SOLD Slavery in Madagascar

 

SOLD

Rare book. Mint condition. HB. 217pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia. 

Published in 1729, Madagascar: or, Robert Drury's Journal, during Fifteen Years Captivity on that Island, describes the adventures of Robert Drury, an English sailor who was shipwrecked off the coast of Madagascar while still a teenager.

After witnessing the massacre of his shipmates, he spent the next fourteen years living as a slave and fighting alongside the islanders in a world of enemy princes and raging civil wars.

Rescued by an English ship at the age of twenty-nine, he returned to London but then made an extraordinary decision. He went back to Madagascar as a slave trader.

Nearly 300 years later, Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist investigating the unique burial customs of Madagascar's Tandroy people, came across Drury's journal, and became hopeful that it would turn out to be a useful historical source, which might assist him with his investigations.

Previously believed to be a hoax written by the novelist Daniel Defoe, the journal could have proved useless to Parker Pearson's research.

However, he headed for Madagascar, with a team of archaeologists and the journal, in order to understand more about the Tandroy people and to attempt to uncover the truth behind Drury's story.

SOLD Queen Victoria's Indian confidant

 

SOLD

Brand new. Mint condition. 336pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The tall, handsome Abdul Karim was just twenty-four years old when he arrived in England from Agra to wait at tables during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. An assistant clerk at Agra Central Jail, he suddenly found himself a personal attendant to the Empress of India herself. Within a year, he was established as a powerful figure at court, becoming the queen's teacher, or Munshi, and instructing her in Urdu and Indian affairs.

Devastated by the death of John Brown, her Scottish ghillie, the queen had at last found his replacement. But her intense and controversial relationship with the Munshi led to a near-revolt in the royal household. 

The book formed the basis of a major motion picture starring Dame Judi Dench. Victoria & Abdul examines how a young Indian Muslim came to play a central role at the heart of the empire, and tells a tender love story between an ordinary Indian and his elderly queen.

About the Author

Shrabani Basu is an author, journalist and historian. She has also written Curry: the Story of the Nation's Favourite Dish (2003) and Spy Princess: the Life of Noor Inayat Khan (2006). She is based in London.

SOLD Examining our lives online

 

SOLD

Very good condition. PB. 319pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A New York Times Bestseller

An audacious, irreverent investigation of human behavior—and a first look at a revolution in the making

Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don’t need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.

For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook “likes” can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot.

He charts the rise and fall of America’s most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter.

He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don’t think about Simon & Garfunkel.)

Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible.

Visually arresting and full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves—a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time.

On siblings

 

Very good condition. PB. 323pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Love, envy, resentment, regret, tenderness - established, bestselling and award-winning writers explore the tensions, alliances and affections between siblings in this dazzling collection of stories, with contributions from Robert Drewe, Roger McDonald, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Cate Kennedy and many more.

RESERVED On the architecture of mosques

 

RESERVED

Ex-library. Mint condition. HB. 142pp. Colour photos. $50 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The story of the world's great mosques is intrinsically related to the story and spread of Islam.

Against the canvas of the rise and fall of great Islamic dynasties, this book takes the reader on a fascinating journey to ancient lands, where some of the greatest architectural marvels of history were created.

“Mosques" charts the development of the mosque in countries and kingdoms across the world, from the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, and the founding of the first Muslim congregational place of prayer, to the mosque's place in the modern age.

Accompanied throughout with stunning photography, highlighting the architectural features of these beautifully designed buildings, "Mosques" documents one of the most dynamic religious movements of all time.

One of the world's great travel writers finds love of and in Japan and Zen Buddhism

 

Excellent condition. PB. 332pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power. 

All this he did. And then he met Sachiko. 

Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese "salaryman" who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. 

With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation -- and misunderstanding -- and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new.

Travels and filming the Australian outback

 

Mint condition. PB. 228pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Find out more about this book here.

Entertaining account of Monte struggling to come to grips with Sunrise, technology and a newly-acquired 4WD bus determined to kill him.

Monte’s amusing transition from mainstream television to freelance multimedia something-or-other; stories edgier and more chaotic than the first book, a touch of restrained madness here.

“He views life with a Jack Nicholson like, quizzical overview, a Why is this thus? disdain.” Ted Egan

SOLD Historical developments in neuroscience

SOLD 

Ex-library. Mint condition. PB. 323pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Off-beat book about retirees on the move

 

Mint condition. PB. 194pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia. 

They're everywhere! Retiree couples dragging caravans across Australia. I saw them on the sides of highways, at truckstops and in rest areas during a recent roadtrip from Sydney to Broken Hill and back.

A delightfully left-field look at the most important migration this country has seen since the gold rush. Stories gathered during a lap of the country with the Nomads (grey, reluctant or otherwise), offering a highly entertaining expose on what's happening out there in the great Australian outback while nobody's watching.

A secret friendship between two woman - one Israeli and the other Palestinian

 

Very good condition. PB. 304pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The extraordinary true story of a secret forty-year friendship between two women who should have been bitter enemies. One: the beautiful Raymonda Tawil, the mother-in-law of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The other: Ruth Dayan, widow of General Moshe, the most celebrated Jewish general since Joshua and the man who spent much of his military career trying to kill Arafat.

The story of these two remarkable women's turbulent lives and their clandestine friendship, brilliantly told by award-winning author Anthony David, gives voice to Israelis and Palestinians caught up in the Middle East conflict. It also provides an insight into the Middle East's most influential leaders from two prominent women on either side of the conflict.

That Ruth and Raymonda continue their friendship to this day, despite the great danger it has put them in, is a testament not only to their affection for each other but also their joint commitment to seeing an end to the violence in the Middle East. Theirs is an unwavering faith in a future of peace, and An Improbable Friendship a beautiful story of reconciliation.

About the Author

Anthony David is the author of eight books, including his collaboration with Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh on his autobiography, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life. David holds a Ph.D. in European History from the University of Chicago and currently lives in Jerusalem.

Young adult fiction explores modern "white" slavery

 

Excellent condition. PB. 272pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt, then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words "Simply to endure is to triumph" and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision - will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

Bernie Sanders on Bernie Sanders

 

Mint condition. PB. 288pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

During his campaign for President in 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders repeatedly stated that the future of America was dependent upon its willingness to start a political revolution. Real change never occurs from the top down — it always happens from the bottom up. That’s what he said when he ran for President, and that’s what he believes now more than ever.

At a time of massive and growing wealth inequality, with the US moving closer and closer to an oligarchic form of society, and in the shadow of the most reactionary Presidency in the history of the Republic, Sanders is calling for an unprecedented grassroots political movement to stand up to the greed of the billionaire class and the politicians they own.

And the good news is, progress is being made.

In this important new book, America's most popular political figure speaks about what he's been doing to oppose the Trump agenda and strengthen the progressive movement, how America can go forward as a nation and the impact that can have on the global stage.

In an era that leaves many would-be liberal and progressive voters feeling frustrated about politics, Bernie Sanders shows what he stands for, not just what he stands against. In this book, he details the core values of the progressive movement and translates them into the actions that will truly uplift the nation and the world.

Pulitzer prize-winning fiction

 

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

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Los Angeles Times Book Award, National Book Circle Critics Award for fiction in the US and Longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Jennifer Egan’s spelling binding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varies as New York, San Francisco, Naples and Africa.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to Powerpoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both- and escape the merciless progress of time, in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.

About The Author

Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her non-fiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.

SOLD Growing up in a family fighting apartheid

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 384pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The deeply moving memoir of the Slovo family which also encompasses much of the story of the Apartheid years.

A passionate witness to the colossal upheaval that has transformed her native South Africa, Gillian Slovo has written a memoir that is far more than a story of her own life. For she is the daughter of Joe Slovo and Ruth First, South Africa's pioneering anti-apartheid white activists, a daughter who always had to come second to political commitment. Whilst recalling the extraordinary events which surrounded her family's persecution and exile, and reconstructing the truth of her parents' relationship and her own turbulent childhood, Gillian Slovo has also created an astonishing portrait of a courageous, beautiful mother and a father of integrity and stoicism.

Lebowski'ist philosophy?

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. PB. 292pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Celebrate the Dude with an abiding look at the philosophy behind The Big Lebowski

Is the Dude a bowling-loving stoner or a philosophical genius living the good life? Naturally, it's the latter, and The Big Lebowski and Philosophy explains why.

Enlisting the help of great thinkers like Plato and Nietzsche, the book explores the movie's hidden philosophical layers, cultural reflection, and political commentary.

It also answers key questions, including: The Dude abides, but is abiding a virtue? Is the Dude an Americanized version of the Taoist way of life? How does The Big Lebowski illustrate the Just War Theory? How does bowling help Donny, Walter, and the Dude oppose nihilism?

Yes, the Dude is deep, and so is this book. Don't watch the movie or go to Lebowski Festival without it.

Explores many of The Big Lebowski's key themes, such as nihilism, war and politics, money and materialism, idealism and morality, history, and more

Gives you new perspective on the movie's characters: the Dude, the Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak, Donny, Maude Lebowski, Bunny Lebowski, and others

Helps you appreciate the Coen Brothers classic even more with the insights of Aristotle, Epicurus, Kant, Derrida, and other philosophical heavyweights

Biography of songs from one of world's legendary rock bands

 

Mint condition. PB. 192pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Featuring original and revealing interviews with band members and key people close to them, and tracing the band's meteroic rise from the early days to a group that has galvanized the pop music scene for more than twenty years, Stories Behind The Songs explores the background and inspiration behind every song written by U2, and is the definitive text on the subject. 

As testament to the band's enduring popularity, a full twenty-four years after the release of their first album, "Boy", in 1980, U2 hit Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic with "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", selling a million copies in three weeks. 

The first single from that album, "Vertigo" won three Grammys. 

U2 remains in every sense a world-class rock 'n' roll band, and this book takes you into the heart of the group, to reveal the inspiration behind their music.

About the author

Niall Stokes is the award-winning editor of the long-running fortnightly Ireland music and political magazine Hot Press based in Dublin . He has edited the magazine since 1977. He has been a longstanding champion of Irish music, most famously U2 in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. He was involved with The Music Show, an exhibition of the Irish music industry held in the RDS in October 2008. He was Chairman of the Independent Radio and Television Commission (now the BCI) between 1993 and 1998.