Stalin and the new Russia

 

Mint condition. HB. 304pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

From the first publisher granted access to Stalin's personal archive, a provocative and insightful portrait of modern Russia—the most compelling since David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb.

To most Americans, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the Iron Curtain era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country had an opportunity to face its tortured past. In Inside the Stalin Archives, Jonathan Brent asks, why didn't this happen? Why are the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in Moscow's airport?

Brent draws on fifteen years of unprecedented access to high-level Soviet Archives to answer these questions. He shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the sidewalks, while now shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets are jammed with Mercedes. Stalin's specter hovers throughout, and in the book's crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator's personal papers to glimpse the dark heart of the new Russia. Both cultural history and personal memoir, Inside the Stalin Archives is a deeply felt and vivid portrait of Russia in the twenty-first century.

SOLD The story of modern India

 

SOLD

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

Reversing his parents’ immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new.

Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, “We’re all trying to go that way,” pointing to the rear. “You, you’re going this way?”

Giridharadas was returning to the land of his ancestors amid an unlikely economic boom. Yet he was interested less in the gold rush than in the cultural upheaval – what would happen when old traditions met new ambitions?

In India Calling, Giridharadas blends the objectivity of the outsider with the intimacy of the insider; the result is India seen at once from within and without. He introduces us to entrepreneurs, radicals, industrialists and religious seekers, but, most of all, to Indian families. Through their stories, and his own, he paints an intimate portrait of a country becoming modern while striving to remain itself.

About the author

Anand Giridharadas is a columnist for the New York Times and its global edition, the International Herald Tribune. A native of Cleveland, he worked in Bombay as a management consultant before joining the Times in 2005 as its first Bombay-based correspondent in the modern era. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

PJ O'Rourke takes on Adam Smith

 

Mint condition. HB. 256pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the book that created the field of economics, is transformed into a page-turner of global significance by America's sharpest political commentator.

'The Wealth of Nations is, without doubt a 'book that changed the world.' But it has been taking its time. Two hundred and thirty one years after publication, Adam Smith's practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. 

Although its contents didn't make people gasp, something about The Wealth of Nations was grit in the gears of Enlightenment thinking. And that something is still there, grinding on our minds. I could feel it myself when the subject of self-interest came up. Gosh, I'm not selfish. I think about the environment and those less fortunate than me. Especially those unfortunates who don't give a hoot about pollution, global warming, and species extinction. I think about them a lot, and I hope they lose the next election. Then maybe we can get some caring and compassionate people in public office, people who aren't selfish. And let's face it, the 'lower ranks of the people' do have too much money. Look at Britney Spears . . .'

P. J. O'Rourke brings An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations zinging to life. Packed with wit and insight this extraordinary 'enquiry' demonstrates that the Wealth of Nations underpins economic debates still raging today.

One of the biggest scandals in Australian criminal law

 

Very good condition. PB. Underbelly meets Molly's Game - the true crime investigation that rewrote the story of Melbourne's infamous gangland war and triggered a royal commission.

Melbourne's gangland war was an era dominated by murders, stings, hits, drug busts, corruption and greed - inspiring bestselling books and even a popular TV series, Underbelly. It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel and their accomplices. When the police finally closed the case file, just how they really won the war, with the help of an unlikely police informer, would become a closely guarded secret and its exposure, the biggest legal scandal of our time.

Lawyer X is the scandalous, true story of how a promising defence barrister from a privileged background broke all the rules - becoming both police informer and her client's lover - sharing their secrets and shaping the gangland war that led to sensational arrests and convictions. The story of how Nicola Gobbo became Lawyer X, and why, is a compelling study in desperation and determination.

Lawyer X is the definitive story of Melbourne's gangland wars and its most glamorous and compelling central character, based on the ground-breaking work of investigative journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, who broke the story for the Herald Sun in 2014, and their five-year struggle to reveal the truth about the identity of Lawyer X.

SOLD A definitive work on torture and the rule of law

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 368pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

After 9/11. George W. Bush's administration declared that they were going to have to work through 'the dark side'. And they did: they turned their backs on international law and on America's history of respecting human rights. They wanted only legal advice that made it okay to torture, and they made sure they got it. Voices of dissent were sidelined, while low level officials brainstormed interrogation techniques and took their lead from Jack Bauer in 24.

In Torture Team, Philippe Sands tracks down and interviews those responsible, and makes a compelling case that, in an ugly blotch on America's recent past, war crimes were committed for which no one has yet been held to account.

After 9/11. George W. Bush's administration declared that they were going to have to work through 'the dark side'. And they did: they turned their backs on international law and on America's history of respecting human rights. 

They wanted only legal advice that made it okay to torture, and they made sure they got it. 

About the author

Philippe Sands QC has been Professor of Law at University College London since 2002, and has also taught at Boston College School of Law, Cambridge University and New York University Law School. He is the author and editor of several books on international law and participated in the negotiation of the 1992 Climate Change Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He is also a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers and has been involved in leading cases before English and international courts, including those concerning Senator Augusto Pinochet and the Guantanamo and Belmarsh detainees.

An anthology of top Kiwi travel writing

Mint condition. PB. 200pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This anthology of travel essays from 12 of New Zealand's best-known writers documents a wide range of personal experiences, from Joy Cowley's stint in Alaskan villages, where hunting is part of the daily business of survival, to Barbara Else's working tour of London and Manchester. 

Travel with Graeme Lay in heady Tahiti, take an African safari in Zimbabwe with Catharina van Bohemen, experience Corsica with Sarah Quigley, and Joy MacKenzie's Paris. 

Follow Lloyd Jones as he explores Brooklyn, a world away from the safe environment back home, Michaeanne Forser searching for passion in Mexico, and visit the silica terraces and hot pools of Tessa Duder's Turkey. 

Peter Wells goes to Sydney, a city 'ripe for the millennium', CK Stead travels to Croatia, and Chris Orsman explores Antarctica, a continent etched with a brittle history.