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HMAS Sydney
by Tom FrameThe complete and authoritative account of the sinking of the HMAS Sydney, and the recent finding of her wreck.On 19 November 1941, the pride of the Australian Navy, the light cruiser Sydney, fought a close-quarters battle with the German armed raider HSK Kormoran off Carnarvon on the West Australian coast. Both ships sank ? and not one of the 645 men on board the Sydney survived. Was Sydney?s captain guilty of negligence by allowing his ship to manoeuvre within range of Kormoran?s guns? Did the Germans feign surrender before firing a torpedo at the Sydney as she prepared to despatch a boarding party? This updated edition covers the recent discovery of the wreck ? with the light this sheds on the events of that day 67 years ago, and the closure it has brought to so many grieving families. `Tom Frame has produced the most comprehensive and compelling account of the loss of HMAS Sydney to date. His judgements are fair and his conclusions reasoned. If you only read one book on this tragic event in Australian naval history, and want all the facts and theories presented in a balanced way, Tom Frame?s book is for you? - Vice Admiral Russ Shalders AO CSC RANR Chief of Navy, 2005-08.
Holidays
by William McInnesWritten and read by bestselling Australian author and much loved actor, William McInnes, this is a story about our love affair with holidays.It's about going away and staying at home. It's about the relaxing times you had as a kid, escapes you have with your children and the stories you hear from your friends.It can be about a romantic sunset, the spare seat at breakfast being taken by an attractive stranger, a miraculous airline upgrade - or missing bags, unfortunate rashes and wrong turns that lead to places you definitely did not intend to go.But most of all it's about being in your backyard in an above-ground pool, floating in circles, staring at the clouds as you go round and round, and knowing as you float that life is sweet because you're on holidays.PRAISE for William McInnes' books:'skilfully constructed...insightful, understated and very funny' Sydney Morning Herald on THE LAUGHING CLOWNS'The Making of Modern Australia is a ripper' The Canberra Times'William McInnes compels with the sheer delightfulness of his memoir, and with his fine ability to spin a damn funny yarn' Sunday Telegraph on A MAN'S GOT TO HAVE A HOBBY'funny and clever' Daily Telegraph on THAT'D BE RIGHT'A big-hearted novel with character' Sunday Telegraph on CRICKET KINGS
Hope at Sea
by Teresa ShewryAs far back as Thomas More's Utopia and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the Pacific Ocean has inspired literary creations of promising worlds. Hope at Sea asks how literary writers have more recently conceived the future of ocean living. In doing so, it provides a new perspective on art and imagination in the face of enormous environmental change.Drawing together ecocriticism, theories of hope, and literary analysis, this book explores how literary writers evoke hope in engaging with environmental upheavals that are reshaping life in the Pacific Ocean. Teresa Shewry considers contemporary poetry, short stories, novels, art, and journalistic pieces from Australia, New Zealand, Hawai'i, and other ocean sites, examining their imaginative accounts of present life and future living in places where humans coexist with environmental loss: rivers that no longer reach the sea, dwindling populations of ocean life, the effects of nuclear weapons testing, and more. These works are connected by their views of a future that includes hope.Until now, hope has never been theorized in a direct, sustained way in ecocriticism. Hope at Sea makes an argument for hope as a lens for creative and critical confrontation with environmental disruptions and the resulting sense of loss. It also reflects on the critical approaches that hope as an analytic category opens up for the study of environmental literature.With hope as a critical perspective, Shewry develops a method for reading environmental literature: literary writers create new ways to apprehend existing environmental realities and craft stories about seas, forests, cities, and rivers that could be--not as literal plans but as ways of imagining promising lives in the present world and in the world to come.
The Hostage Rescuer: The Return of a Child into a Mother's Arms
by Darren Franklin Martin PhillipsThe gripping true crime story of a child abducted by his father from his mother, and the international race to rescue him against dangerous odds.Two close encounters with death convince Darren Franklin that his career in global private security is not the healthiest. Meanwhile Scottish nurse Diane is on a life-changing journey of her own after a Shirley Valentine-style romance on a Greek holiday island. As she moves to Australia to marry her Greek lover and start a family, Darren escapes a contract on his life and teams up with a former British special forces operative to get into the business of rescuing abducted children. Then Darren’s and Diane’s paths cross. After Diane’s marriage breaks down, her ex takes their four-year-old son Theo back to the Greek islands, and, when all attempts to get her son back via the courts have failed, Darren’s company is called in to get him back. As Diane waits anxiously in the wings, Darren and his small team must contend with hostile locals, double-crossing police, and dubious legal contacts to conduct surveillance on their target, formulate a plan, and grab the boy before making their hazardous escape. They can trust no one. A whole island community is against them, they have their suspicions about their own lawyer, and the charity go-between on their team is actively leaking details of their plans, risking their mission, and possibly their lives. Set against an epidemic of parental abductions, and a background of frequent failed recoveries, the action swings from Britain to South America to Australia, to the USA and the Greek Islands on a dramatic, emotional roller coaster from start to finish.
The Hostage Rescuer: The Return of a Child into a Mother's Arms
by Darren Franklin Martin PhillipsThe gripping true crime story of a child abducted by his father from his mother, and the international race to rescue him against dangerous odds.Two close encounters with death convince Darren Franklin that his career in global private security is not the healthiest. Meanwhile Scottish nurse Diane is on a life-changing journey of her own after a Shirley Valentine-style romance on a Greek holiday island. As she moves to Australia to marry her Greek lover and start a family, Darren escapes a contract on his life and teams up with a former British special forces operative to get into the business of rescuing abducted children. Then Darren’s and Diane’s paths cross. After Diane’s marriage breaks down, her ex takes their four-year-old son Theo back to the Greek islands, and, when all attempts to get her son back via the courts have failed, Darren’s company is called in to get him back. As Diane waits anxiously in the wings, Darren and his small team must contend with hostile locals, double-crossing police, and dubious legal contacts to conduct surveillance on their target, formulate a plan, and grab the boy before making their hazardous escape. They can trust no one. A whole island community is against them, they have their suspicions about their own lawyer, and the charity go-between on their team is actively leaking details of their plans, risking their mission, and possibly their lives. Set against an epidemic of parental abductions, and a background of frequent failed recoveries, the action swings from Britain to South America to Australia, to the USA and the Greek Islands on a dramatic, emotional roller coaster from start to finish.
How Australia Decides
by Sally YoungIn recent years, the Australian media have come under fire for their reporting of politics and election campaigns. Political reporting is said to be too influenced by commercial concerns, too obsessed with gossip and scandal, and too focused on trivia and 'sound bites' at the expense of serious issues. There are accusations of bias, sensationalism, 'lazy' journalism and 'horse-race' reporting that is obsessed with opinion polls. How Australia Decides is the first book to put these allegations to the test. Based on a four-year empirical study, Sally Young reports the results of the only systematic, historical and in-depth analysis of Australian election reporting. This groundbreaking book shows how election reporting has changed over time, and how political news audiences, news production and shifts in political campaigning are influencing media content, Ai with profound implications for Australian democracy.
How Decent Folk Behave
by Maxine Beneba Clarkewe are all just one small disasteraway from sinking, and sometimes you only realisewhen you're gasping for airOn a daylight street in Minneapolis Minnesota, a Black man is asphyxiated - by callous knee of an officer, by cruel might of state, and under crushing weight of colony. In Melbourne the body of another woman has been found - this time, after catching a late tram home.The Atlantic has run out of the English alphabet, when christening hurricanes this season. The earth is on fire - from the redwoods of California, to Australia's east coast. The sea draws back, and tsunamis lash out in Samoa and Sumatra. Water rises in Sulawesi and Nagasaki. Bloated cod are surfacing, all along the Murray Darling.The virus arrives, and the virus thrives. Authorities seal the public housing towers up, and truck in one cop to every five residents. Notre Dame is ablaze - the cathedral spire blackened, and teetering.Out in Biloela, the deportation vans have arrived. Every Friday, in cities all across the world, children are walking out of school. The wolves are circling. The wolves are circling.These poems speak of the world that is, and sing for a world that may one day be.'One of the most compelling voices in Australian poetry this decade' Overland Literary Journal'a powerful and fearless storyteller' Dave Eggers'Readers are left with the sense they have been seen, heard and understood' Books + Publishing
How Folklore Shaped Modern Art: A Post-Critical History of Aesthetics (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies #15)
by Wes HillSince the 1990s, artists and art writers around the world have increasingly undermined the essentialism associated with notions of "critical practice." We can see this manifesting in the renewed relevance of what were previously considered "outsider" art practices, the emphasis on first-person accounts of identity over critical theory, and the proliferation of exhibitions that refuse to distinguish between art and the productions of culture more generally. How Folklore Shaped Modern Art: A Post-Critical History of Aesthetics underscores how the cultural traditions, belief systems and performed exchanges that were once integral to the folklore discipline are now central to contemporary art’s "post-critical turn." This shift is considered here as less a direct confrontation of critical procedures than a symptom of art’s inclusive ideals, overturning the historical separation of fine art from those "uncritical" forms located in material and commercial culture. In a global context, aesthetics is now just one of numerous traditions informing our encounters with visual culture today, symptomatic of the pull towards an impossibly pluralistic image of art that reflects the irreducible conditions of identity.
How Good is Scott Morrison?
by Wayne Errington Peter van OnselenWithout fear or favour, How Good is Scott Morrison? examines the trials and tribulations of our 30th prime minister. Investigating Morrison's unlikely rise to the liberal leadership and his miracle electoral win, van Onselen and Errington put his leadership under the spotlight.Covering Morrison's disastrous management of the catastrophic bushfire season that was highlighted by the extraordinary statement, 'I don't hold the hose, mate,' and the decision to holiday while the country burned, How Good is Scott Morrison? shows his resolve and the redemption the government's response to the pandemic brought him.Right now, Scott Morrison seems unassailable and sure to win the next election, but what exactly is his vision for Australia? A pragmatist rather than an ideologue, he is a deeply Pentecostal religious man but he doesn't wear his faith as a badge of honour. So what does he really believe in?When the history of this period is written, Morrison will certainly be seen as an election winner but will he be viewed as having had the courage and vision to change Australia for the better, or the worse?
How to Be Happy Though Human: New and Selected Poems
by Kate CampA timely collection of new and previously published work by one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed poets, How to Be Happy Though Human introduces Kate Camp’s eclectic and musical poetry to international audiences for the first time.How to Be Happy Though Human: New and Selected Poems is Kate Camp’s seventh book of poetry and the first to be published outside New Zealand. Incorporating a grouping of new, previously unpublished work and a selection of important poems from her six earlier collections, this volume introduces North American readers to poetry that has been described by critics as “fearless,” “mesmerizing,” and “containing a surprising radicalism and power.”Camp’s work is recognized for its wide-ranging and eclectic subject matter, its technical control, and its musicality, with pop culture, high culture, the domestic confessional, close observation, and found language featured as recurring elements of style.A timely retrospective that represents a new chapter in Camp’s career, How to Be Happy Though Human promises to gain a wide readership for this thoughtful, engaging, and popular writer.
Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Australia (Human Rights in History)
by Jon PicciniThis groundbreaking study understands the 'long history' of human rights in Australia from the moment of their supposed invention in the 1940s to official incorporation into the Australian government bureaucracy in the 1980s. To do so, a wide cast of individuals, institutions and publics from across the political spectrum are surveyed, who translated global ideas into local settings and made meaning of a foreign discourse to suit local concerns and predilections. These individuals created new organisations to spread the message of human rights or found older institutions amenable to their newfound concerns, adopting rights language with a mixture of enthusiasm and opportunism. Governments, on the other hand, engaged with or ignored human rights as its shifting meanings, international currency and domestic reception ebbed and flowed. Finally, individuals understood and (re)translated human rights ideas throughout this period: writing letters, books or poems and sympathising in new, global ways.
The Humanitarians: Child War Refugees and Australian Humanitarianism in a Transnational World, 1919–1975 (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare)
by Joy DamousiSpanning six decades from the formation of the Save the Children Fund in 1919 to humanitarian interventions during the Vietnam War, The Humanitarians maps the national and international humanitarian efforts undertaken by Australians on behalf of child refugees. In this longitudinal study, Joy Damousi explores the shifting forms of humanitarian activity related to war refugee children over the twentieth century, from child sponsorship, the establishment of orphanages, fundraising, to aid and development schemes and campaigns for inter-country adoption. Framed by conceptualisations of the history of emotions, and the limits and possibilities afforded by empathy and compassion, she considers the vital role of women and includes studies of unknown, but significant, women humanitarian workers and their often-traumatic experience of international humanitarian work. Through an examination of the intersection between racial politics and war refugees, Damousi advances our understanding of humanitarianism over the twentieth century as a deeply racialised and multi-layered practice.
A Huntsman Spider In My House . . .
by Michelle Ray“Delightful and charming . . . Deliver[s] a valuable lesson on treating all such creatures with respect, without falling into the trap of being preachy.” —Kiddiespace A Huntsman Spider in My House features a young girl concerned about the huge unwelcome guest in her room. Rather than reacting by immediately killing the spider, as commonly taught by society, she finds another way: She catches the Huntsman instead, and then releases it outside to let it live and contribute to the ecosystem of Australian fauna. The little girl’s actions show that insects are important, necessary, not so scary, and support the world too. “The young, nameless female protagonist of Sylvie Ashford’s charming book speaks in rhyme as she explains the habits of Huntsman Spiders to children as well as to the adults that read the book aloud . . . We thoroughly endorse educating young children to have more tolerance for the lower beasts.” —What’s That Bug? “The story follows her beautifully simplistic childlike thought process as she explores her feelings about it, and the ways in which the spider could be dealt with . . . It leaves you with a deep sense of satisfaction, and provides a practical fear-resolution solution to which kids of all ages can relate.” —Kiddiespace “Michelle Ray, author of A Huntsman Spider in My House, does a wonderful job weaving a story to teach young children not to be afraid.” —The Education Cafe
The Husband Poisoner: Suburban women who killed in post-World War II Sydney
by Tanya BrethertonShocking real-life stories of murderous women who used rat poison to rid themselves of husbands and other inconvenient family members. For readers of compelling history and true crime, from critically acclaimed, award-winning author Tanya Bretherton.After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members. Yvonne Fletcher disposed of two husbands. Caroline Grills cheerfully poisoned her stepmother, a family friend, her brother and his wife. Unlike arsenic or cyanide, thallium is colourless, odourless and tasteless; victims were misdiagnosed as insane malingerers or ill due to other reasons. And once one death was attributed to natural causes, it was all too easy for an aggrieved woman to kill again.This is the story of a series of murders that struck at the very heart of domestic life. It's the tale of women who looked for deadly solutions to what they saw as impossible situations. The Husband Poisoner documents the reasons behind the choices these women made - and their terrible outcomes.
I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires and Everything Else
by Tom Ballard&‘A damn hilarious read.&’ Nazeem Hussain &‘A true barbarian.&’ Andrew Bolt Our world is in chaos lol. And no, Australian Millennials, it&’s not your imagination: things are especially f**ked for us. Millions of Baby Boomers got beach houses, free education, jobs for life and a franking credit-fed retirement. But Millennials have been handed a housing crisis, crippling student debt, the gig economy, a cooked planet, a truly broken political system and now wars, inflation and a global pandemic, as a treat.This fully sucks. But never fear – this book is going to fix everything. Through the power of jokes, history, interviews and sass, so-called comedian Tom Ballard unpicks how his generation got here, and explains why we should probably do a revolution. Fact-filled and furiously funny, this is a must-read not just for young people wondering why they&’ve been given such a raw deal, but for anyone with an interest in how we&’re making our collective future impossible. &‘Tom Ballard is one of the most original, fearless and hilarious voices in Australian comedy.&’ Wil Anderson &‘As a fellow beleaguered Millennial, Tom is exactly the voice we need in this time of wailing capitalist death throes. Funny but biting, he lays out how the system has screwed us all – and it has nothing to do with avocado toast. You&’ll never be able to afford a house, so spend your money on this book instead.&’ Amy Remeikis &‘Ballard is fuming, funny, and armed with facts.&’ Tom Tilley &‘Speaking as Tom&’s non-biological mother, I am naturally proud to bursting of everything he does, especially the gay sex and particularly the class consciousness, which you will find emerging in this book.&’ Helen Razer &‘Tom makes me laugh, and think. I&’m not sure in which order. This book might be his last but that&’s ok – he&’s nailed it.&’ Dave Hughes
The Ilahita Arapesh: Dimensions of Unity
by Donald F. TuzinThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.
Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia (Borderlands and Transcultural Studies)
by Ann McGrathIllicit Love is a history of love, sex, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and settler citizens at the heart of two settler colonial nations, the United States and Australia. Award-winning historian Ann McGrath illuminates interracial relationships from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century through stories of romance, courtship, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and colonizers in times of nation formation.The romantic relationships of well-known and ordinary interracial couples provide the backdrop against which McGrath discloses the “marital middle ground” that emerged as a primary threat to European colonial and racial supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds from the Age of Revolution to the Progressive Era. These relationships include the controversial courtship between white, Connecticut-born Harriett Gold and southern Cherokee Elias Boudinot; the Australian missionary Ernest Gribble and his efforts to socially segregate the settler and aboriginal population, only to be overcome by his romantic impulses for an aboriginal woman, Jeannie; the irony of Cherokee leader John Ross’s marriage to a white woman, Mary Brian Stapler, despite his opposition to interracial marriages in the Cherokee Nation; and the efforts among ordinary people in the imperial borderlands of both the United States and Australia to circumvent laws barring interracial love, sex, and marriage.Illicit Love reveals how marriage itself was used by disparate parties for both empowerment and disempowerment and came to embody the contradictions of imperialism. A tour de force of settler colonial history, McGrath’s study demonstrates vividly how interracial relationships between Indigenous and colonizing peoples were more frequent and threatening to nation-states in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds than historians have previously acknowledged.
Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives (The Spatial Humanities)
by Jane Stadler Stephen Carleton Peta MitchellImagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia's cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape. It offers fresh insights on cultural topography and spatial history by examining the technical and conceptual challenges of georeferencing fictional and fictionalized places in narratives. Among the items discussed are Wake in Fright, a novel by Kenneth Cook, adapted iconically to the screen and recently onto the stage; the Australian North as a mythic space; spatial and temporal narrative shifts in retellings of the story of Alexander Pearce, a convict who gained notoriety for resorting to cannibalism after escaping from a remote Tasmanian penal colony; travel narratives and road movies set in Western Australia; and the challenges and spatial politics of mapping spaces for which there are no coordinates.
Immigration Policy from 1970 to the Present (Routledge Studies in Modern History #19)
by Rachel StevensThis book examines national debates on immigration, asylum seekers and guest worker programs from 1970 to the present. Over the past 45 years, contemporary immigration has had a profound impact throughout North America, Europe and Australasia, yet the admission of ethnically diverse immigrants was far from inevitable. In the midst of significant social change, policymakers grappled with fundamental questions: what is the purpose of immigration in an age of mass mobility? Which immigrants should be selected and potentially become citizens and who should be excluded? How should immigration be controlled in an era of universal human rights and non-discrimination? Stevens provides an in-depth case study comparison of two settler societies, Australia and the United States, while drawing parallels with Europe, Canada and New Zealand. Though contemporary immigration history that focuses on one national setting is well established, this book is unique because it actively compares how a number of societies debated vexing immigration policy challenges. The book also explores the ideas, values and principles that underpin this contentious area of public policy, and in doing so permits a broader understanding of contemporary immigration than outlining policies alone.
The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero
by Timothy Egan<P>From the National Book Award-winning and best-selling author Timothy Egan comes the epic story of one of the most fascinating and colorful Irishman in nineteenth-century America. <P>The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, <P>Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York -- the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America. <P>Meagher's rebirth in America included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade from New York in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War -- Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg. Twice shot from his horse while leading charges, left for dead in the Virginia mud, Meagher's dream was that Irish-American troops, seasoned by war, would return to Ireland and liberate their homeland from British rule. <P>The hero's last chapter, as territorial governor of Montana, was a romantic quest for a true home in the far frontier. His death has long been a mystery to which Egan brings haunting, colorful new evidence. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Imperfect Passage: A Sailing Story of Vision, Terror, and Redemption
by Michael CosgroveTurning sixty isn’t the end; it’s only the beginning. Michael Cosgrove had a beautiful family, a successful career, and a lovely Southern California home overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At age sixty, he decided to leave all that behind to sail around the world. With the vision of rugged individualism and salty tales to share with his grandchildren, Cosgrove quickly realized that sailing around the world wasn’t as easy as he had imagined. From a psychotic crewmate, to sleep deprivation and mental breakdowns, to constant storms and hallucinations, Cosgrove rode the waves, trying to keep his idea of "doing something grand” alive. Alone, and thousands of miles away from everyone he loved, he was forced to ask himself one question: What in God’s name am I doing here? In his attempt to avoid the inevitable (growing old, weak, frail), Cosgrove runs amok. He breaks his budget to outfit the boat and then refuses to read the manuals. He enters unfamiliar harbors in the dead of night, hires a violent first mate, and sails headlong into ferocious storms. At the same time, he longs for the simpler days when his four daughters were still children, when his first marriage was still intact, and when his dreams were still within reach. Though driven by scenes of sheer terror, absurd folly, and deep inner searching, the tone is always buoyant and laugh-out-loud funny. Imperfect Passage is the story of one man’s perseverance against Father Time and Mother Nature, proving that with enough will, one can indeed conquer the unconquerable.
Imperial Culture in Antipodean Cities, 1880–1939
by John GriffithsDrawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, this book explores how far imperial culture penetrated antipodean city institutions. It argues that far from imperial saturation, the city 'Down Under' was remarkably untouched by the Empire.
Imperial Theory and Colonial Pragmatism
by David J. GilchristThis book considers the role played by co-operative agriculture as a critical economic model which, in Australia, helped build public capital, drive economic development and impact political arrangements. In the case of colonial Western Australia, the story of agricultural co-operation is inseparable from that of the story of Charles Harper. Harper was a self-starting, pioneering frontiersman who became a political, commercial and agricultural leader in the British Empire’s most isolated colony during the second half of the Victorian era. He was convinced of the successful economic future of Western Australia but also pragmatic enough to appreciate that the unique challenges facing the colony were only going to be resolved by the application of unorthodox thinking. Using Harper’s life as a foil, this book examines Imperial economic thinking in relation to the co-operative form of economic organisation, the development of public capital, and socialism. It uses this discussion to demonstrate the transfer of socialistic ideas from the centre of the Empire to the farthest reaches of the Antipodes where they were used to provide a rhetorical crutch in support of purely pragmatic co-operative establishments.
In a Sunburned Country
by Bill BrysonA CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ONE SUMMER Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity.Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide.From the Trade Paperback edition.
In God They Trust?: The Religious Beliefs of Australia's Prime Ministers 1901-2013
by Roy WilliamsMost of Australia's leaders since Federation believed in God. Some were serious Christians and very few were indifferent towards religion. In this timely and original book, Roy Williams examines the spiritual life of each of our Prime Ministers from Edmund Barton to Julia Gillard. He explores the ways in which - for good and ill - their beliefs (or agnosticism) shaped the history and development of the nation. Featuring extensive interviews with John Howard and Kevin Rudd, and pulling no punches, IN GOD THEY TRUST? will appeal to voters across party lines and excite plenty of debate among believers and non-believers alike.