Twinkle, twinkle little star

If I could keep my eyes open, I would become an ametuer astronomer. But, alas, sleep keeps me from pursuing the idea.

Responsible for the greatest advances in astronomy since Copernicus, William and Caroline Herschel forever transformed our view of the heavens. Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today.

The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation.

Celebrated science writer Michael Lemonick guides readers through the depths of the solar system and into his protagonists' private lives: William developed bizarre theories about inhabitants of the sun; he procured an unheard-of salary for Caroline even while haggling with King George III over the funding for an enormous, forty-foot telescope; the siblings feuded over William's marriage and eventually reconciled.

Erudite and accessible, The Georgian Star is a lively portrait of the pair who invented modern astronomy. Today you can buy The Georgian Star for only $3.35.

Click here to purchase The Georgian Star

Healthy hearts are happy hearts

More than 70 million Americans have some form of heart disease. For each of them, obtaining accurate information about the disease and the many options for dealing with it can be both empowering and life saving.

In this book, cardiologist Dr. Barry L. Zaret and Genell Subak-Sharpe offer up-to-date facts about the best treatments available and an innovative approach that shows how treatment programs can be tailored to meet the needs of each unique patient.

Written in a warmly reassuring style, this indispensable guide to heart care offers realistic hope and specific directions for designing a lifelong heart care program. Filled with practical advice, instructional case histories, a philosophy for controlling your health, self-tests to assess risk, and questions to ask your doctor, it looks toward an even better future for those with heart disease.

Heart Care for Life is supercheap today for only $1.82. What a great price for a book that could help you lead a healthier life and be a better informed patient.

Click here to purchase Heart Care for Life

A love story of an infertile couple

One of a man's most prized prerogatives is the ability to produce a child. But what happens when that ability is challenged?

Twenty-nine-year-old Matthew M.F. Miller came across that dilemma when he and his wife Constance's plans to have a child were thwarted by fertility problems. Miller's solution was not to mope, but to reach out to other 6.1 million couples in America who encounter the same situation.

Maybe Baby is a romantic comedy--a book about love, inappropriate moments at the urologist's office, reproductive clinics, survival, and (hopefully one day) triumph--all through the eyes of a man.

Maybe Baby is a book that offers women comfort and insight on what their partners are thinking and going through, while encouraging men who are experiencing infertility--whether it is their medical problem or their wives'--with humor, honesty, and practicality.

Today, you can purchase Maybe Baby for your Kindle for only $1.94.

Click here to purchase Maybe Baby

When you need advice to go green

Some people let pride keep them from asking anyone for help. Then there's the person who thought of the "for Dummies" books. What a brilliant idea for those who aren't afraid to ask for help.

As attention has been focused on the environment and ways we can be wise stewards of our resources, Green Gadgets For Dummies by Tom Zeller, Jr., offers practical advice and alternatives for electric devices.

Green gadgets encompass everything from iPods to energy-efficient home entertainment devices to solar laptop chargers and crank-powered gizmos. This helpful resource explains how to research green gadgets, make a smart purchasing decision, use products you already own in a more environmentally friendly way, and say goodbye to electronics that zap both energy and money.

Explore the environmental and financial benefits of green gadgets with this friendly reference
Discusses which gadgets save energy-and which ones create energy
Learn ways to offset your carbon footprint when you can't reduce consumption
Get tips for understanding products labels and avoiding "greenwash"
Discover how to calculate the energy and money your gadgets consume

Today you can get Green Gadgets for Dummies for only a bit of green - $2.82.

Click here to purchase Green Gadgets For Dummies

SuperCheap! Want to zip through those Sudoku puzzles?

I confess: I'm a numbers geek and I want this book! Did you even know that numbers had an inner life? This book promises some exciting stuff - if you are a numbers geek.

Inspired by the popularity of Sudoku – and millennia of human attempts to figure things out – this pithy, kaleidoscopic book takes a fresh, witty and hands-on approach to such various topics as musical harmony, code breaking, and probabilities in poker and lotteries. It probes the surprising symmetries of time, space, matter, and forces. It even goes to the heart of what computers can do.

Andrew Hodges weaves together the inner life of numbers – the patterns of primes and powers that we try to grasp, and that have us in their grip. Accessible to anyone with a general curiosity and interest in puzzles, One to Nine might even have you completing a fiendish Sudoku in record time.

Today you can purchase One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers for the numbers One, Three, and Zero - or $1.30. That's a number I like!

Click here to purchase One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers

SuperCheap for the brainiacs

I don't know what you don't know. I don't even know what I don't know. Sun in a Bottle is about a subject that I don't know anything about. Rather than embarrass myself by showing my ignorance, here is the product description from Amazon's site:

With his knack for translating science into understandable, anecdotal prose and his trademark dry humor, award-winning science writer Charles Seife presents the first narrative account of the history of fusion for general readers in more than a decade. Tracing the story from its beginning into the twenty-first century, Sun in a Bottle reveals fusion's explosive role in some of the biggest scientific scandals of all time. Throughout this journey, he introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science. With the giant international fusion project ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) now under construction, it's clear that the science of wishful thinking is as strong as ever. This book is our key to understanding why.

Note that last sentence: This book is our key to understanding why. I'm still clueless.

However, if this book appeals to you, Sun in a Bottle is super cheap today for only $1.75.

Click here to purchase Sun in a Bottle

Kermit says it isn't easy being green. . .

If you can take a little green, invest it in green options and companies, and make more green, then is it a green-green situation?

Jack Uldrich, a contributor to The Motley Fool's website (www.fool.com), profiles 100 green companies and offers suggestions for a model portfolio of investments in clean, sustainable products.

You will learn the guidelines for smart green investing, long-term and short-term trends in green investing, and the bull and bear of each investment.

To save you the maximum green, Green Investing is available today for only $3.11. It's a green-green situation.

Click here to purchase Green Investing

It takes a village

It takes a village to determine how to survive in a future that might require people to learn how to live in harsh, inhospitable environments and to do so in an ecologically sound and sustainable manner. The village of Gaviotas was founded in the 1970s in Colombia as a study of how scientific and medical professionals, artists, educators and students lived together to create a sustainable and self-sufficient community.

Journalist Alan Weisman has chronicled the story of this experiement in the book Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World. Today the book can be purchased for only $2.93.

Click here to purchase Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

Who can resist a kitten?

Isn't this little fellow just adorable? Ever wonder what draws us to these chubby balls of fur? Natural historian Janet Lembke has written a book to explain the complexities of animal and human behavior, the interactions between owner and pet, and what civilization owes its animals - wild and domestic.

Today Lembke's book, Because the Cat Purrs: How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters, is available on the Kindle for $2.93.

Read the book and rescue a kitten from the local animal shelter. Win-win all around.

Click here to purchase Because the Cat Purrs: How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters

Looks like there's a change in the weather

If you watch The Weather Channel more hours a day than you work, Marq de Villiers has written a book you are going to love. Windswept explains to common people the theory of wind. Throughout the book de Villiers explains the role of wind in weather. The book also tracks the progress of Hurricane Ivan from its formation off the coast of Africa to the Americas.

Before the price blows away, Windswept is available for $3.93. Come on, Weather Channel addicts, you know you want it!

Click here to purchase Windswept

Wondering Why

If you have ever wondered why about anything, this book has the answers to some questions. Don't count on it answering your questions unless you wanted to know why race horses have big butts or why poker can make you sick.

You just might gain enough useless knowledge to win on Cash Cab.

Never overpay for useless knowledge. The Why Files is cheap at $2.40.

Click here to purchase The Why Files