Stories from the Japan Earthquake
by the quakebook community
Our Man in Abiko (Editor)
5.0 out of 5 stars – 11 customer reviews
Kindle Price: $9.99
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Here’s one of the most important books we have ever shared with you here at Kindle Nation.
In the line of work I’m in, of course, I hear about dozens of new books every day. But here’s one I heard about this week, from an old friend whom I have known since I was five years old, and it is a very important new ebook that I must share with you.
Pardon my backwards approach, but I am going to lead here with what happens to the $9.99 that you will pay for this book, or the $9.99 that I paid for it. Every penny of it — 100 per cent — goes to the Japanese Red Cross Society to aid the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Not just the profit, but every penny, all $9.99. Nothing goes to the authors, or the publisher, or Amazon, or any intermediary. You’ll note, if you are interested, that there is no Amazon Associate tag on the links to the book that are embedded in this post either here or on the Kindle Nation Facebook page.
So one of the things that means is that if you were thinking of donating $10 to help the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, you can do it this way and at the same time you will get a remarkably vivid, hopeful, and sometimes heartbreaking book that — I promise you — is every bit as much of a page-turner as any book we’ve ever suggested here at Kindle Nation.
If you were thinking of donating $100 to help the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, you can do it this way and click here to make a gift of the book to 10 other people that you care about. (Please note: they don’t need Kindles to read it. All they need is an email address and the gift email from Amazon will tell them exactly how to open the gift copy on a Kindle, a computer, or an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android device, BlackBerry, or just about anything else that has buttons on it except the shirt you are wearing).
I heard about the book from my old friend Sue Tierney, whose daughter Kimberly Tierney married a Japanese man and has lived in Japan for five years. Kim teaches English, acts, does voice over work, translates, and is a director at a local theater. That all sounds great, like all our children sound great, of course, but this is an arrow right to my heart not only because Kim is Sue’s daughter and has been through a very rough month, but also because Kim sounds right off the bat to me so much like my own daughter Kip in so many of the details of her life and even in the voice that comes through so poignantly in the story, “Home,” that Kim contributed to this book. But of course, Kip was not in Japan at 2:46, and Kim was.
The book’s foreword was contributed by Kindle Nation friend Barry Eisler, the man who turned down $500,000 recently to bring his next two books directly to Kindlers and other readers. Here’s the set-up, as we like to say here at Kindle Nation:
In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it, 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake contains a piece by Yoko Ono, and work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.
“The primary goal,” says the book’s editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims. I don’t have any medical skills, and I’m not a helicopter pilot, but I can edit. A few tweets pulled together nearly everything – all the participants, all the expertise – and in just over a week we had created a book including stories from an 80-year-old grandfather in Sendai, a couple in Canada waiting to hear if their relatives were okay, and a Japanese family who left their home, telling their young son they might never be able to return.”
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the price you pay goes to the Japanese Red Cross Society to aid the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. If you’d like to donate more, please visit the Japanese Red Cross Society website, where you can donate either via Paypal or bank transfer (watch out for the fees, though!) or the American Red Cross Society, which accepts donations directed to its Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund (but only accepts donations made with U.S.-issued credit cards).
And of course, if you like the book, please tell your friends, and tell them to give generously as well! Thank you! Japan really does appreciate your help!