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Reflections of Prague: Journeys Through the 20th Century
by Ivan MargoliusReflections of Prague is the story of how a Czech Jewish family become embroiled in the most tragic and tumultuous episodes of the twentieth century. Through their eyes we see the history of their beloved Prague, a unique European city, and the wider, political forces that tear their lives apart. Their moving story traces the major events, turmoil, oppression and triumphs of Europe through the last hundred years – from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the First World War; from the vibrant artistic and intellectual life of Prague in the times of Kafka, the Capek Brothers and Masaryk to years of hunger in a Polish ghetto and the concentration camps of Hitler; from the tyrannous rule of Stalin to the rekindled hopes of Dubcek and the subsequent Soviet occupation to liberation under Havel. Told from Ivan’s perspective, it is a poignant but uplifting tale that tells of life lived with purpose and conviction, in the face of personal suffering and sacrifice. ‘A remarkable book. This archetypical story of the twentieth century is intertwined with an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative of the history of the Czechs, of Prague, interspersed with samples of exquisite poetry by great contemporary poets. So the narrative flows like Eliot’s sweet Thames full of the debris of tragic lives, of horrors, of moments of beauty and testimonies of love – all against the backdrop of man’s inhumanity.’ Josef Škvorecký ‘A poignant and vivid mémoire of a child searching for traces of his father, lost in the murky ideologies of post war Central Europe. An engrossing book.’ Sir John Tusa
Restoring The Land: Environmental Values, Knowledge and Action
by Laurie Cosgrove David G Evans David YenckenThis provocative book brings together scholars and practitioners from many different disciplines. Philosopher and churchman, farmer and feminist, politician and agronomist-each considers environmental issues from a unique perspective. Part I explores the clash between the Western world's traditional belief in progress and development, and an emerging set of beliefs based on a new environmental ethic. Part II demonstrates that scientific knowledge is not always enough to solve an environmental problem-indeed, to a politician or a farmer, 'expert' knowledge may be less important than the attitudes of voters, consumers and the community; and Part III takes agricultural sustainability and the degradation of farming lands as a case study. The special concerns of the farming community and the practical difficulties imposed by the rural crisis are given due weight; and specific problems, such as salinity, are discussed in detail. To create a sustainable future, we must make a renewed attempt to define a human relationship with the spirit of the land. By drawing together authors with many different interests and backgrounds this book makes a valuable contribution to that dialogue. It will be of interest to all who are involved with land use and environmental decision-making, and to all readers who are concerned about Australia's future.
New Puberty
by Amanda DunnEmily is a happy ten-year-old who wears a size 12B bra and has tampons nestled in her school bag beside her play lunch. She isn't alone. Children are going through puberty earlier than ever before. How does this affect them? What does it mean for their parents, friends and society? What exactly happens during puberty, and how does it impact on social and emotional development? How is it linked to mental health, gender and sexuality, body image and risk-taking? Why is puberty still such a no-go topic? The New Puberty tackles these complex questions for parents and teachers of school-aged children through the latest research and expert analysis. It unpacks some of the mysteries surrounding puberty, and with the battle scars of those who have gone before, shows how adults can best help young people through this vital stage of life to set them up for a happy adulthood.
Adam Lindsay Gordon
by Geoffrey HuttonScottish aristocrat, rebellious youth, expert horseman, club-man, MP and poet-beneath the image of rake and hell-raiser, Adam Lindsay Gordon remained a conservative, frustrated with his failure to achieve the success he had expected from life. He finished his passionate life as dramatically as he had lived it, in a mixture of glory and outrage. A flawed hero, he was acclaimed as Australia's National Poet in 1933. Geoffrey Hutton examines this tragic and romantic character as a man, and a poet against his culture and his times and the process of his later apotheosis. 'He wrote imperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might have made perfect.'–Oscar Wilde
South Melbourne
by Susan Priestley"South Melbourne is a state of mind. Once you live there, you don't want to shift." Doris Condon, South Melbourne resident from 1942 until her death in 1979, Mayor 1969 to 1970. The first of Melbourne's suburbs to adopt fuoll municipal status, South Melbourne has also been at the forefront of many of the forces that have shaped both the local and national landscapes. Having seen its Aboriginal inhabitants displaced by European settlers, what became of one of Melbourne's first industrial suburbs then underwent a shift from manufacturing to commercial industry after the Second World War before experiencing the recent push for inner-city heritage conservation and urban renewal. South Melbourne's people have participated in the national dramas of immigration, federation, booms, busts, and world war. Not surprisingly in a suburb that boasts some of Melbourne's most popular beaches and sporting grounds, the residents have contributed significantly to the national passions for beach culture and sport, producing cricket heros, football legends and playing host, most controversially, to motor racing. As the home of the National Gallery of Victoria, the Victorian Arts Centre and other cultural institutions, South Melbourne has a unique place in Australia's cultural life. Part of an amalgamated City of Port Phillip since June 1994, the suburb now looks to draw strength from what Jessie Kennelly, long-time resident and widow of Senator Pat Kennelly, calls it 'good past'.
Explorations In Creative Writing
by Kevin BrophyThis set of reflective essays about the writing life examines the poetics and politics of reading as a writer, teaching and learning about writing in an academic or informal setting, and pacing oneself through writing projects. Academic investigations about the medieval concept of the writer and the novelization of the poem accompany more practical discussions about keeping a writer's sketchbook and conducting research. The growth of creative writing programs and the particular role of the artist in Australian society is explored.
Hill End: An Historic Australian Goldfields Landscape
by Alan MayneThe history of the Australian gold rushes is full of exaggeration: the First This, the Richest That, the Largest Something Else. Hill End unravels the myths surrounding the gold rushes in order to reveal the hidden histories of the Wiradjuri people, of the graziers and convicts who occupied the Wiradjuri lands, of the multicultural gold-boom community and of the subsistence community that endured for generations after the boom had passed. Hill End is perched high on the New South Wales Central Tablelands, some 300 kilometres north-west of Sydney. The Hill End Historic Site, which was proclaimed in 1967, is one of first cultural heritage sites to be reserved in Australia. This is a book that digs past Hill End's gold rush fa�ade into the lives of the people who lived through its history.
Lachlan Macquarie: A Biography
by John Ritchie'Ritchie has provided an exciting and dramatic account of the life and work of Macquarie. We learn, in contrast to the antiseptic treatment of the standard text books, that Macquarie was a man of strong passions, beliefs, plans and ambitions which drove him to hobnob with polite London society, to beg for promotion and favours from his superiors, to wangle commissions for his relatives, to be generous to a fault with those he sought to help and to demand unquestioning support from those he promoted or pardoned.' Malcolm J. Kennedy, Agora
Settling the Office: The Australian Prime Ministership from Federation to Reconstruction
by Paul Strangio Paul 't Hart James WalterThe 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? Settling the Office 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.
Anthology Of Colonial Australian Adventure Fiction
by Ken Gelder Rachael WeaverMarauding bushrangers, lost explorers, mad shepherds, new chums and mounted troopers: these are some of the characters who populate the often perilous world of colonial Australian adventure fiction. Squatters defend their hard-earned properties from attack, while floods and other natural disasters threaten to wipe any trace of settlement away. Colonial Australian adventure fiction takes its characters on a journey into remote and unfamiliar territory, often in pursuit of wealth and well-being. But these journeys are invariably fraught with danger, and everything comes at a price. This anthology collects the best examples of colonial Australian adventure fiction, with stories by Ernest Favenc, Louis Becke, Rosa Praed, Guy Boothby, and many others. Also available in this series: The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction The Anthology of Colonial Australian Crime Fiction The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction
Forged By War: Australian Veterans in Combat and Back Home
by Gina LennoxIn Forged By War, Australian veterans and their families reveal the experience of combat and how it has changed their lives. These stark first-hand accounts describe the reality of military action and its personal consequences in every major conflict and peacemaking mission since World War II, including the invasion of Iraq. Sometimes the reader is in lockstep with a soldier on patrol, watching as a land mine explodes, or a local militiaman points an AK–47 at Australian peacemakers. Other times, the reader is inside a returned veteran's head, feeling their superfluous adrenalin, their need to control their environment, even at home. With accounts from Peter and Lynne Cosgrove, Graham Edwards, Frank Hunt (I Was Only Nineteen), other veterans of Vietnam, Glenda Humes (daughter of Capt Reginald Saunders), peacemakers and an SAS trooper, this compelling investigation by Gina Lennox in underpinned by the question: where does family fit in a soldier's life?
Latham Diaries
by Mark LathamHere are the political diaries of one of Australia's most promising national leaders—published within twelve months of his resignation from office—an historic first. The Latham Diaries are searingly honest bulletins from the front line of Labor politics. They provide a unique view into the life of a man, the Party and the nation at a crucial time in Australian history.Mark Latham resigned from parliament in January 2005, after only fourteen months as Leader of the Opposition, amid bitter post-election recrimination and his own ill health. From the beginning of his career he was viewed by many observers as the ALP's resident intellectual and larrikin, the great hope of a new generation with the drive and talent to become prime minister.So why did his career end so abruptly? As The Latham Diaries reveal, the rising tide of public cynicism about politics, the cult of celebrity, the dangerous liaison between politics and the media, and the sickness at the heart of the Labor machine all played their part. As did Latham's own errors, as he candidly records in these diaries.This is a riveting chronicle of life inside politics: the backroom deals, the frontroom conniving, the bitter defeat of idealism and the triumph of opportunism. The Latham Diaries is not just the story of the Labor Party in the last years of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, but a sobering account of the state of Australian democracy 100 years after Federation.
John Curtin
by Lloyd RossThis is an important classic biography of an Australian Prime Minister whose life still exerts an abiding influence on Australian society and national consciousness—a key figure in Australian history. 'Curtin was a complex character. Warm and sympathetic, but cold and aloof; a comrade but a loner; a rebel and anti-conscriptionist but Prime Minister. Moody; irritable; uncertain; changeable; vacillating; temperamental; opportunist; sentimental; courageous; all are true of Curtin.' Lloyd Ross sums up the character of the wartime Labor Prime Minister who fought Churchill to bring back Australian troops from Europe to defend our nation. An intense and passionate orator, Curtin inspired respect in cynical Australians by his unassuming dignity, straightforwardness and refusal of any personal privilege.
Voyage To Australia And The Pacific
by Edward DuykerIn 1791 Admiral Bruny d'Entrecasteaux sailed with two ships from Revolutionary France to search for his compatriot, the explorer La P�rouse, who was missing in the Pacific. Over a period of nearly two years he had held his ideologically divided expedition together. Without his exceptional maritime skills his men (and one cross-dressing woman!) might all have died—or played out the destructive fury of the Revolution on the quarterdeck before reaching Java. More than two centuries later, d'Entrecasteaux's account of his voyage remains a profound affirmation of his achievements. His humane, sensitive and even joyful encounters with the peoples of Australia and the Pacific make this a remarkably appealing book. Although d'Entrecasteaux failed to discover the fate of La P�rouse, and perished in the attempt, his voyage was more than a mere rescue mission. Between 1791 and 1793 the expedition discovered the Derwent estuary and the D'Entrecasteaux Channel between Bruny Island and mainland Tasmania, and Esperance Bay and the Archipelago of the Recherche in Western Australia. D'Entrecasteaux's voyage also recorded some of the earliest observations of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania and south-western Australia, and detailed accounts of the islands and peoples of the Pacific, including New Zealand, Tonga, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. D'Entrecasteaux died suddenly off the coast of New Guinea, reportedly afflicted by symptoms of scurvy in July 1793.
Short Goodbye: A skewed history of the last boom and the next bust
by Elisabeth WynhausenElisabeth Wynhausen was at her desk writing a story about people being sacked when she was sacked herself. The Short Goodbye is the untold story of a nation forever changed by the global financial crisis and the people whose lives have been glossed over in the grand narratives of politicians and commentators. With verve and wit, she dissects the myth that Australia dodged a financial bullet by documenting the lives of those discarded on an economic minefield, from bankers to factory workers, and warns that without reform Australia could suffer a more terrible social and economic calamity from the next global rout.
Finding Valentino: Four Seasons In My Father's Italy
by Angela Di SciascioAngela Di Sciascio's father can no longer describe his past, lost in a world ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. Deciding not to let his story fade, Angela embarks on a voyage that takes her through four seasons in her father's Italy, reconnecting to her ancestry and absorbing all of its chaos, beauty and style. Meal by meal at her father's family table and step by step through the Italian countryside, she slowly comes to understand the young Valentino who left for the new world. Along the way, she discovers the simple pleasures of rustic polenta high in the mountains, pesto on the Ligurian coast and shares melt-in-your-mouth rag� with friends inla boisterous Rome. But she is always drawn back to the small hamlet tucked in the embrace of the Abruzzo mountains and the cuisine that feeds her soul, sharing with us her family's traditional recipes, as well as the joy of finding her father's home.
Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975-2015
by Carolyn RasmussenThe University of Melbourne was already over 110 years old when this history begins. The second oldest university in Australia, it has been graced with a number of histories written by eminent historians. Each of these histories has documented the University's evolution and diversification from the perspective of their time. Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975-2015 continues that story, but the period covered is entirely within living memory. It pauses at ten-year intervals, the first at 1975, to look back at the previous decade. We are invited to enter the University of Melbourne as a living institution, and to watch it as it responds to changing expectations of students, staff and community, to shifting policy frameworks and to an evolving economic and social context. The principal themes that arc across this story involve massive growth, the evolution towards a research-intensive institution, changing pedagogical imperatives, bureaucratisation and internationalisation in the face of declining public funding.
Navy and the Nation: Australia's Maritime Power in the 21st Century
by Tim BarrettThe Royal Australian Navy is at a watershed moment in its history. Major reinvestment following the 2016 Defence White Paper will see it re-equipped with offshore patrol boats, a new class of frigate, a modern and expanded submarine force and an air warfare destroyer.How does the Navy best prepare for the future? Vice Admiral Tim Barrett forcefully argues the answer is by reimagining the way the Navy views itself, especially its domestic and international relationships.In The Navy and the Nation Vice Admiral Barrett outlines the extensive opportunities for the service and Australia if the Navy is embraced as a national enterprise.
Evolution Revolution: Design without intelligence
by Ken McNamara John Long3.8 billion years ago life evolved. 540 million years ago came the first complex animals. 380 million years ago fish had evolved fins with arm bones that humans have today. So are humans a case study for or against evolution? The Evolution Revolution takes you on a rollicking ride through the past 3.8 billion years of life on Earth exploring the complex and often controversial issue of evolution. Join two of Australia's most accomplished popular science writers, palaeontologists Ken McNamara and John Long, on field trips that unearth some of the world's most significant fossils, from microbes to mighty mammals, including the feathered dinosaurs that make the link between reptiles and birds. The authors take us through the dramatic transition from fins to limbs, how the first insects flew, why dinosaurs got so big and how life has evolved into nearly every nook and cranny on Earth. The major fossil discoveries of the past decade they have documented comprehensively debunk the notion of intelligent design. Like it or not, along with dinosaurs, donkeys and dahlias we too came from bacteria that swam in the primordial soup. Impeccably researched, remarkably readable and punctuated with good humour, The Evolution Revolution puts a human face on the enterprise of palaeontology. It is essential reading for anyone interested in fossils and the big events in life history.
John Shaw Neilson: A life in letters
by Hewson, HelenThe selection begins in 1906 when A. G. Stephens started up The Bookfellow. From this crucial point, and throughout the ensuing thirty-five years, we follow Neilson the man—farming and working in the bush, maintaining caring relationships with his scattered family, and finally moving in 1928 to Melbourne and a job as an interdepartmental messenger with the Country Roads Board in Carlton. Helen Hewson has chosen and edited her material from more than a thousand existing letters, most of which have not been published previously. They cover family, social and publishing correspondence, in addition to the detailed letters about writing poetry which passed between Neilson and his three very different editorial advisers, A. G. Stephens, Robert H. Croll and James Devaney, his first biographer. Other writers of the period who corresponded with Neilson included Robert Bridges, Mary Gilmore, Christopher Brennan, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Hubert Church, Percival Serle and Frank Wilmot. The letters are full of revealing details about his association with many institutions and personalities-the Australian Literature Association, the Bread and Cheese Club, Coles Book Arcade, the Hill of Content, the Hawthorn Press, Blamire Young, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Mary Gilmore, Bernard O'Dowd, Frank Wilmot, Victor Kennedy and others. John Shaw Neilson: A Life in Letters establishes a social background and a literary context which ends any suggestion that Neilson is merely a 'bush poet' or 'a simple singer'. This complex poet participated in an intricate network of literary relationships and literary production, and it is only through reading the letters that one realises the degree to which he reflected on his own and other people's poetry and writing.
Straight-Out Man: F.W. Albrecht and Central Australian Aborigines
by Barbara HensonCentral Australia and its oldest mission, Hermannsburg, have long been a potent arena for the encounter between Australia's indigenous people and the European newcomers. The life of Hermannsburg's longest serving superintendent, F. W. Albrecht, vividly details much of that encounter, beginning in the 1920s when Aborigines were thought to be a dying race, with governments and public largely indifferent to their fate. Described by some as Australia's greatest missionary, Albrecht battled to gain secure reserves on traditional lands, and to foster Aboriginal education, employment and leadership. Prominent figures crossed his path: Flynn of the Inland,T. G. H. Strehlow—and Albert Namatjira, in whose life and painting Albrecht played a key role. Aboriginal recollections punctuate the story, providing a rare glimpse into Aboriginal thoughts and feelings for Albrecht himself and the events surrounding them. And at the centre is a man of great personal commitment, struggling with the painful unlearning of his own cultural certainties. This is subtle and compelling storytelling.
Class Act: Ending the Education Wars
by Maxine McKewMaxine McKew makes the case for a considered examination of the transformation that's now underway in some of Australia's most challenged schools. Through a series of conversations and case studies Class Act documents the precise strategies that are helping to change the culture of individual schools and to lift academic performance. Class Act invites reflection on one of our most pressing national dilemmas—how we replicate success across a fragmented educational system and reverse the decline in student performance.
Knowledge Solution: What place does history have in a post-truth world?
by Anna ClarkWhat can we learn from recurring events across the recent history of Australia, of colonisation, nationalism, racism, fighting on foreign shores, land booms, industrial campaigns and culture wars? Arguments about the discipline of Australian History, from thinkers across the ideological and historical spectrum, are distilled in these extracts and essays. The Knowledge Solution: Australian History is the second collection in a series that draws from the remarkable books published by Australia's oldest university press. Contributors include: Bain Attwood, Geoffrey Blainey, Michael Cannon, Raffaello Carboni, Manning Clark, Peter Cochrane, James Curran, Mark Davis, Alexandra Dellios, Richard Evans, Michele Grossman, Marcia Langton, Helen MacDonald, Stuart Macintyre, Janet McCalman, Mark McKenna, Lisa Palmer, Ray Parkin, Rachel Perkins, Robert Reynolds, John Rickard, Kathryn Shain, Peter Spearritt, Peter Sutton, Rebe Taylor, Maureen Tehan, David Unaipon, Jo Wainer, Stuart Ward, Ellen Warne, Myra Willard and Alexis Wright.
Profits of Doom: How vulture capitalism is swallowing the world: Updated Edition
by Antony LoewensteinVulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres. Mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations are invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, the cost of cheap clothing manufacturing and militarised private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it.Endorsements for Profits of Doom: 'In Australia, so often bereft of voices of dissent and courage, Antony Loewenstein's tenacious work stands out. Profits of Doom is a journey into a world of mutated economics and corrupt politics that we ignore at our peril.' - John Pilger, independent investigative journalist, author and documentary film-maker 'A great exercise in joining the dots, on essential terrain that too often is ignored. At a time when rapacious private interests campaign to destroy government - so they can cash in on its absence - Loewenstein reports from the frontline in an insidious war.' - Paul McGeough, author of Kill Khalid and chief foreign correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald 'The competition for the most depraved example of the predatory state capitalism of the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal era is fierce. In this chilling study, based on careful and courageous reporting, and illuminated with perceptive analysis, Antony Loewenstein presents many competitors for the prize, while also helping us understand all too well the saying that man is a wolf to man.' - Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at MIT and Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, political activist and author 'Profits of Doom nails the mad idea that the drive for profits will create global wellbeing. Antony Loewenstein delivers a spine-chilling account of the post 9/11 world taken over by vulture capitalism and its political cronies. And this is what we are voting for.' - Bob Brown, former leader of the Australian Greens and director of Sea Shepherd 'Antony Loewenstein's Profits of Doom is a powerful indictment of the corporations and governments across the globe whose unquenchable thirst for resources and power threaten the stability - perhaps even the very existence - of the planet. Loewenstein is no armchair academic or cubicle journalist. The stories in the book are the product of years embedded, in military and economic warzones, with the disempowered of the world, the people from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea and beyond who have the audacity and bravery to fight back against all odds. Loewenstein's keen sense of justice is evident on every page of this book as he gives voice to the voiceless and confronts the powerful. Profits of Doom is a devastating, incisive follow-up to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.' - Jeremy Scahill, international best-selling author of Dirty Wars and Blackwater
River: A Journey Through The Murray-Darling Basin
by Chris HammerIn The River, Chris Hammer takes us on a journey through Australia's heartland, following the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin, recounting his experiences, his impressions, and, above all, stories of the people he meets along the way. It's a journey punctuated with laughter, sadness and reflection. The River looks past the daily news reports and their sterile statistics, revealing the true impact of our rivers' decline on the people who live along their shores, and on the country as a whole. It's a tale that leaves the reader with a lingering sense of nostalgia for an Australia that may be fading away forever.