Readings Recommends: Politics
This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
$33.95 – Paperback / Princeton University Press
Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, this title presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and... Buy or find out more→
Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies
$39.95 – Paperback / Pluto Press
Examines the failure of the money-based global economy and how we might live in more sustainable, equitable ways. A textbook and manifesto for change. Buy or find out more→
Man-made World: Choosing Between Progress and Planet
$19.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
Across the globe, economists and environmentalists vie over who has the right response to climate change, population or food security issues. In this groundbreaking essay Charlton argues that our descendants will only thank us if... Buy or find out more→
Looking for the Light on the Hill
$32.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Today, the Australian Labor Party is in crisis. Reduced to minority government after just one term, and at rock bottom in the opinion polls, the party seems to be at a defining moment in its history. The perception of the... Buy or find out more→
Sideshow Dumbing Down Democracy
$32.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
When Lindsay Tanner resigned in 2010 as the ALP's federal minister for finance and member for Melbourne, having had an 18-year career as an MP, he notably managed to retire with his reputation for integrity intact. In Sideshow, he... Buy or find out more→
The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made Its Own Luck - and Could Now Throw it All Away
$29.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
Australia is an international success story, but can it stay on top? The Sweet Spot takes a provocative look at how Australia continues to ride the boom, and what might cause it to fall. Buy or find out more→
After Words: The Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches
$74.95 – Hardback / Allen & Unwin
A unique volume of speeches and occasional pieces written entirely by former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. Buy or find out more→
Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant
$32.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
'I'm so damn average that what I write resonates with people', Joe Bageant said in explaining how he gained a global following for his web-published essays. In 2004 at the age of 57, Joe sensed that the internet could give him... Buy or find out more→
Keynes Hayek The Clash That Defined Modern Economics
$35.00 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Can government fix a broken economy? Two great economists disagreed eighty years ago, and their debate dominates politics to this day. Buy or find out more→
Frontier Justice The Global Refugee Crisis And What To Do About It
$34.95 – Paperback / University of Queensland Press
‘A wonderfully readable, lucid account of the treatment of refugees in modern western democracies. Lamey writes superbly. Taking Hannah Arendt’s philosophy as its gravitational centre, it draws the reader to the inescapable... Buy or find out more→
Best Australian Political Cartoons 2011
$29.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
The year-in-review as witnessed by our funniest and most subversive political cartoonists. Buy or find out more→
Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy
$29.95 – Paperback / John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Philosophy starts with questions, but attempts at answers are just as important, and these answers require reasoned argument. Cutting through notoriously dense and verbose philosophical prose, this book sets 100 famous and... Buy or find out more→
Grand Pursuit: A Story of Economic Genius
$60.00 – Hardback / HarperCollins Publishers
Sylvia Nasar, the author of the phenomenal bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through the epic story of the making of modern economics, and how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material... Buy or find out more→
Maonomics Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do
$32.95 – Paperback / UWA Publishing
The end of the Cold War was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over communism. In Maonomics, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and... Buy or find out more→
Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan The
$32.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
A true-life Catch-22 set in the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by one of the region's longest-serving correspondents. Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent - she is candid,... Buy or find out more→
An Unwinnable War: Australia in Afghanistan
$40.00 – Paperback / Melbourne University Press
This book charts for the first time the decisions, motives and influences that carried Australia into Afghanistan. Based on interviews with dozens of key political and military figures in Australia and abroad, the book looks at... Buy or find out more→
Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight
$24.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
In this title, the author provides tools for confronting adversaries of all kinds. Using eight conflicts drawn from history (including fascinating examples such as Churchill's approach to Hitler, and Nelson Mandela's response to... Buy or find out more→
The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder, and the Search for Truth in the Arab World
$32.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
The Arab Islamic world is known for religious extremism, ethnic conflicts, and, now, the overthrow of seemingly unshakable regimes - but it's become clear that our understanding of the region remains incomplete. This a timely and... Buy or find out more→
Deadly Waters: Inside the Hidden World of Somali Pirates
$29.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
The recent gangs of daring, ragtag pirates off the coast of Somalia, hijacking huge ships owned by international conglomerates, have brought the scourge of piracy into the modern era. The world sees nothing but opportunistic bands... Buy or find out more→
Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond 9/11
$39.95 – Paperback / Macmillan Education Australia
This is a version of the war on terror that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movement. Buy or find out more→
Conversations with Power: What Great Presidents and Prime Ministers Can Teach Us About Leadership
$24.95 – Paperback / Palgrave Macmillan
Till distils the collective wisdom of well-known former world-leaders into key lessons for aspiring leaders of the future. With a list of interviewees including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Martti Ahtisaari, these... Buy or find out more→
Infernal Triangle
$33.00 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
Writing on recent events in the Middle East from Australia's best known foreign correspondent - including the devastating Gaza Flotilla incident. Buy or find out more→
Indignez-vous
$9.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Stephane Hessel, Resistance fighter and concentration-camp survivor, tells the young of today that their lives and liberties are worth fighting for. Remembering the ideals for which he risked his life, while never forgetting the... Buy or find out more→
Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Climate Frontiers
$36.99 – Paperback / Melbourne University Press
Jo Chandler sets out on a quest that takes her across the Antarctic ice, under the seas and through the tropical rainforests of far north Queensland. Her mission is to explore one of the defining mysteries of our age - climate... Buy or find out more→
Islamic Activists: The Anti-enlightenment Democrats
$41.00 – Paperback / Pluto Press
A thorough explanation of Islamic scholarship on democracy, which shows that enlightenment values are not essential to democratic societies. Buy or find out more→
No Nonsense Guide To Climate Change
$10.00 – Paperback
Just as the need for action on climate change becomes more urgent and overwhelming, the campaign to deny that humans are causing it has gained more traction. This completely new book meets the sceptics head on, offering a guide... Buy or find out more→
Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force
$24.95 – Paperback / Pluto Press
Noam Chomsky analyses US foreign policy in the Middle East in the 10 years since 9/11. Includes 3 previously unpublished essays. Buy or find out more→
Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
$23.00 – Paperback / Taylor & Francis Ltd
Is more economic growth the solution? Will it deliver prosperity and well-being for a global population projected to reach nine billion? Written by a top sustainability adviser to the UK government, this book makes a case against... Buy or find out more→
The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today
$29.95 – Paperback / I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
How should Jews respond to an age of militant Zionism and resurgent anti-Semitism? This book offers a fresh reading of Jewish history, arguing that the narrative of relentless woe and suffering popularised by nineteenth-century... Buy or find out more→
Great Crises of Capitalism
$29.95 – Paperback / Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd
In Great Crises of Capitalism, Peter summarises four hundred years of capitalist progress, including the costly setbacks from major wars and repeated episodes of financial instability. Buy or find out more→
Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
$24.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
Reveals such things as why you are more likely to be killed walking drunk than driving drunk; how a prostitute is more likely to sleep with a policeman than be arrested by one; why terrorists might be easier to track down than you... Buy or find out more→
Monsoon The Indian Ocean And The Battle For Supremacy In Thetwenty First Century
$34.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
Kaplan shows how the rise of India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia and Oman, among others, represents a crucial shift in the global balance of power. It is in 'Monsoon Asia' that the fight for democracy, energy independence and... Buy or find out more→
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America
$35.00 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Beneath America's outer appearance of sanity and democracy, there is a machine devoted to pure theft and political despotism. Matt Taibbi tells the story of the people and institutions that have taken over America, centring on... Buy or find out more→
No Ordinary Deal Unmasking The Transpacific Free Trade Agreement
$39.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been billed as a deal fit for the 21st century. Experts examine its geopolitics and security context, the costs of making concessions to the US simply to achieve a deal, and the contradictions of... Buy or find out more→
Iran: The Looming Crisis: Can the West Live with Iran's Nuclear Threat?
$27.00 – Paperback / Profile Books Ltd
Iran: the Looming Crisis is a new and extensively revised edition of Emanuele Ottolenghi's well received Under a Mushroom Cloud (2009). Fully updated to take account of the current diplomatic stalemate,this uncompromising analysis... Buy or find out more→
Political Awakenings Conversations With History
$39.95 – Paperback / UWA Publishing
As a kid, Noam Chomsky handed out the Daily Mirror at his uncles newsstand on 72nd Street, inadvertently finding himself in a buzzing intellectual and political hub for European immigrants in New York. Buy or find out more→
Quarterly Essay 40 George Megalogenis On The 2010 Election
$19.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
In the aftermath of the 2010 election, the author considers what has happened to politics in Australia. The Hawke, Keating and Howard years were the era of bold reform; the present seems to be the ear of power without purpose Buy or find out more→
Australian Prime Ministers
$39.95 – Hardback / New Holland Publishers
Written to commemorate the centenary of Federation, this book is a fascinating look at how and why we have chosen the 25 leaders who have taken Australia from Federation into the 21st century. Buy or find out more→