Readings.com.au: The Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction 2009 Shortlist

Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia Won the Battle for Evolution and Changed the World

Charles Darwin, HMS Beagle, 1831-36 Sent to Cambridge to join the clergy, the young Darwin emerged with a passion for naturalism and an invitation to sail on a naval survey vessel to South America, New Zealand and Australia. That journey would change his life, and the course of modern science.

Joseph Hooker, HMS Erebus, 1839-43 Inspired by Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, assistant-surgeon Hooker undertook his own dramatic voyage of exploration, from the Cook Islands to the Antarctic via the high society of Hobart. His botanical research added critical evidence ti Darwin's developing ideas on evolution, and he became Darwin's closest ally.

Thomas Huxley, HMS Rattlesnake, 1846-50 'Darwin's Bulldog' would become evolution's most effective champion against the clergy (coining the term agnostic'). As a brilliant, ascerbic young man, Huxley was determined to make his name through discoveries in marine biology in the Southern Hemisphere – but his most improbable discovery was that in Sydney he fell in love.

Alfred Wallace, the Amazon and South-East Asia, 1848-66 The least celebrated but perhaps the most brilliant of the four. During his many years in remote jungles as a professional specimen collector, the largely self-educated Wallace arrived independently at a theory of evolution by natural selection. He sent his idea to Darwin, precipitating a dramatic moral crisis and the writing of On the Origin of Species.

Darwin's Armanda is both a gripping adventure story and a brilliantly enlightening work of history, for the first time portraying the Darwinian revolution as a collective enterprise forged in Australasia. These four remarkable men did what one alone could not – combed the world for evidence of evolution by natural selection, and then fought tirelessly in the social and intellectual battle that followed its famous publication 150 years ago.

Together they changed the world.

House Of Exile

In 1933 the prominent author and political activist Heinrich Mann and his partner Nelly Kroeger were forced to flee Germany, finding refuge in France and later, in great despair, Los Angeles. There Nelly committed suicide in 1944 and Heinrich dies in 1950. Prior to their death they formed a unique clique of friends in exile, crossing paths with the likes of Joyce, Brecht, Kafka, Schwitters and Woolf. House of Exile is a unique work, pioneering a new literary form - the collective biography. This book is a must for all interested in the literary landscape of the 20th century and those with interest in the Bloomsbury, Algonquin set. National reviews expected.

Arabesques

One Sunday afternoon in a secluded valley in Normandy, Robert Dessaix chanced upon the castle where the famous French writer Andr Gide spent his childhood. Recalling the excitement Robert felt when he first read Gide as a teenager, he set off to recapture what it was that once drew him so strongly to this enigmatic figure.

The City's Outback

This honest and compelling book follows the fraught, exciting and painful process of getting to know ‘others’, in this case Australian Aborigines in the suburbs who are already ‘known’ through shocking images and worrying statistics. Gillian Cowlishaw has written a book about the intimacy of the encounter, the practical and ethical dilemmas of research and the fun of engagement in the city’s outback.