Australian Studies

ISBN: 9781743791608
Title: 1787 : THE LOST CHAPTERS OF AUSTRALIAS BEGINNINGS
Author: BRODIE NICK
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

For over 200 years Australia’s official history has focused on English colonisation and ‘discovery’, with tales of British explorers and first generation white Australians navigating the vast and unfriendly land. But what of the millennia before the English claimed Australia as their own and wrote the history books. 1787 traces the journey of Australia before the infamous 1788 date, to explore just how ‘discovered’ the southern continent was by not only the Indigenous Australians who had lived and prospered for thousands of years, but also the sailors, traders, fishermen and many others who had visited our shores.

This is not about voyages of ‘discovery’, cartography, geography, or hero-captains and their sailing ship adventures. This is a bigger history—of the rise and fall of empires, the shifts in global economies, and their impact on Australia. By charting the encounters with Australia and its original people by several major groups of visitors, primarily the Portuguese, Dutch, Malay, French, and British from the late Middle Ages, 1787 reveals the stories of first encounters between Indigenous Australians and foreigners, placing Indigenous Australians back into our known history rather than a timeless pre-historical one. It’s a fascinating story that shifts focus away from post-colonial history and engages the reader in the eventful and lively stories of Australia as a vast and active land participating in a global history.

Imprint: Hardie Grant Books
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760528218
Title: ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS : A History since 1788
Author: BROOME RICHARD
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

'In this book Richard Broome has managed an enviable achievement. The vast sweeping story of Aboriginal Australia from 1788 is told in his typical lucid and imaginative style . This is an important work of great scholarship, passion and imagination.' - Professor Lynette Russell, Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University

In the creation of any new society, there are winners and losers. So it was with Australia as it grew from a colonial outpost to an affluent society.

Richard Broome tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians: those who lost most in the early colonial struggle for power. Surveying over two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, he shows how white settlers steadily supplanted the original inhabitants, from the shining coasts to inland deserts, by sheer force of numbers, disease, technology and violence. He also tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation, and traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of a settler society to a more central place in modern Australia.

Broome's Aboriginal Australians has long been regarded as the most authoritative account of black-white relations in Australia. This fifth edition continues the story, covering the impact of the Northern Territory Intervention, the mining boom in remote Australia, the Uluru Statement, the resurgence of interest in traditional Aboriginal knowledge and culture, and the new generation of Aboriginal leaders.

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781742232621
Title: ADELAIDE
Author: GOLDSWORTHY KERRYN
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A painting, a frog cake, a landmark, a statue, a haunting newspaper photograph, a bucket of peaches, pink shorts in parliament, concert tickets, tourist maps.

Kerryn Goldsworthy's Adelaide is a museum of sorts, a personal guide to the city through a collection of iconic objects. Adelaide navigates her southern home, discovering its identifying curios and passing them to the reader to touch, inspect and marvel at. These objects explore the beautiful, commonplace, dark and contradictory history of Adelaide: the heat, the wine, the weirdness, the progressive politics and the rigid colonial formality, the sinister horrors and the homey friendliness. They all paint a lively portrait of her home city as remembered, lived in, thought about, missed, loved, hated, laughed at, travelled to and from, seen from afar and close up by assorted writers, citizens and visitors but mainly as it exists in her memory and imagination.

Imprint: Newsouth Books
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760899455
Title: AGAINST ALL ODDS : The inside account of the Thai cave rescue and the courageous Australians at the heart of it
Author: CHALLEN CRAIG / HARRIS RICHARD
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

'I just want to warn you. You're going to dive to the end of the cave. You're going to see these kids. They're all looking healthy and happy and smiley. Then, you're going to swim away, and they're probably all going to die.'

In June 2018, for seventeen days, the world watched and held its breath as the Wild Boars soccer team were trapped deep in a cave in Thailand. Marooned beyond flooded cave passages after unexpected rains, they were finally rescued, one-by-one, against almost impossible odds, by an international cave-diving team which included Australians Dr Richard Harris and Dr Craig Challen.

These two men were chosen for their medical expertise and cave diving knowledge, but this dangerous rescue asked so much more of them. They had to remain calm under extreme pressure and intense scrutiny, adapt to constantly changing circumstances and importantly, build trust among the rescue team and with the young boys and their coach, whose lives were in their hands.
Here is the story of these two Australian men who became international heroes - it is a story of determination, cunning and triumph that will long be remembered.

Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $24.99

ISBN: 9781760895242
Title: ARSONIST : A Mind on Fire - Indie Book of the Year 2019 - Non-Fiction
Author: HOOPER CHLOE
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn't know.

The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the strange puzzle of his mind. It is also the story of fire in this country, and of a community that owed its existence to that very element. The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species - understanding its abuse will define our future.

A powerful real-life thriller written with Hooper's trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonist is a reminder that in an age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers.

Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $22.99

ISBN: 9781743054826
Title: ASHTONS HOTEL : The Journal of William Baker Ashton First Governor of the Adelaide Gaol
Author: HARRIS RHONDDA
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

South Australia was meant to be the perfect colony: free settlers, no crime, and no mental illness. But good intentions go awry. Within three years plans for a permanent gaol were well established, along with a governor to oversee it: William Baker Ashton. This is the first published edition of his journal.

Imprint: WAKEFIELD
RRP: $39.95

ISBN: 9781921867606
Title: AUSTRALIA : A Cultural History
Author: RICKARD JOHN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: NOVEMBER 2017 NEW RELEASE

John Rickard’s Australia: A Cultural History, first published in 1988, is still the only short history of Australia from a cultural perspective. It has also acquired a reputation as an introduction to the development of Australian society and was listed by the historian and public intellectual John Hirst in his ‘First XI: The best Australian history books’.

Although arranged chronologically, this book is not a chronicle, still less a laborious detailing of governors and governments: rather, it focuses on the transmission of values, beliefs, and customs amongst the diverse mix of peoples who are today’s Australians. The story begins with sixty thousand years of Aboriginal presence and their continuing material and spiritual relationship with the land, and takes the reader through the turbulent years of British colonisation and the emergence, through prosperity, war, and depression, of the cultural accommodations which have been distinctively Australian. This third edition concludes with a critical review of the challenges facing contemporary Australia and warns readers that ‘we may get the future we deserve’.

Imprint: MONASH UNIVERSITY PRESS
RRP: $39.95

ISBN: 9781460753187
Title: AUSTRALIA DAY
Author: GRANT STAN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

As uncomfortable as it is, we need to reckon with our history. On January 26, no Australian can really look away. There are the hard questions we ask of ourselves on Australia Day.

Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends.

In this book, Australia Day, his long-awaited follow up to Talking to My Country, Stan talks about reconciliation and the indigenous struggle for belonging and identity in Australia, and about what it means to be Australian. A sad, wise, beautiful, reflective and troubled book, Australia Day asks the questions that have to be asked, that no else seems to be asking. Who are we? What is our country? How do we move forward from here?



Praise for Talking to My Country:

'A story so essential and salutary to this place that it should be given out free at the ballot box' The Australian
'Deeply disturbing, profoundly moving' Hobart Mercury
'Grant will be an important voice in shaping this nation' The Saturday Paper

Talking to My Country won the 2016 Walkley Book Award and the Special Award at the 2016 Heritage Awards, and was shortlisted in the 2016 Queensland Literary Awards, the Nib Waverley Library Awards and the 2017 ABIA Awards.

Imprint: Harper Collins
RRP: $34.99

ISBN: 9781743534823
Title: AUSTRALIA REIMAGINED : Towards a More Compassionate, Less Anxious Society
Author: MACKAY HUGH
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A courageous and passionately argued treatise on how we harness the power of the new era to create a stronger, fairer society.

Australia's unprecedented run of economic growth has failed to deliver a more stable or harmonious society. Individualism is rampant. Income inequality is growing. Public education is under-resourced. The gender revolution is stalling. We no longer trust our major institutions or our political leaders. We are more socially fragmented, more anxious, more depressed, more overweight, more medicated, deeper in debt and increasingly addicted - whether to our digital devices, drugs, pornography or 'stuff'.

Yet esteemed social researcher Hugh Mackay remains optimistic. Twenty-five years ago, he revolutionised Australian social analysis with the publication of Reinventing Australia. Now he takes another unflinching look at us and offers some compelling proposals for a more compassionate and socially cohesive Australia. You might not agree with everything he suggests, but you'll find it hard to get some of his ideas out of your head.

Argued with intelligence and passion, this book is essential reading for everyone who loves Australia enough to want to make it a better place for all of us.

Imprint: MACMILLAN
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781486311637
Title: AUSTRALIAN BIRD NAMES : Origins and Meanings
Author: FRASER IAN / GRAY JEANNIE
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

This Second Edition of Australian Bird Names is a completely updated checklist of Australian birds and the meanings behind their common and scientific names, which may be useful, useless or downright misleading! For each species, the authors examine the many-and-varied common names and full scientific name, with derivation, translation and a guide to pronunciation. Stories behind the name are included, as well as relevant aspects of biology, conservation and history. Original descriptions, translated by the authors, have been sourced for many species.

As well as being a book about names, this is a book about the history of the ever-developing understanding of birds, about the people who contributed to this understanding and, most of all, about the birds themselves. This Second Edition has been revised to follow current taxonomy and understanding of the relationships between families, genera and species. It contains new taxa, updated text and new vagrants and will be interesting reading for anyone with a love of birds, words or the history of Australian biology and bird-watching.

Imprint: CSIRO PUBLICATIONS
RRP: $54.99

ISBN: 9780143782377
Title: AUSTRALIAN DESPERADOES : The Incredible Story of How Australian Gangsters Terrorised California
Author: SMYTH TERRY
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

They were the Australians who made American history. In the roaring days of the 1850s California gold rush, San Francisco was the most dangerous town in America, made so by a notorious criminal gang known as the Sydney Coves.

The Coves – San Francisco's first organised-crime gang – were Australians: men and women with criminal careers in Australia who had come to the US, mostly illegally, during the gold rush. The Coves had come not to dig for gold but to unleash a crime wave the likes of which America had never seen. Robbery, murder, arson and extortion were the Coves' stock-in-trade, and it was said that the leader of the gang, Jim Stuart, had killed more men than any man in California.

The gang’s base, in the waterfront district, came to be known as Sydney Town. The area was a no-go zone for police – many of whom were in Stuart’s pocket anyway – so, just as Capone would one day rule Chicago, the Coves ruled San Francisco. And more than once, just to make sure there was no doubt that Frisco was their town, they burnt it down.

The Coves were hated and feared by the respectable citizens of San Francisco – who derisively called them 'Sydney Ducks' but never to their faces – and, realising that the forces of the law could not, or would not, take them on, decided lynch law was the only solution, and formed a vigilante group.

The streets of San Francisco became a battlefield as the Coves and the vigilantes fought for control of the city, with gunfights and lynchings almost daily spectacles as the police stood idly by. Jim Stewart was arrested in Sacramento for killing a sheriff, but escaped to be involved in one the most celebrated cases of mistaken identity in the annals of American crime. When the smoke cleared, the Coves' reign of terror was over. Some were strung up from storefronts in the street, some fell in a deadly gunfight with Jonathan R. Davis, one of the fastest guns in the west, others escaped capture and returned to Australia.

The story of the Sydney Coves is little-known, fascinating and well worth telling.

Imprint: EBURY
RRP: $34.99

ISBN: 9781486307241
Title: AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE : Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird
Author: KAPLAN GISELA
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

An insight into the cognition, communication and social structure of this iconic Australian bird.

Imprint: CSIRO PUBLICATIONS
RRP: $45.00