I first shared this tip about 5 years ago. It’s a valuable one for readers and learners and worth repeating:

You can get a free ebook to download each month
from the University of Chicago Press. 

The University of Chicago Press (UCP) has an outstanding and always growing catalog of top-notch publications—we writers know the press as a respected institution, the home of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Their ebooks program is excellent—no tricks, no surprises, no unwanted email. Just the offer of one free book to download each month. I’ve been reading their selections since 2011.

The books’ subjects tend to vary widely and are sometimes controversial. September’s selection is:

Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet
by Rob Hengeveld.

 

Describing the book, (currently $24. on Amazon for the Kindle edition) UCP says,

All systems produce waste as part of a cycle—bacteria, humans, combustion engines, even one as large and complex as a city. To some extent, this waste can be absorbed, processed, or recycled—though never completely. In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld reveals how a long history of human consumption has left our world drowning in this waste.

Reviews include,
Rob Hengeveld provides a broad history of humanity’s impacts on Earth’s life support systems, leading to today’s pivotal and dangerous moment. Wasted World is a sobering read that provides us with an understanding of how this urgent situation came to be. It is possible to pull Earth back from the brink—if we act on Hengeveld’s message.

(Gretchen Daily, Stanford University)

In this detailed study, biogeographer Hengeveld tackles the dilemma of reconciling the way we live with the future affect our habits will have on the planet. Tracing our origins from the first reproducing cells to today’s massive global economy, Hengeveld describes how all life depends on energy to thrive.

(Publishers Weekly)

Simply follow this link, enter your email, and UCP will send you the free download link. Enjoy—and feel free to share!