March 1797. Ninety Mile Beach, Victoria. Five British sailors and twelve Bengali seamen swim ashore after their longboat is ripped apart in a storm. The British penal colony at Port Jackson is 700 kilometres to the north, their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove stranded far to the south on a tiny island in Bass Strait. To rescue the... Read more...

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 co... Read more...

Robbers have always seen themselves as the cream of the underworld, at the top of the criminal aristocracy, both in and out of prison. Gangland Robbers follows the stories of the men and women who go to great lengths to organise heists which, if all goes well, will keep them in luxury for many years, if not for life. If their plans fail, then often ... Read more...

The Liberal Party took a risk replacing Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull. They had seen how voters could turn when the ALP tore down a first-term prime minister. But MPs were desperate, having witnessed the collapse in polling during Abbott's prime ministership. By the time Turnbull called the election it was still unclear what he wanted to achieve... Read more...

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... Read more...

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 p... Read more...

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2017) has given national consciousness to the problematic treatment of sexual offences in Australia's past. Yet there has been little historical research into the policing, prosecution and punishment of those crimes.This book examines Australia's treatment of se... Read more...

The Forgotten People challenges the assumption that constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians is a project of the left in Australia.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... Read more...

Trust is the most powerful weapon in the political arsenal.It can pierce an opponent's armour or deflect the most ferocious attack. It can explain difficult policies, and become a well of goodwill for politicians when they need it most. Yet despite its great value we are resigned to the idea that trust in politics will continue to decline.Drawing on... Read more...

Man & Beast features some of the greats of Australian literature, writing about the particular kinships they have with animals: the loves, the losses and the surprising turns those relationships can take.Les Carlyon writes about those strange beings, horse people. Robert Drewe's curious eye falls on everything from bull sharks to bull ants. Don Wats... Read more...

Some of our strongest, most lasting relationships are hidden in plain view—those we have with objects. What do our possessions do for us? And how do they do it?In The Promise of Things, Ruth Quibell explores what our possessions say about us: who we think we are, what we long for and struggle against. It invites us to think about how we use th... Read more...

The greatest drugs scandal in Australian sport goes well beyond who took what. What happened at Essendon, what happened at Cronulla, is only part of the story.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... Read more...

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.Mark Di Stefano reveals what happens behind the scenes and how the two campaigns manu... Read more...

Peter Thomson won five golf Open Championships. He is only the third golfer to have won five or more, behind the great Harry Vardon, who won six. It is a feat unlikely to be repeated in the modern era and puts him in the legendary league of sports players like Don Bradman, Rod Laver, Margaret Court and Dawn Fraser. Read more...

The Meanjin winter issue takes on the culture wars. It's an essential primer in this election season written by Melbourne academic Mark Davis, the man who brought you Gangland, the book that revealed the baby boomer cultural monopoly. Now Davis turns his attention to the shady world of cultural politics, a world dominated by race, climate, and irrat... Read more...

How does Indigenous policy signed off in Canberra work—or not—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 ... Read more...

Libertarianism—the philosophy of government that pairs free market economics with social liberalism— presents a vigorous challenge and viable political alternative to the old Left-Right partisan shouting match.Libertarianism offers surprising new solutions to stagnant policy debates over issues such as immigration and civil rights, and p... Read more...

Climate scientists have warned that we need to change our behaviour in ways that may be inconvenient and threaten the commercial status quo. The result has been a polarising division in society and a sustained attack on their research.In The Knowledge Wars, Nobel prizewinner Peter Doherty makes a passionate case for citizens to become informed so th... Read more...

I WILL WALK OFF YOUR SINS: Pilgrim seeks sinners for mutually beneficial arrangement. Seven Deadlies a specialty.With these words Ailsa Piper's journey begins. Less than a month later she finds herself hiking through olive groves and under translucent pink blossoms, making her way from the legendary city of Granada, towards the cliffs at Finisterre ... Read more...

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.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 influenc... Read more...

Our bush heritage helped to define our identity, but today Australia is a nation of cities. A higher proportion of Australians live in cities than almost any other country, and most of our national wealth is generated in them. For most of the twentieth century, our cities gave us some of the highest living standards in the world. But they are no lon... Read more...

Andrew Robb lived with an unspoken fear that what he passed off as 'not being good in the mornings' was something darker: a black dog whose daily visit lasted longer as the years passed. Worried about stigmas and letting people down, he avoided confronting the problem for four decades, the adrenaline of high-pressure and high profile jobs offering t... Read more...

The events of the Great War intensified the relationship between the British Empire and Australia—the legacy can still be felt today.Australia and the Great War 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... Read more...

We are not born readers, we learn to turn words into worlds. But why is fine writing lauded while excellent reading is ignored?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 b... Read more...

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 p... Read more...

Céleste de Chabrillan, former courtesan and widow of the first French Consul to Melbourne, became the most prolific female stage writer in nineteenth-century France. Forever haunted by her scandalous past, Céleste fought to hold her place in an artistic world dominated by men.Courtesan and Countess tells the story not only of her struggle as a creat... Read more...

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.The 'field coordinator' of this terrorist operation was the Bantenese Abdul Aziz a... Read more...

Continued political and economic turbulence, pervasive threats of terrorism and climate change: 2015 was a testing year. Even Australia's charmed run as 'the lucky country' threatened to come to an end. The pressures of government resulted in Malcolm Turnbull ousting Tony Abbott to become the country's fifth prime minister in five years. Will this p... Read more...

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. Rather than a route to mindfulness it opens the way for busy political tragics to render our leaders in their true colours.For over twenty years David Rowe's cartoons and caricatures ha... Read more...

The summer 2015 issue of Meanjin has a wonderful essay from author and academic Margaret Simons based on an extraordinary novella-length love letter from Germaine Greer to Martin Amis. Join Greer as she travels the United States in the late seventies, flushed with the success of The Female Eunuch, seeking comfort in the arms of her American lover, s... Read more...

The highs and lows of Malcolm Turnbull's remarkable career are documented here in technicolour detail by journalist Paddy Manning. Based on countless interviews and painstaking research, it is a forensic investigation into one of Australia's most celebrated overachievers.>Turnbull's relentless energy and quest for achievement have taken him from exc... Read more...

'Akira Mizubayashi is a man whose dog, Mélodie, taught him what it means to be human.' RAIMOND GAITAMélodie 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 wit... Read more...

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.Myths shift wit... Read more...

Take an integrated, down-to-earth approach. From proposal to examination, producing a dissertation or thesis is a challenge. Grounded in decades of experience with research training and supervision, this fully updated and revised edition draws on case studies and examples to guide you step-by-step towards productive success.Early chapters frame the ... Read more...

With his undeniable precociousness, John Perceval came to the attention of the art cognoscenti in his early teens. His elegant charm, astonishing good looks and original intelligence captivated many of the most important art figures of his time—Norman Lindsay, John and Sunday Reed, the Boyd family, Bernard Smith, Max Harris, John Brack, Charle... Read more...

Far from being the work of a madman, Anders Breivik's murderous rampage in Norway was the action of an extreme narcissist. As the dead lay around him, he held up a finger asking for a Band-Aid. 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. Manne exa... Read more...

Joseph Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men. On Stalin's Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin were a dozen or so loyal and competent men who formed a remarkably effective team from the late 1920s until his death in 1953... Read more...

His wife Margaret was his 'best appointment', he called Malcolm Fraser 'Kerr's cur' after the Dismissal and when Sir Winton Turnbull called out in parliament 'I am a country member', Gough interjected 'I remember'.When it was suggested he was funny, Gough responded: 'Funny! Funny? Witty, yes. Epigrammatic perhaps, but not funny. You make me sound l... Read more...

Nothing prepares a person for the job of chief of staff to a Commonwealth Minister. There are no professional development courses, no specialist recruitment agencies and no training manuals.It was into this vortex that Allen Behm became chief of staff to Greg Combet in 2009, the minister responsible for managing carbon pricing and the pink batts cri... Read more...

B.A. Santamaria was one of the most controversial Australians of our time. An ardent anti-Communist and devout Catholic, he was fiercely intelligent and a natural leader, polarising the community into loyal followers and committed opponents.In the 1940s Santamaria created the anti-Communist organisation 'The Movement'. In the 1950s he was a key figu... Read more...

Tony Abbott came to the prime ministership lauded as the most effective leader of the opposition since Whitlam. Why then did he fail to succeed in the job to which he had aspired for decades??Frontbenchers leaked about cabinet processes to the media while backbenchers complained about the lack of access to their leader.?Abbott's long apprenticeship ... Read more...

Is there more to politics than politics? What about sincere belief? Or conviction?Both are missing in action, trumped by political expedience.We've just sat through an election campaign in which the major parties fought a pitched battle over precious little, two bitterly adversarial political organisations scrambling desperately for the middle groun... Read more...

In Australian Notebooks, Betty Churcher revisits some of the artworks she most cherishes—a seminal Picasso, early works of the Heidelberg School, a striking portrait by Lucian Freud—and invites us to look afresh at the treasures that can be found in Australian galleries.Taking in the glorious work of Australian artists such as John Olsen... Read more...

In this gorgeously illustrated book, join Betty Churcher on a personal tour of her most beloved works, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Velázquez, Courbet, Vermeer and Cézanne.A trained artist, Betty's sketches reveal the secrets within the artworks and the processes of their creation.With the gift for making art accessible that ... Read more...

The urgent phone call comes from behind the barbed wire.'This is Ayalon prison,' says one of the guards urgently. 'Listen, he hanged himself, we need an ambulance.'Prisoner X, just 34 years old, was slumped in a small bathroom, separated from his cell by a transparent door. Kept in one of the most technologically sophisticated solitary jail cells, a... Read more...

Fast-paced Australian political fiction, Challenge unfolds over three days in an atmosphere of treachery and deceit, amid a looming federal leadership challenge.Opposition leader Daniel Slattery is a former sporting hero from the wrong side of the tracks, politically principled and courageous, but also personally unhinged and highly volatile. He is ... Read more...

How can I have so many clothes, yet still have nothing to wear?Style is Eternal provides you with the tools to transform your wardrobe from faddish to stylish. Nicole Jenkins shares her experience as a fashion buyer and stylist to navigate the essential additions to your wardrobe without breaking the bank, use accessories to create new outfits, conv... Read more...

On a Sunday evening in July 2011, 40-year-old Anthony Dunning was pinned to the floor of Melbourne's Crown casino by security staff. Four days later, he died in the intensive care unit of the Alfred Hospital. The incident was reported to the police by two friends who were with Dunning on the night—not by Crown casino. Later that week, a spokes... Read more...

In Mothermorphosis, some of Australia's most talented writers and storytellers share their own experiences of motherhood. In telling their stories they articulate the complex internal conflicts, the exhilaration and the absurdity of the transformation that takes place when we become mothers.We read about the yearning for a child, the private and pub... Read more...

House of All Nations is Christina Stead's 1938 gripping portrayal of financial world success. Set in an exclusive European bank in the heady days of the early thirties, Stead weaves a remarkable tale of greedy, devious and shady characters, all brought together by their love of money. The director of the bank, Jules Bertillon, leads these gamblers, ... Read more...