Media

As editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell ran the largest stable of journalists with the largest editorial budget in the country for more than twelve years. This entertaining and deeply revealing book offers readers riveting insights into the quirks and foibles of some of the most powerful politicians and media executives this country has produced.

Turnbull leads a party whose culture he doesn't share. While the narrow election victory may have justified the gamble to place him in office, does Turnbull have the leadership qualities needed to break the cycle of division and instability of the last decade?

What a Time to Be Alive: That and Other Lies of the 2016 Campaign is Mark Di Stefano's ugly, unsanitised diary behind the double dissolution election campaign. A poll fought between two wildly ambitious men who want to win their first election, whatever it takes.

Robbers have always seen themselves as the cream of the underworld; at the top of the criminal aristocracy, in and out of prison. Robbers follows the stories of the men and women who go to great lengths to organise a heist which, if all goes well, should keep them in luxury for many years, if not for life.

Comeback tells the Geelong story—how a town unloved by the big city up the road turned to football to show it was as good as anyone.

On the fiftieth anniversary of his last open championship, Peter Thomson talks about his life, golf and how he achieved Open glory.

Ride the wave of nostalgia with Surf-o-rama, the largest collection of Australian beach culture memorabilia, including artefacts, ephemera and photographs. Meet Duke Kahanamoku, who gave the first public demonstration of surfboard riding in Australia. Relive the glories of Midget and Gidget and cruise the kitsch and the cool in your salt-encrusted panel van. 

My Year Without Meat is a surprising and bittersweet journey that changed Richard's body, his values and how he cooks. It's a meditation on ethical meat, an ode to vegetables and a cautionary tale about our relationship to food—as told by a self-confessed meat lover. 

Presenting the work of Australian and international artists across twenty-nine exhibitions and events, ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE explores the power of art to create the empathy, emotional engagement and cultural understanding needed to motivate meaningful change. 

Shooting The Picture is the story of Australian press photography from 1888 to today—the power of the medium, seismic changes in the newspaper industry, and photographers who were often more colourful than their subjects. This groundbreaking book explores our political leaders and campaigns, crime, war and censorship, international events, disasters and trauma, sport, celebrity, gender, race and migration. It maps the technological evolution in the industry from the dark room to digital, from picturegram machines to iPhones, and from the death knock to the ascendancy of social media. It raises the question whether these changes will spell the end of traditional press photography as we know it. 

By the end of the First World War the combat formations of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in both France and the Middle East were considered among the British Empire's most effective troops. While sometimes a source of pride and not a little boasting, how the force came to be so was not due to any inherent national prowess or trait. Instead it was the culmination of years of training, organisational change, battlefield experimentation and hard-won experience;a process that included not just the Australians, but the wider British imperial armies as well. This book brings together some of Australia's foremost military historians to outline how the military neophytes that left Australia's shores in 1914 became the battle winning troops of 1918. It will trace the evolution of several of the key arms of the AIF, including the infantry, the light horse, the artillery, and the flying corps, and also consider how the various arms worked together alongside other troops of the British Empire to achieve a remarkably high level of battlefield effectiveness. 

The story of the University of South Australia is one of the most successful of the Dawkins changes. After a shaky start its rapid rise to prominence in South Australia and beyond allows it to be truly seen as 'a new kid on the block' in Australian higher education.

Possible Spaces of Somali Belonging explores representations of Somali resettlement to understand the mechanics of contemporary belonging and the challenges faced by Western societies as they attempt to 'integrate' Somali migrants. How do particular representations contribute to or detract from Somali belonging? 

In her award-winning biography of Gough Whitlam, Jenny Hocking first revealed the astonishing secret story of the planning, the people—and the collusion—behind the removal of Gough Whitlam. 

Now Hocking brings together this hidden history—a mixture of the unknown, the overlooked and the clandestine—to write a political thriller: the story you were never meant to know.

Windsor's Way reveals Tony's courageous political path—as a young branch member he moved a no-confidence motion against the National Party leader. He conducted a rigorous 17-day assessment period of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard's promises following the indecisive 2010 election and then seized the opportunities of the subsequent hung parliament. 

It's Our Country: Indigenous Arguments for Meaningful Constitutional Recognition and Reform is a collection of essays by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander thinkers and leaders including Patrick Dodson, Noel Pearson, Dawn Casey, Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Mick Mansell. Each essay explores what recognition and constitutional reform might achieve—or not achieve—for Indigenous people.

Drawing on contemporary political stories and examples, The Trust Deficit shows us how faith in our politicians has been eroded and how it can be rebuilt. Julia Gillard's pledge that there wouldn't be a carbon tax and Tony Abbott's promise of no cuts to health or education saw a collapse in their governments' levels of support. 

From the basement office of a suburban football club to the seedy corners of Peptide Alley to the polished corridors of Parliament House, The Straight Dope is an inside account of the politics, greed and personal feuds that fuelled an extraordinary saga. 

In For the Common Good, Bill Shorten reflects on the values and beliefs that led him to devote himself to the labour movement and stand for the nation's highest office. He looks back on the emphasis on education and social justice in his childhood in suburban Melbourne, and his many years spent empowering tens of thousands of Australians in workplaces across our continent.

In The Libertarian Alternative, Chris Berg offers a new agenda for restoring individual liberty in Australia, revitalising politics and strengthening our sagging economy. 

Mélodie is the heartfelt memoir of a Japanese man's life with his golden retriever—or rather of his golden retriever's life with him. Fidelity, patience, attachment, love and family ties are illuminated through the demands and joys of living with a large dog in a small apartment in Tokyo.

Australians came to the ABC's The Killing Season in droves, their fascination with the brutal Rudd-Gillard struggle as enduring as the saga itself. This is the book that brings you the uncut version of The Killing Season, taking you behind the cameras to reveal the untold stories and candid moments that didn't go to air. For the first time a more complete version of the truth is revealed. 

In The Art of Reading, philosopher Damon Young reveals the pleasures of this intimate pursuit through a rich sample of literature: from Virginia Woolf's diaries to Batman comics. He writes with honesty and humour about the blunders and revelations of his own bookish life. 

In Life As I Know It, Michelle Payne tells her deeply moving story. It will lift your spirits, stir your heart and give you courage.

Joined-up government has captured the imaginations of public administrators for many decades. It offers great promise for tackling the complex, or 'wicked', policy problems that concern the governments of industrialised countries. Despite ongoing interest, there remains an absence of core methods and principles to make joined-up government work in practice. Increasingly, public policy scholars are calling for 'evidence-based' joined-up government.<br><br><i>Grassroots to Government</i> comprehensively explains the state of evidence in joined-up government, accompanied by an in-depth case study of the experiences of a national joined-up initiative&mdash;the Australian Social Inclusion Agenda. In doing so, it offers both a breadth and depth of knowledge on joined-up government.<br><br>This is essential reading for anyone interested in designing, implementing and evaluating joined-up and whole-of-government initiatives, including: public service professionals, academics, community sector practitioners, and advanced level students in public policy, social policy and public administration.

<i>The Forgotten People</i> challenges the assumption that constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians is a project of the left in Australia.<br><br>It demonstrates that there may be a set of reforms that can achieve the change sought by indigenous leaders, while addressing the critical concerns of constitutional conservatives and classical liberals. More than that, this collection illustrates the genuine goodwill that many Australians, including Major General Michael Jeffery, Cardinal George Pell, Chris Kenny and Malcolm Mackerras, share for achieving indigenous recognition that is practically useful and symbolically powerful.

The Australian Greens played a pivotal role after the 2010 federal election. It ensured the Gillard minority government went full term and won its first House of Representatives seat.<br><br>But what do we really know about the Greens in Australia? Is the party really just an extension of the environment movement or a professional party, capable of influencing the major parties? This book examines the people who make the party tick. Uncovers the members and activists of the party.<br><br><i>The Australian Greens: From Activism to Australia's Third Party</i> asks whether the Greens has made the transition from a home for tree-huggers and alternative lifestylers to a party ready to work in Government.

On the evening of 12 October 2002 two suicide bombers detonated bombs inside Paddy's Pub and in front of the Sari Club in Kuta, one of Bali's main tourist districts. Two hundred and two people were killed including eighty-eight Australians and thirty-eight Indonesians.<br><br>The 'field coordinator' of this terrorist operation was the Bantenese Abdul Aziz alias Imam Samudra, who was later executed for his role in the attacks.<br><br><i>Imam Samudra's Revenge</i> examines why Samudra bombed nightclubs in Bali paying due regard to the social and political context provided by both his experiences as a youthful member of the Darul Islam movement in Indonesia and Pakistan, and the outbreak of religious violence in Indonesia from 1999. Yet these same factors also influenced his colleagues within the extremist Islamist group Jema'ah Islamiyah, and they strongly disapproved of his actions in Bali. Therefore, it is also important to consider Samudra's personality; and, more particularly, his proneness to humiliation which led him via the vengeful ideology of global jihadism to embrace terrorism in Bali.

Following the success of their bestselling <i>Gangland Australia</i>, James Morton and Susanna Lobez turn their attention to crime and criminals, both organised and disorganised, in Australia and New Zealand over the last century.<br><br><i>Dangerous to Know</i> documents murderers known and not so well known, conmen and their victims, street gangs of the early twentieth century, crime lords of the 1920s, dock warlords of the 1970s, bikers, sex offenders and the drug gangs of today, as well as the wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. They're all here, as well as the police, lawyers and judges who have tried to deal with them.

The past is consumed on a grand scale: popularised by television programs, enjoyed by reading groups, walking groups, historical societies and heritage tours, and supported by unprecedented digital access to archival records. Yet our history has also become the subject of heated political debate.<br><br>In <i>Private Lives, Public History</i>, historian Anna Clark explores how our personal pasts intersect with broader historical questions. Drawing on interviews with Australians from five communities around the country, she uncovers how we think about the past in the context of our local and intimate stories, and the role that history plays in our lives.

How does Indigenous policy signed off in Canberra work&mdash;or not&mdash;when implemented in remote Aboriginal communities? Mark Moran, Alyson Wright and Paul Memmott have extensive on-the-ground experience in this area of ongoing challenge. What, they ask, is the right balance between respecting local traditions and making significant improvement in the areas of alcohol consumption, home ownership and revitalising cultural practices?<br><br>Moran, Wright and Memmott have spent years dealing with these pressing issues. <i>Serious Whitefella Stuff</i> tells their side of this complex Australian story.

The prime ministership is indisputably the most closely observed and keenly contested office in Australia. How did it grow to become the pivot of national political power? <i>Settling the Office</i> chronicles the development of the prime ministership from its rudimentary early days following Federation through to the powerful, institutionalised prime-ministerial leadership of the postwar era.

The events of the Great War intensified the relationship between the British Empire and Australia&mdash;the legacy can still be felt today.<br><br><i>Australia and the Great War</i> explores both the immediate and longterm consequences of the war on this complex relationship, looking in particular at identity, history, gender, propaganda, economics and nationalism.<br><br>This multidisciplinary collection of essays unveils the creation and subsequent [mis]use of histories and mythologies while considering the necessity and nature of both remembering, and forgetting, war.

<p>Love them or loathe them, we can't avoid insects.</p><p>From aphids to flies, ladybirds to wasps, insects of all shapes and sizes share our homes and gardens. Now in an updated edition, the bestselling <i>Backyard Insects</i> explores the secrets and habits of more than one hundred little critters that are common to backyard Australia. Crawling with full-colour, larger-than-life photographs for easy identification, <i>Backyard Insects</i> is an indispensable guide for nature lovers, gardeners and kids of all ages.</p>

A group of visitors to the Salzburg Festival, brought together by chance, decides to mark time by telling tales. Their fantasies, legends, tragedies, jokes and parodies come together as <i>The Salzburg Tales</i>.<br><br>Dazzling in their richness and vitality, the tales are grounded in Christina Stead's belief that 'the story is magical . what is best about the short story [is] it is real life for everyone; and everyone can tell one'. Originally published eighty years ago, these are thoroughly modern stories that invite comparison with Boccaccio's <i>Decameron</i> and Chaucer's <i>The Canterbury Tales</i>.<br><br><i>The Salzburg Tales</i> are published here with a new introduction by Margaret Harris, Challis Professor of English Literature Emerita at the University of Sydney, and literary executor for Christina Stead.

Lost for more than eighty years until discovered by the authors in the attic of a French country manor, these are the unpublished and final set of memoirs from Céleste de Chabrillan–former courtesan and widow of the first French Consul to Melbourne, who went on to become the most prolific female stage writer in nineteenth-century France.

The great philanthropic gift of Russell and Mab Grimwade—The Miegunyah Fund—has opened up incredible opportunities for the University of Melbourne. This is the story of the Grimwades, and their legacy to the Australian nation.

The Phenomenology of Community Activism provides an experientially-based understanding of Muslim civil society organisations (MCSOs) in Australia.

A new paperback edition of the lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Australian Art: A History, which provides an overview of the major developments in Australian art, from its origins to the present.

Mindless Colouring 101 is a colouring-in book like no other, featuring more than 100 drawings by award-winning cartoonist, David Rowe, of Australia's notable Federal leaders past and present.

Battleground chronicles the paradox of the Abbott prime ministership: steadfast loyalty when pragmatism was required; social values at odds with community attitudes; stubbornness when tactics and strategy were essential. All would bring him undone.

Continued political and economic turbulence, pervasive threats of terrorism and climate change: 2015 fits the bill for a challenging year.

Here is the definitive story of the most divisive episode in Australia's history—the dismissal of Gough Whitlam's government.

In The Dismissal, thirty prominent Australians recall the events of November 11, 1975 and the days and weeks that followed. This new edition features a foreword by editor Sybil Nolan considering the dual perspective this collection provides: people's original memories and the views they had in 2005.

The Reith Papers is the best of those diary entries from the heart of a government that changed Australia.

The unauthorised biography that unravels the many layers of the man who has just become the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.

A stunning double biography that lifts the veil on the unconventional marriage of modernist pioneers John and Sunday Reed, and their relationships with some of Australia's most celebrated artists and writers.

In this book, the full complexity of John Perceval's work and his personality are rigorously and engagingly analysed, in a story that is as sweet and fascinating as it is tragic.

In The Politics of Myth, Stephen Knight studies nine figures still vividly alive, all of them appearing in twenty-first century film and television. Analysing how they relate to the major themes of power, resistance and knowledge, he shows how fact and fiction interweave to help us explore and understand the complexities of our world.

A series of practical lessons on leadership and public life that offer insights into the challenges and opportunities Australia currently faces.

Professionals or Part-Timers? examines the electoral professionalism of major party senators, as well as how they deal with the sometimes competing interests of factionalism and personal ambition.

Australia's involvement in the liberation of East Timor in 1999 was the most decisive demonstration of Australian influence in the region since World War II and the largest military contribution since the Vietnam War. East Timor Intervention looks at the crisis through the prism of key participants and observers on the ground and abroad.

Paris in Style reveals this city's most surprising and fascinating fashion, design and style destinations.

From stained-glass windows to entrance halls, wallpapers to walled gardens, The Constant Renovators showcases each of the Romeos' renovation projects, the history of the houses and what it took to restore them.

Joseph Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that no one realises he worked with a collaborative and brilliant team. This is their story.

A positive perspective on the ageing of Australia's baby boomers.

Written with the pace of a psychological thriller, The Life of I is a compelling account of the rise of narcissism in individuals and society.

'Comrade Ambassador reveals how Australia from the 1960s decided to engage with Asia and change for all time how we saw our role in the world.' -Bob Carr

In his candid memoir, Loosley writes about defending the indefensible, the best way to start and kill off rumours, the value of truth in campaigning, how to use humour to squash a scandal, the key to fundraising and why bullshit always comes back to smother you.

Former Treasurer Chris Bowen provides a rare insight into Australia's most important economic office through interviews with former Treasurers and senior bureaucrats.

In The Knowledge Wars, Nobel prizewinner Peter Doherty makes a passionate case for citizens to become informed so they are able to evaluate the facts of any scientific debate.

Filled with specific guidance and examples for leaders in all walks of life, Leadership in Action presents a unique framework of leadership techniques that work in any situation.

Christopher Pyne's honest account of how a belief in the power of public service led him to pursue a career in politics, driven by the ambition of leaving a legacy for the next generation.

Ten years after the Cronulla riots, the violence, racism and branding of young bodies with signs and symbols of Australian nationalism, along with the reprisal attacks by Lebanese-Australian youth, continues to inflame discussions about race relations in Australia, with many conversations shifting away from ideas of multiculturalism and cultural diversity, and towards patriotism, localism, security and fear of the (predominantly) Muslim 'Other'.

Older and Bolder is a rallying cry to living audaciously in the last third of your life.

The greatest drugs scandal in Australian sport goes well beyond who took what.

Beyond Surrender examines the impact that different types of camps, commandants and locations had on surrender, survival, prison life and the prospects of escape.

The inside story of just how close Australia came to losing the US Alliance.

No, Minister is not about the political record: it is about how the record is created and managed by largely unseen people in a volatile and almost always unpredictable environment.

What did the public sector ever do for us?

Kirstie Clements, former editor-in-chief of Vogue, bestselling author, judge on Australia's Next Top Model and style guru, plus a dazzling array of industry insiders give their expert opinions on how to get the job you want, get noticed and get ahead.

Born and bred in north-western New South Wales, Tony Windsor has held the balance of power in state and federal parliaments for nearly a third of his public life.

In the Front Row charts the rise of Australian Fashion Week, from one man's ambition to take Australian fashion to the world, to the glittering international event it is today.

A beautifully told mixture of fact and fiction, Watson's Pier traces not just one man's journey, but the history of a nation.

In Mothermorphosis, some of Australia's most talented writers and storytellers share their own experiences of motherhood.

Transforming Biology opens a window on the lives and work of the scientists, teachers and students who have contributed to the achievements of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne.

An Eye for Eternity paints a sweeping portrait of the man who gave Australians the signature account of their own history.

Topical and up to the minute, Minority Policy: Rethinking governance when parliament matters explores the influence of marginal parliamentarians both within the major parties and on the cross benches in the formations of contemporary public policy.

Using stories and case studies to show how individuals, families and businesses experience life in cities today, City Limits provides an account of why Australia's cities are broken, and how we can fix them.

In these brilliantly written opinion pieces Latham pulls no punches as he scrutinises the Australian political landscape.

Based on exclusive access to Turkish archives, Defending Gallipoli reveals how the Turks reacted and defended Gallipoli.

Alter-Politics is concerned with the way anthropological critical writing in particular aims to weave oppositional concerns (anti-politics) with a search for alternatives (alter-politics): alternative economies, alternative modes of inhabiting and relating to the earth, alternative modes of thinking and experiencing otherness.

Gallipoli: The Turkish Defence is the first and only book to reveal new details of the Turkish point of view of the conflict, revealing how the Turks reacted and defended Gallipoli and how they succeeded in forcing the Allied forces to withdraw.

In this book, Kate White looks at the challenges that women face, which often result from discrimination and being positioned as outsiders.

Old Age in Australia provides essential historical context for current discussions about the implications of ageing in Australia.

Winning the Peace seeks to explore and explain how Australian governments, during the modern period of Australia's engagement with Asia (from 1983 till today), have attempted to use their defence and foreign policies to shape the region.

Christina Stead's first novel, a brilliant portrayal of a group of men and women living in Sydney in the 1920s amid conditions of poverty and social turmoil.