A humorous Jewish memoir of life in the Soviet Sixties

 

Rare book. Mint condition. HB. 307pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Read more about this book here.

SOLD Memoir of a young woman from Somalia

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 368pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This is the extraordinary first-person account of a young woman's coming of age in Somalia and her struggles against the obligations and strictures of family and society.  

By the time she is nine, Aman has undergone a ritual circumcision ceremony; at eleven, her innocent romance with a white boy leads to a murder; at thirteen she is given away in an arranged marriage to a stranger.  

Aman eventually runs away to Mogadishu, where her beauty and rebellious spirit leads her to the decadent demimonde of white colonialists.  

Hers is a world in which women are both chattel and freewheeling entrepreneurs, subject to the caprices of male relatives, yet keenly aware of the loopholes that lead to freedom.  

Aman is an astonishing history, opening a window onto traditional Somali life and the universal quest for female self-awareness.

A century of advertising in Australia

 

Mint condition. PB. 312pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

But Wait,There's More ... provides a unique insight into the place of advertising in Australian society.

Catchy phrases, chants at cricket matches and jingles which consumers just can't get out of their heads-the best advertising stands out because it is creative, clever and, most importantly, funny.

Advertising in Australia can be traced back to the early 1900s, when spruikers wooed the public with appeals to vanity, health and patriotism. By the time Australia had endured two World Wars, the Depression, economic downturns, political upheavals and direct confrontations, the advertising industry had not only survived, but had become a multi-billion dollar industry, with an enormous influence over people's everyday lives and their spending habits.

But Wait, There's More. is the first detailed history of the Australian advertising industry, exploring its development over the course of the twentieth century from a disorganised group of individuals selling newspaper space to a multi-billion dollar enterprise run by giant transnationals. It follows the admen and adwomen who worked to convert their audiences into consumers and examines their ongoing quest for legitimacy in the face of new technologies and an increasingly sophisticated and media-savvy audience.

A journey through Australia's underclass

 

Excellent condition. PB. 246pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

For three decades award-winning journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen has written compelling accounts of the lives of the working poor and the downside of Australia's 'miracle economy'. In late 2001, she decided to join them. Over a period of ten months Elisabeth went undercover and worked as a factory hand, an office cleaner, a retail worker and a kitchen hand, moving from state to state and attempting to live on her meagre earnings. Caustic, courageous and often funny, this is a unique view of class, power and middle management seen from the other side of the serving counter, and a very personal experience of what it is like to be under-paid, under-appreciated and part of Australia's emerging underclass.

Personal stories behind China's economic miracle

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. 384pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Jane Hutcheon's became the ABC's China correspondent in 1995, she began a journey through an ancient and intriguing culture that is undergoing rapid change. Though China has transformed itself into a heady capitalistic republic, the country's new facade covers up a multitude of the same old problems.

Judith Lucy discovers her soul

 

Mint condition. Signed by the author. PB. 256pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

• A book about life that discusses liquor and lovemaking as much as it does the point of it all. 
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• Judith Lucy has looked everywhere for happiness. Growing up a Catholic, she thought about becoming a nun, and later threw herself into work, finding a partner and getting off her face. Somehow, none of that worked. 
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• So lately, she's been asking herself the big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? What happens when we die? And why can't she tell you which of her friends has herpes, but not what they believe in? 
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• In her first volume of memoir, the bestselling The Lucy Family Alphabet, Judith to work out her parents. 
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• In Drink, Smoke, Pass Out, she tries to find out if there's more to life than wanting to suck tequila out of Ryan Gosling's navel. With disarming frankness and classic dry wit, she reviews the major paths of her life and, alarmingly, finds herself on a journey. 
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• 'A well written, poignant, moving and naturally humorous story of one forty-something's attempt to get her life together.' Australian Bookseller + Publisher 
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• 'An often hilarious, at times disarming account of her ongoing search for spiritual awakening.' Madison 
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• 'Can she write? Heck, yeah . . . At least one laugh per page - that's about 245 laughs' Herald Sun

SOLD Historical fiction by a Saudi dissident

 

SOLD

Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 640pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

"Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, this novel records the encounter between Americans and Arabs in an unnamed Gulf emirate in the 1930s. As oil exploration begins, the destruction of an oasis community amounts to "a breaking off, like death, that nothing and no one could ever heal." The promise inherent in the creation of a city divided into Arab and American sectors provides the novel's most striking revelation: here not merely two cultures, but two ages, meet and stand apart. Alternatively amused and bewildered by the Americans and their technological novelties, the Arabs sense in their accommodation to modernity the betrayal of their own traditions. Highly recommended, if only for its cross-cultural insights." Library Journal, L.M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"The only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country." Edward W. Said

Hilarious autiographical stories from one of Australia's best female comics

 

Mint condition. PB. 240pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Should we bring back the Visible Panty Line (because wearing a g - string is sexual harassment)? Are you allergic to your friends? What is the difference between having a child and passing a camel through the eye of a needle? Why will no man ever appreciate anything a woman achieves academically unless she does it in the nude? 

Some people have an extraordinary way of viewing the ordinary. This book is a collection of wit, poignancy and silliness from one such person.

A moving Holocaust biography

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. 254pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This account of a teacher in Austria—a friend of Freud and one of the millions of victims of the Holocaust—is “beautifully written and deeply moving” (Joyce Carol Oates).

Peter Singer’s Pushing Time Away is a rich and loving portrait of the author’s grandfather, David Oppenheim, from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of his life in a concentration camp during the Second World War. Oppenheim, a Jewish teacher of Greek and Latin living in Vienna, was a contemporary and friend of both Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. With his wife, Amalie, one of the first women to graduate in math and physics from the University of Vienna, he witnessed the waning days of the Hapsburg Empire, the nascence of psychoanalysis, the grueling years of the First World War, and the rise of anti-Semitism and Nazism.

Told partly through Oppenheim’s personal papers, including letters to and from his wife and children, Pushing Time Away blends history, anecdote, and personal investigation to pull the story of one extraordinary life out of the millions lost to the Holocaust.

A contemporary philosopher known for such works as The Life You Can Save and Animal Liberation, Singer offers a true story of his own family with “all the power of a great novel . . . resonant of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink or An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro” (The New York Times).

Classic Australian comedic fiction

 

Very good condition. PB. 299pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

"I basically blew my university days in the pursuit of one girl."

Richard Derrington has been trashed, the sort of tragic thrashing when the take-out place's caller ID identifies you as your ex, the kind of thorough trashing that causes you to invent spontaneous trips to Melbourne and makes heartbreaking moments of junk mail. That may be why he's distracted and work and crap on the racquetball court. That may be why Greg the cat has found himself ground zero for a flea infestation and why Richard's renovation of his grandparents' home has begun and ended at the verandah railing.

But that's not altogether true. In between a complicated relationship with his boss and earning himself a Neighbor of the Month award on Zigzag Street, Richard will correct anyone who calls him Ricky, get caught up by The Spanish Tragedy, and stumble his way from perpetrator of a mild concussion to befuddled participant in a dinner party that may or may not be a first date.

Zigzag Street. It's where Richard Derrington will dance naked in the office. It's where he might just come of age in his late twenties.

And it's where it all began for critically acclaimed Brisbane author Nick Earls. Winner of the Betty Trask award, Who Weekly called Zigzag Street "A comic masterpiece." Readers called it "seriously funny" and "Great Australian writing."

Aussie cricketers who served in war

 

2nd hand book. Excellent condition. PB. 336pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Aussie cricketing heroes who also fought for Australia during wartime 'That's nothing. Pressure is having a Messerschmitt up your arse.' - Keith Miller, when asked if he felt under pressure while captaining the NSW cricket team.

Numerous heroes of Australian cricket have also proved themselves on the battlefield, from Gallipoli to Vietnam and beyond. 

Among them are some of Australia's most illustrious cricketing names: Donald Bradman, Keith Miller, Keith Carmody, Jack Fingleton and, in more recent years, Doug Walters. 

In this sport/history page-turner, veteran sports journalist Greg Growden tells their extraordinary stories of bravery, hardship, courage and human endeavour.

John Button's delightful memoir of life in politics

 

Very good condition. PB. 412pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

John Button was leader of the government in the Senate and industry minister from 1983 to 1993. He was a professorial fellow at Monash University and a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers. He edited Look Here: Considering the Australian Environment, and wrote Flying the Kite, On the Loose and As it Happened.

Mr Button died in April 2008 from pancreatic cancer. Bob Hawke, who visited Mr Button days before he died, described him as ‘a giant in the history of the Labor Party’.

The lies that led to the war in Iraq

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. 448pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'Curveball' was the codename given to the mysterious defector whose first-hand evidence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction proved vital in giving the Bush administration the excuse it needed to invade Iraq.

The only problem - this 'evidence' was nothing more than a pack of lies.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Drogin has written the definitive account of the most notorious intelligence fiasco in US history, revealing how squabbling, arrogance and incompetence within the various intelligence agencies allowed one man's lies to spread higher and higher up the chain of authority, eventually reaching the White House itself.

Breathlessly paced and shockingly revelatory, Curveball is an explosive true-life account of how honour and dishonesty amongst spies led to the UK and the US becoming embroiled in a catastrophic war.

Coming of age in post-9/11 Afghanistan

 

Rare book. PB. 339pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Akbar recounts his pilgrimage to his home country with precocious wisdom and insight, taking readers from palaces to prisons and from Kabul to the borderlands in a revealing portrait of a country in the midst of a historic transition.

How occupation flooded Afghanistan with narcotics

 

Mint condition. PB. 464pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

An in-depth investigation into the heroin trade in Afghanistan—including who runs it, who's profiting, and who's lives are caught in the balance
 
Afghanistan has become the world's largest producer of opium and its offshoot, heroin—all under the noses of Western civil and military stakeholders. 

At the nexus of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, truth is as elusive and fragile as the new democracy itself, now on the brink of being consumed by an expanding mire of chaos. 

Stranger in a strange land, Gregor Salmon entered the war-torn country alone and spent eight months investigating Afghanistan's dependence on poppy, investigating questions such as: Who depends on poppy profits? And who pays the ultimate cost? 

Along the way he encountered Afghans whose lives were intimately tied to the trade: farmers, harvesters, eradicators, smugglers, police, doctors, addicts, warlords, gun-runners, politicians—even a pop-song loving Taliban commander. 

The result is a tense, fascinating, and deeply moving journey along the narcotics trail, and a story about keeping your sanity in a senseless world.

What is it like to have a father who is a murderer?

 

Mint condition. Based on the award-winning podcast. PB. 272pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This was Nina Young’s shocking realisation in her mid-twenties, when she found out from online court records that her estranged father, Allan Ladd, had strangled a woman to death decades before. In prison he’d met Denise, Nina’s mother, who was his tutor. Although Denise didn’t know the extent of Allan’s crime when she fell in love with him, by the time she found out, she was in too deep. She had to flee from him before Nina turned two.

A decade after reading the court records, Nina, now a journalist, decided to release a podcast to tackle the questions she’d been asking herself ever since. How did her mother fall in love with a murderer? What happened to Conan, Nina’s estranged half-brother, who spent his formative years in Allan’s care? How much do your origins determine your destiny?

This is the story behind the podcast, taking Nina on a cross-country journey to retrace her steps. It is also Denise’s story, of falling in love with a charismatic, intelligent prisoner who turned out to be violent and callous. Unburdening herself of the stigma she carried with her for thirty years, Denise writes of what it took to leave and rebuild her life in the wake of the destruction Allan caused.

Young adult fiction from Australia

 

Mint condition. PB. 368pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Azra's dreams of finishing high school in Sydney and going to university are threatened by her uncle's plans to marry her off to an older cousin she has never met - will she have to choose between her family and her happiness?

'Reading Promising Azra prompted me to revisit stories I have heard too many times to count. Forced marriage is not bound to a certain culture or religion, it's an epidemic affecting children from many backgrounds. For real change to be possible, it’s important for us to hear these stories.’ Dr Eman Sharobeem Community Engagement Manager, SBS

Azra is sixteen, smart and knows how to get what she wants. She thinks. When she wins a place in a national science competition, she thinks her biggest problem is getting her parents' permission to go. But she doesn't know they're busy arranging her marriage to an older cousin she's never met. In Pakistan. In just three months' time.

Azra always thought she'd finish high school with her friends and then go on to study science, but now her dreams of university are suddenly overshadowed. Can she find a way to do what she wants, while keeping her parents happy?

Or does being a good daughter mean sacrificing her freedom?

Reportage from African war zones

 

Excellent condition. PB. 224pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

During 1991-95 James Schofield was the only Australian journalist based in Africa to report regularly on the major crises in Somalia, Rwanda, Goma and Zaire. In this book Schofield records his personal experience of the trauma and horror of events in modern Africa: famine and clan conflict in Somalia; genocide in Rwanda; cholera in Zaire; and civil war in the Sudan.

Biographies of the Australian generation lost in the Great War

 

Two copies, both in excellent condition. PB. 608pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

For Australia, a new nation with a relatively small population, the death of 60,000 soldiers during World War I was catastrophic. It is hardly surprising, then, that Australians evaluating the consequences of the conflict have tended to focus primarily on the numbing numbers of losses - on the sheer quantity of all those countrymen who did not return. 

That there must have been extraordinary individuals among them has been implicitly understood, but these special Australians are unknown today. This book seeks to retrieve their stories and to fill the gaps in our collective memory. 

Farewell, Dear People contains ten extended biographies of young men who exemplified Australia's gifted lost generation of World War I. Among them are accounts of an internationally acclaimed medical researcher; a military officer described by his brigadier as potentially an Australian Kitchener; a rugby international who became an esteemed administrator and a rising Labor star; an engineer who excelled on Mawson's Antarctic mission; a visionary vigneron and community leader who was renowned for successful winemaking at an unusually young age' a Western Australian Rhodes scholar assured of a shining future in the law and/or politics; a Tasmanian footballer who dazzled at the highest level; and a budding architect from Melbourne's best-known creative dynasty who combined an endearing personality with his family's flair for writing and drawing. This magisterial book tells their stories for the first time. In doing so, it enriches the story of Australia immeasurably. 

'Farewell, Dear People is a powerful revelation of the lasting cost of the Great War - a deeply felt engagement with lost lives, and a superb union of research and writing.' Peter Stanley, author of Men of Mont St Quentin

About the author

Ross McMullin is a historian and biographer whose main interests are Australian history, politics and sport. He has researched and written extensively about the impact on Australia of its involvement in World War I. His books include the ALP centenary history The Light on the Hill- The Australian Labor Party 1891 - 1991, the award-winning biography Pompey Elliott, and So Monstrous a Travesty- Chris Watson and the World's First National Labour Government. He has also contributed chapters to many other books.

India's unruly politics

 

Mint condition. PB. 448pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

10 years ago, India was an emerging world power being courted by the world's most powerful political and business leaders, an upbeat story of unparalleled economic growth. Since then, it has failed to account for the human capital at the heart of its effort to modernize: more than one billion people clamoring for what has become known as the “Indian Dream”-an education, a career, and an opportunity to pull one's family out of poverty and into prosperity. Today, India is suffering an immense crisis of confidence-crippling political corruption, politicians mired in the status quo, economic inequality, brutal violence against women, and rampant social injustice.

Hilarious travel anecdotes from a former Australian politician

 

Excellent condition. PB. 224pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A funny and charming account of life after politics by the retired Labor senator.

Button writes hilariously about everything under the sun, from Christmas shopping to minding the dog, from the rights of smokers to the joys of jogging-and muses on the republican debate, political correctness and parliamentary language. He globetrots to Hong Kong, Hanoi, New York and Ballarat, casting a keen eye over the locals wherever he goes.

Stories from Australia's top authors

 

Good condition. PB. 346pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

How blokes deal with grief

 

Very good condition. PB. 224pp. $18 postage anywhere in Australia.

Explores men's reactions to the death of a loved one, and offers suggestions for enhancing the healing process.

"Men and Grief" is an insightful and thought-provoking look at the problems men face as they experience the emotionally painful times of their lives.