New books!

Hi Jura community!

We've just received a box of new books. Some very exciting new titles, plus some new editions of older classics.

Come visit the shop between 12pm-5pm on Saturdays or get in touch with us via email or social media to arrange a mail order.

Check them out!

Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia by Victor Steffensen. $30

An Indigenous land management expert and descendant of the Tagalaka people, Steffensen explains how reviving cultural burning practices, and improved 'reading' of country, could help to restore land. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire. Moreover, fire is an important part of a wholistic approach to the environment, and when burning is done in a carefully considered manner, this ensures proper land care and healing.

Decolonizing solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles by Clare Land. $46

Clare Land's study of the role of settler-colonists in decolonization movements is a necessary read for every non-Indigenous person in so-called Australia.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. $20

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.

Young Dark Emu: A Truer History by Bruce Pascoe. $27

Bruce Pascoe has collected a swathe of literary awards for Dark Emu and now he has brought together the research and compelling first person accounts in a book for younger readers. Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the reader to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived – a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and an understanding of the environment and its natural resources that supported thriving villages across the continent. Young Dark Emu - A Truer History asks young readers to consider a different version of Australia's history pre-European colonisation.

Anarchy's Brief Summer: The Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. $48

Anarchy’s Brief Summer brings anarchism to life by focusing on the charismatic leader Buenaventura Durruti (1896–1936), who became a key figure in the Spanish Civil War after a militant and adventurous youth. The basis of the book is a compilation of texts: personal testimony, interviews with survivors, contemporary documents, memoirs, and academic assessments. They are all linked by Enzenberger’s own assessment in a series of glosses—a literary form that is somewhere between retelling and reconstruction—with the contradiction between fiction and fact reflecting the political contradictions of the Spanish Revolution. On the trail of forgotten, half-suppressed struggles, Anarchy’s Brief Summer offers a unique portrait of a revolutionary movement that is largely unknown outside Spain.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. $18

"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it." Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell. $4

'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.'Language is a political issue, and slovenly use of language and cliches make it easier for those in power to deliberately use misleading language to hide unpleasant political facts. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology, and it is no accident that 'Politics and the English Language' was written after the close of World War II.

Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell. $12

Down and Out in Paris and London was the outcome of Orwell's years in Paris and of months tramping south-east England. Whilst not quite autobiography, it does give a vivid picture of the kind of life he led 'in the lower depths', and exemplifies his belief that 'The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.' Orwell thought of calling this first book 'Confessions of a Dishwasher', and he hesitated for some time over the pseudonym under which it was published, the name by which, in due time, he was to achieve worldwide fame: George Orwell. This edition of Down and Out in Paris and London differs in many ways from all earlier editions and restores material censored by its original publisher in 1933.