Stories from the Stolen Generation

 

Very good condition. 198pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The story oof one of Australia's most contentious religious discrimination case

 

PB. 300pp. Excellent condition. $15 including p9stage anywhere in Australia.

In March 2002, three Muslim converts attend an Evangelical Christian seminar promoted to reveal the inner secrets of ‘Holy Jihad’.

Shocked by what they hear, they convince the Islamic Council of Victoria to lodge a complaint against Catch the Fire Ministries, under a controversial new hate speech law. A case expected to be over in three days turns into an unholy war of words lasting five long years – freedom of speech versus freedom from vilification is under the spotlight.

Award-winning author Hanifa Deen follows this case from beginning to end, witnessing the religious impulse at its best – and worst. Her very human account focuses on the personalities and motives of the two religious tribes – Muslims and born-again Christians. Real people – on both sides of the courtroom – express their pain and their innocence at a hearing that turns into a nightmare.

Through Deen’s eyes we discover a wider meaning to this conflict, as we come to realise that religious vilification is only one strand of a more complex story with hidden agendas.

Australian cricket and cheating

 

Very god condition. 229pp. PB. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

He was top of the world, with numbers bettered only by Don Bradman – then captain Steve Smith led his Australian team into a cheating scandal that stunned cricket. Media exploded and million-dollar contracts were torn up. Australia’s prime minister expressed the public anger and disappointment: ‘Our cricketers are role models, and cricket is synonymous with fair play.’

But there was more to the story than the actions of a few young men. A tangle of personality, politics and culture had led them to this point.

Geoff Lemon witnessed that story from commentary boxes and press conferences, and was there in South Africa for its final act. This is a frank, fearless and often humorous account of the path from Ashes high to Cape Town low, from someone who watched it all unfold.

SOLD Australia's WWII experience

 

SOLD

Mint condition. Rare book. PB. 324pp. Available second hand on ebay for over $40 with postage. Our special price $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

World War II was the most defining moment in Australia's history. More than a million Australians served in campaigns against Germany and Italy in Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, and against Japan in southeast Asia and other parts of the Pacific. 

On All Fronts looks at the key milestones of Australia's participation in the major theatres of World War II, from the tenacity of the Rats of Tobruk to the bitter battles of Greece and Crete, and the Allied triumph at El Alamein. Once Japan entered the war, the Australians were called to serve in the Pacific, bravely doing their duty when Singapore fell and struggling against a fierce and unrelenting enemy on the notorious Kokoda Track. 

The realities of war finally came to our own shores in 1942, when Japanese aircraft bombed towns in northwest Australia and Sydney Harbour came under attack from Japanese midget submarines. Jim Haynes presents little known accounts of the battles that Australians troops were called to, giving a glimpse into the human and social impact on Australians. 

On All Fronts celebrates the strength and determination of Australians who rose up to meet the extraordinary challenges faced on the frontline and back on the home front.

The stories of Australian troops in Vietnam

 

 Mint condition. PB. 320pp. Booktopia are selling this for $24 plus postage. Our special price is $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD Biography of former PM John Howard

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 458pp. Amazon sells new copies for over $100. Our special price $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

John Howard has an image problem. He isn't the strong-willed man of principle his supporters like to imagine. Neither is he the rat-cunning opportunist feared and loathed by his opponents. Most importantly, for a man often accused of zealotry of various types, he's not much into political ideas. With a few exceptions borne out of his suburban middle-class upbringing, policies are just part of his armoury. Howard is both more mundane and more complex than his public persona. He enjoys family, cricket, and running the country. But while the image of the ordinary bloke has been helpful to his enduring popularity, Howard possesses a number of uncommon strengths that have helped him reach the top, most important of these being the rare tenacity that saw him through the lean years of opposition, and through the tumultuous first two terms as prime minister.

The story of an Australian who fought at Tobruk

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. Rare book. Amazon retails at over $200. 319pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Journey to Tobruk tells the remarkable life story of John Murray, a genuine Australian hero, on and off the battlefield. This engaging blend of military history and biography - with a strand of family history (and family secrets) woven through - follows the transformation of a raw young bushman into a courageous soldier and inspiring leader. 

A lifelong correspondence between John and his mother is a feature of the narrative; Murray's laconic tone, which never falters even as he endures the horrors of the North African campaign as a 'rat of Tobruk', is definitively Australian. 

An illegitimate child whose wealthy grazier father never acknowledged him, John was sent at age fourteen to work on an outback sheep property as a jackeroo. The harshness of this environment schooled him for survival, forging the strength and resourcefulness that were later tested in the crucible of war. While the story also follows Murray's post-war life, the focus of this moving and impeccably researched book remains John's six-year wartime odyssey, from Australia, to Tobruk, El Alamein, New Guinea and Borneo, evoked in heart-gripping detail, supported by maps and images. 

Through it all, this fascinating, brave, resilient and humane man retains an optimism and stoicism that allow him to face and conquer the horror he confronts.

Walking through Gallipoli

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. 298pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This book normally retails for over $50.

Every year tens of thousands of Australians make their pilgrimages to Gallipoli, France and other killing fields of the Great War. It is a journey steeped in history. Some go in search of family memory, seeking the grave of a soldier lost a lifetime ago. For others, Anzac pilgrimage has become a rite of passage, a statement of what it means to be Australian. 

This book, first published in 2006, explores the memory of the Great War through the historical experience of pilgrimage. It examines the significance these 'sacred sites' have acquired in the hearts and minds of successive generations and charts the complex responses of young and old, soldier and civilian, the pilgrims of the 1920s and today's backpacker travellers. 

This book gives voice to history, retrieving a bitter-sweet testimony through interviews, surveys and a rich archival record. Innovative, courageous and often deeply moving, it explains why the Anzac legend still captivates Australia.

Never to be Obeid

 

Red-hot!! Excellent condition. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The answer to this question by Greg Barnes SC

 

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

There's only one Jeff Kennett

 

Mint condition. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

Journalistic account of regional and outback Australia

 

Mint condition. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Tony Abbott's maaaaaaaaaate memoir

 

Very good condition. Reduced to $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Biography of Australia's first and only female PM

 

Mint condition. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Biographies of Australian Prime Ministers

 

Very good condition. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Memoir of poverty in outback Australia

 

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

Social mobility is not a train you get to board after you've scraped together enough for the ticket. You have to build the whole bloody engine, with nothing but a spoon and hand-me-down psychological distress.

Violence, treachery and cruelty run through the generational veins of Rick Morton's family. A horrific accident thrusts his mother and siblings into a world impossible for them to navigate, a life of poverty and drug addiction

One Hundred Years of Dirt is an unflinching memoir in which the mother is a hero who is never rewarded. It is a meditation on the anger, fear of others and an obsession with real and imagined borders. Yet it is also a testimony to the strength of familial love and endurance.

SOLD Dark tales from Australian history

 

SOLD to a lawyer on East Sydney

Excellent condition. PB. 384pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia

A compelling collection of tales from Australia's dark heart - of catastrophe and misfortune, intrigue and passion, betrayal and tragedy.

AUSTRALIAN TRAGIC ranges across our past and our present: the heartbreaking story of the fire at Luna Park; the unstoppable opportunist who snatched innocent men and women from Palm Island to be part of P. T. Barnum's 'Greatest Show on Earth'; a world-class boxer who lost his battle with alcohol and ended up in an unmarked American grave; a man who heroically survived a war to find himself crushed and defeated by events much closer to home; and a new story - of an echo from Ned Kelly at Stringybark Creek, in our own time ...

Heartbreaking and shocking, gothic and weird, these fascinating stories are all true, and told to remind us of the Australia we don't know, the one that simmers with love and hate, of hopes raised and futures dashed, unheralded and unnoticed . . . until now.

Can Australia look beyond the two party system?

 

Mint condition. PB. 424pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia

Also available here and here.

The demands placed on western governments have increased exponentially in recent years, but the fundamental structure of most of these governments - the two party system - has not. Governments are now not only required to be competitive in the global economy, but the societies they represent have changed, becoming culturally and ethnically diverse. 

Ian Marsh's challenging book suggests that the two party regime cannot accommodate these changing needs. It outlines the ways in which politics might change to meet these new demands and achieve genuine participatory democracy. The book explores the nature of citizenship from a historical perspective, proposing a new definition of citizenship for the future. 

Ian Marsh argues that political learning will be central to the development of this new citizen, so that they, and not only the leadership elite, have genuine political input.

On the law and reality of whistle blowers in Australia

 

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

The whistleblower is the lone person who decides enough is enough and that it’s time to speak out.  But what motivates them? What do they go through to expose an issue? How do they deal with their employer or the authority they are confronting? What are the ramifications for both the employer and the individual? 

Here, Dempster – hard-hitting journalist – deals with issues ranging from the BHP and Westpac to the Civil Aviation Authority, giving the background of the issues and the individuals involved. He knows the price those individuals pay for their efforts and also looks at how companies or businesses should react so that in the longterm, the public interest is better served. 

Whether you are an employer or an employee, this book is for you.

You can watch Quentin Dempster discuss this further here.

An Australian war memoir from the Somme

 

Ex-Library. Mint condition. PB. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

'It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying.' 

Somme Mud tells of the devastating experiences of Edward Lynch, a young Australian private (18 when he enlisted) during the First World War when he served with the 45th battalion of the Australian Infantry Forces on the Western Front at the Somme, which saw the most bloody and costly fighting of the war. In just eight weeks, there were 23,000 Australian casualties. 

The original edition of twenty chapters, was written in pencil in twenty school exercise books in 1921, probably to help exorcise the horrendous experiences Private Lynch had witnessed during his three years at war from mid-1916 until his repatriation home in mid-1919. Lynch had been wounded three times, once seriously and spent over six months in hospital in England. 

Published here for the first time, and to the great excitement of historians at the War Memorial Somme Mud is a precious find, a discovered treasure that vividly captures the magnitude of war through the day-to-day experiences of an ordinary infantryman. 

From his first day setting sail for France as the band played 'Boys of the Dardanelles' and the crowd proudly waved their fresh-faced boys off, to the harsh reality of the trenches of France and its pale-faced weary men, Lynch captures the essence and contradictions of war. 

Somme Mud is Australia's version of All Quiet on the Western Front. Told with dignity, candour and surprising wit, it is a testament to the power of the human spirit, a moving true story of humanity and friendship. It will cause a sensation when it is published.