Crisis

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The Power Broker [ QUOTE ]
Robert Moses held no elected office. His name almost never appeared on a ballot, and the voting public rarely—in some cases, never—had the slightest notion of the immense influence he wielded or how New York City and its suburbs were shaped by his vision. Yet for nearly half a century, Robert Moses exercised more power than any other figure in the history of the city and state of New York. So powerful was Moses, in fact, that both Mayors and Governors, including strong and resourceful politicians like Fiorello La Guardia and Franklin Roosevelt, answered his summonses and carried out his plans.

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The Pirate Coast [ QUOTE ]
The “Pirate Coast”—the southern shore of the Mediterranean from Morocco to Libya—struck fear into the hearts of sailors and merchants for 300 years, from the 16th century until the 19th. Known by the Romans as Africa Barbaria, this “Barbary Coast" swarmed with enterprising Berber and Arab pirates, or corsairs, who based themselves in the Barbary states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Tripolitania. The corsairs attacked merchant and passenger ships, plundered the cargoes, and sold the passengers in their North African slave markets, where a pretty woman would fetch $1,400—ten times the annual wage of a British sailor.

The power of the corsairs should have waned by the 18th century, when heavily-armed British frigates, cruisers and men-of-war controlled the Mediterranean, but Britain actually encouraged the piracy. Britain preferred to pay the Barbary beys, or princes, an annual tribute to safeguard British ships, and let the corsairs hijack everyone else's.

Until the American Revolution, North American shipping was protected by this British tribute. After Yorktown, however, the Royal Navy threw the U.S. overboard. The pirates—who viewed themselves as privateers, not thieves —attacked U.S. ships mercilessly until the 1790s, when Congress reluctantly agreed to pay tribute up and down the coast in the manner of the British. That unprincipled arrangement lasted until 1801, when the bey of Tripoli tried to extort additional tribute from the United States. President Thomas Jefferson refused the demand and dispatched warships into the Mediterranean, one of which, the U.S.S.Philadelphia, rather embarrassingly ran aground near Tripoli, where it was seized by Barbary corsairs, its 307-man crew herded into filthy Barbary jails.

Richard Zacks's The Pirate Coast picks up the story here. For the young United States, this Barbary War was a serious test. American hostages—and those of every other nationality—were brutally handled and sold into slavery. “There was a huge crowd drunk with joy to see so many Christian victims.” wrote the Dutch consul.

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*** the costs for various introductory offers included the shipping