English 
Italiano 
While surfing in the web looking for curious books I came across Davide Mana and his blog Evolutionary Strategies, where the author offers for free some of his writings that I found interesting. I have chosen to focus on three titles, but feel free to read the others. Here Davide describes them, in his own words and with the answers to a few questions.
“My first free e-book is called Il Crocevia del Mondo (“Crossroads of the World”), is a collection of short biographies and curiosities dedicated to scientists, explorers and adventurers that between the First and Second World War roamed the streets of Central Asia. The work is based on my true belief that history is often far more strange and funny than narrative. Of the book there is also a greatly expanded version, entitled Avventurieri sul Crocevia del Mondo (“Adventurers on the Crossroads of the World”), which is available on Amazon.
Il Destino del’Iguanodonte (“The Fate of the Iguanodon”) is instead a very informal history of the beginnings of paleontology in the nineteenth century, the subtitle and other paleontological gossip points precisely to the informal nature of the volume. Even in this case, the revised and expanded version is available on Amazon with the title Avventurieri alle Porte del Tempo (“Adventurers at the Gates of Time”).
Finally Marte! (“Mars!”) is an overview on the history of love-hate relationship that binds Earth and Mars, an exploration of the planet Mars in fiction with a short digression into the world of science”.
Why did you decide to offer your books for free?
“Little essays were born in response to the request of some readers of my blog asking autonomous and extended versions of some of my articles. It seemed like a good opportunity to try to do some experiments in the field of self-publishing, and since it does not seem the case to charge the experiments to my readers I thought to make my texts available for free, leaving open the option of free gift for those who want to give me a token of their appreciation. The success was such as to allow me to learn a lot – through the feedback of the readers – and allowed me to try the road to publication. At the moment my main aim is to let circulate what I write, either in free form and at very low prices, and to continue to learn at the same time entertaining (hopefully!) who has the courtesy of wanting to read me”.
Who is Davide Mana
Born in Turin in 1967 is a technician for environmental sensing and geologist (Turin, London, Bonn) he specializes in applied micropaleontology and statistical analysis of environmental data. He has held teaching, research and dissemination work as a freelancer in the private sector and has worked with the University of Turin, Trieste, Parma, Cagliari and Urbino. He has always been interested in science and the application of new technologies to teaching and to natural sciences; he is an advocate of the interdisciplinary and systemic knowledge. In his spare time he writes, takes pictures, cooks, is interested in Orientalism, maintains a number of blogs in Italian and English. Sometimes he also manages to sleep.
