Readings Recommends: Australian Studies
First Australians (Unillustrated Edition)
$29.99 (Trade paperback / Miegunyah Press )
This book is the dramatic story of the collision of two worlds that created contemporary Australia. Told from the perspective of Australia’s first people, it vividly brings to life the events that unfolded when the oldes... More »
Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened Rome
$29.95 (Paperback book / One Day Hill )
Father Peter Kennedy, of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in South Brisbane, was sacked by his bishop in February of 2009 – essentially for stretching the bounds and definitions of community to include non-Catholics, gay and... More »
Great Australian Speeches
$34.95 (Paperback book / Pier 9 )
Great Australian Speeches brings together a diverse and often moving collection of over 50 speeches ranging from colonial times to the present day. Some have resonated with a power enough to shape the nation; others enca... More »
Hoax Nation
$18.00 (Paperback book / Arcade )
Not for nothing did Mark Twain famously describe Australian history as ‘reading like the most beautiful lies’. But when he uttered those words, Twain didn’t know the half of it.
In this cook’s tour of 2500 years of... More »
Fantastic Dreaming: The Archeology Of An Aboriginal Mission
$49.95 (Paperback book / Altamira Press )
From their earliest encounters, European settlers have evaluated Australian Aboriginal people on the basis of their material culture. This book shows how colonial practices of controlling and transforming Indigenous peop... More »
Why You Are Australian: A Letter to my Children
$29.99 (Hardcover book / Harper Collins )
Nikki Gemmell is the author of the novels The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book of Rapture, and of the non-fiction works Shiver and Cleave and Pleasure. Her books explore ideas about sex, women, friendship, motherhood, ch... More »
Review
Up From The Mission: Selected Writings
$34.95 (Trade paperback / Black Inc )
Up from the Mission charts the life and thoughts of Noel Pearson, from his early days as a native title lawyer to his position today as one of Australia’s most influential figures.
This is writing of great passion and ... More »
Review
The Dreaming And Other Essays
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Black Inc )
This is a collection of work by W.E.H. Stanner, one of Australia's finest essayists. A superb anthropologist, he was both perceptive and prophetic about the Aboriginal people he knew; yet his work has been out of print a... More »
Our Girls: Aussie Pin-Ups Of The 40s And 50s
$18.00 (Paperback book / Arcade )
Meet feisty Adelie Hurley – daughter of famous Antarctic and war photographer Frank Hurley – who worked both sides of the lens; read about Dorothy Leckie, at eleven years old surely the youngest Pix cover girl; and see t... More »
A Place To Remember: A History of the Shrine of Rememberance Melbourne
$59.95 (Hardcover book / Cambridge Univ Pres )
In 1934 The Shrine of Remembrance was dedicated to the 114,000 Victorian servicemen that served in World War I. Bruce Scates traces the history of this striking monument in the changing physical and cultural landscape. H... More »
The Men Who Killed Qantas
$34.95 (Trade paperback / Heinemann )
Matthew Benns details the history of Qantas and examines the myths that surround its status as an Australian icon. From the boardroom to the hangar room, he investigates the decisions that have brought the engineers batt... More »
Sydney Harbour: A History
$49.95 (Hardcover book / New South Books )
In 1925 D.H. Lawrence described a ‘huge, restless, modern Sydney, whose million inhabitants seem to slip like fishes from one side of the harbour to the other’. What was true then had been the case for centuries before, ... More »
Side By Side: A Season with Collingwood
$49.95 (Hardcover book / Geoff Slattery )
Peter Ryan has spent the 2009 season in the inner sanctum of the Collingwood Football Club. Author of *The Australian Game of Football*, Ryan examines the pressure, passions and personalities that make it one of the favo... More »
Letters Home: From Gallipoli and Beyond
$35.00 (Hardcover book / Allen & Unwin )
Sapper Hubert Anthony was a very young man of very humble beginnings when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in October 1914 as a 17 year old. He wrote deeply affectionate letters home to his mother in outback ... More »
Frontier, Race, Nation: Henry Reynolds & Australian History
$39.95 (Hardcover book / Aust Scholarly Pub )
It is often said that Henry Reynolds has altered Australian history, and this book illuminates the extraordinary significance of his personal and public roles as historian, writer and commentator. By expanding and challe... More »
Capital: Melbourne at the Centre of the World 1901-1927
$39.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )
In 1901 the Australian colonies came together to form a new nation which, for the next twenty-six years, was governed from Melbourne. It was a small city, a place where people knew each other—not just the people who matt... More »
Arthur Phillip Australias First Governer
$44.95 (Hardcover book / Woodslane )
Over the two centuries since his appointment, commentators have been as surprised at the choice of Arthur Phillip as some were at the time (the First Lord of the Admiralty, to mention only the most distinguished critic).... More »
Inferno: The Day Victoria Burned
$39.95 (Hardcover book / Slattery Media Group )
The events of Black Saturday on February 7, 2009, produced the worst natural disaster Australia has ever seen. The extreme weather conditions, and the fact that the state was tinder dry from ongoing drought, created an i... More »
Burn: The Epic Story Of Bushfire In Australia
$35.00 (Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin )
In the state of Victoria, the month of January of the year 1939 came towards the end of a long drought which had been aggravated by a severe hot, dry summer season... Dry heat and hot, dry winds worked upon a land alread... More »
Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin
$69.95 (Hardcover book / Lantern Books )
This is a joint biography of architects Walter Burley Griffin, of Canberra fame, and his wife, Marion Mahony Griffin. After their formative years in Chicago - the centre of the Prairie School of architecture made most fa... More »
The Australian Light Horse
$50.00 (Hardcover book / Hachette )
The Australian Light Horse was a unique force, first raised during the Boer War, and then reformed for World War I. Most of the men were from the outback, had a special bond with their horses (which were all brought from... More »
The Capitalism Delusion
$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Books )
The collapse of capitalism in 2008 incensed Bob Ellis to write this book in a white heat in one month! He gives facts, figures, arguments and anecdotes to show the GFC was inevitable.
The Capitalism Delusion is sobering ... More »
Disasters That Changed Australia
$34.99 (Paperback book / Melb Univ Press )
Australian history is full of disasters. Some are natural but many more are man-made, results of individual or collective stupidity, reckless decisions, or greed.
In Disasters that Changed Australia, Richard Evans nomina... More »
Bottersnikes And Other Lost Things: A Celebration of Australian Illustrated Children’s Books
$59.99 (Hardcover book / Miegunyah Press )
Lazy Bottersnikes in outback rubbish tips, Sir Pronoun's dilemma about standing in Miss Noun's place and the story of how Jack built a house, a hut or a shack are all to be found in this treasury of Australian children's... More »
The Making Of Julia Gillard
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )
From prize-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent comes the first biography of the woman most likely to be Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
Including interviews with Gillard and those close to her, K... More »
Australians: Origins To Eureka
$59.95 (Hardcover book / Allen & Unwin )
The first volume of a unique history of Australia where people are always centre stage, from bestselling author Thomas Keneally who brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.
Thomas K... More »
The March Of Patriots: The Struggle For Modern Australia
$59.99$34.95 (Hardcover book / Melb Univ Press )
The March of Patriots looks at the creation of a modern Australia during the 1991–2007 era of Paul Keating and John Howard.
Keating and Howard were the first two Australian prime ministers of the globalised age. They w... More »
Sea Of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )
Two ships set out in search of a missing continent: the St Jean-Baptiste, a French merchant ship commanded by Jean de Surville, and the Endeavour, a small British naval vessel captained by James Cook. Distinguished histo... More »
Men Of Mont St Quentin
$35.00 (Trade paperback / Scribe Publications )
At exactly 1.30 p.m. on 1 September 1918, the dozen men of Nine Platoon, 21st Australian Infantry Battalion, rose from Elsa Trench and walked across a weedy beet-field toward the German defenders of Mont St Quentin. With... More »
The Riddle Of Father Hackett
$39.95 (Paperback book / National Lib Of Aust )
In 1922, at the height of Ireland’s tragic civil war, Irish Jesuit William Hackett was transferred to Australia by his order. Assigned to a minor teaching post, this seemingly unremarkable newcomer caused no stir. Yet Fa... More »
Sense And Nonsense In Australian History
$24.95 (Paperback book / Black Inc )
Sense and Nonsense in Australian History represents a lifetime’s original reflection by Australia’s most innovative and penetrating historian. In these essays, John Hirst blends the intimacy of the insider with the objec... More »
A Concise History Of Australia (Third Edition)
$37.95 (Paperback book / Cambridge Univ Pres )
Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the ne... More »
The Politics of Suffering
$34.99 (Trade paperback / Melb Univ Press )
Winner of the 2009 Manning Clarke House Cultural Award.
Have Australian Aboriginal communities become places of increased suffering because of the progressive policies of the 1970s–2000s? In this provocative book, Austra... More »
Screening for Good Health: The Complete Guide to Health Screening and Immunisation in Australia
$49.99 (Paperback book / Melb Univ Press )
The definitive book on preventative health options available within Australia, this guide explains how screening works in Australia and outlines the tests that are available to everyone.
An alphabetised listing of illnes... More »
Killing: Misadventures in Violence
$34.99 (Trade paperback / Melb Univ Press )
How hard it it to kill, as a hunter on a Kangaroo cull, as a worker in an abbatoir, as an executioner in a prison, as a soldier at war?
Ninety years after World War I, police in a Victorian country town uncover the mummi... More »
Review
The Encyclopedia Of Religion In Australia
$140.25 (Hardcover book / Cambridge Univ Pres )
Huge lavish hardcover telling the reader everything they need to know about the controversies and diversity of religion and belief in Australia. This epic achievement is a landmark in Australian reference publishing from... More »
Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History
$54.99 (Hardcover book / Miegunyah Press )
Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History tells the fascinating story of the only treaties ever made in Australia. It contemplates why these agreements were forged, how the Aboriginal people understood thei... More »
The Water Dreamers: How Water and Silence Shaped Australia
$34.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )
The long-awaited history that will change the way Australians think about their country.
The Water Dreamers is the story of the settlement of Australia: of the scarcity of water and the need to fill an imagined silence w... More »
A Study In Black and White: The Aborigines In Australian History
$29.95 (Paperback book / Rosenberg Publishing )
Many changes have occurred in Aboriginal history in the last twenty years. This means not only that history has continued to happen since 1988. It also means that there have been sharp challenges to our understanding of ... More »
Redemption of a Slave Ship: The James Matthews
$45.00 (Hardcover book / Western Australian Museum )
In 1807 the Atlantic slave trade was made illegal. However, over the next fifty years, millions of kidnapped Africans continued to be transported unwillingly to the sugar plantations of the New World. The James Matthews,... More »
The Bardia Myth: Reality And The Heirs Of Anzacs
$59.95 (Hardcover book / Nsw University Pr )
On 3 January 1941 Australian soldiers led an assault against the Italian colonial fortress town of Bardia. Two days later, after 55 hours of heavy fighting, the position fell to the Australians in a resounding victory. A... More »
Monument For The Flooding Of Royal Park
$29.95 (Paperback book / Schwartz )
Monument For The Flooding Of Royal Park is the elaboration of the video work of the same title into the form of a book. This video work evolved through a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and was exhib... More »
Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia
$39.99 (Paperback book / Miegunyah Press )
Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia explores the impact of the Darwinian revolution on Australian arts and sciences. Beginning with the voyage of HMS Beagle and concluding with contemporary artists exploring... More »
Outback The Discovery Of Australias Interior
$24.95 (Paperback book / Business And Publishing )
In 1800, while the coast of Australia had finally been charted, the vast interior of the continent, and routes across its deserts and mountains from north to south and east to west lay all undiscovered. By 1874, its land... More »
When Wool Was King The Inside Story Of Australias Wool Industry
$29.99 (Paperback book / R M Williams Publishing )
The Australian wool industry has seen boom times and busts, wars and droughts, political upheaval and market manipulation. Alec Morrison lived through it all. When Wool was King is his story. Working his way up from jack... More »
Quarterly Essay 35: Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia
$16.95 (Paperback book / Black Inc )
Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have promised an education revolution, but what might that really mean? In Quarterly Essay 35, one of Australia’s most original and provocative thinkers turns his attention to the question of... More »
Quarterly Essay 34: Stop At Nothing
$16.95 (Paperback book / Black Inc )
What does Malcolm Turnbull stand for? In Stop at Nothing Annabel Crabb tells the story of the man who would be prime minister. Based on extensive interviews with Turnbull as well as those who have worked with him, this i... More »