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.

A classic work on Palestinian experience

 

Mint condition. PN. 160pp. Booktopia is selling this for over $26 plus postage. Our special price is $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Israeli army invaded Ramallah in March 2002. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; Israeli soldiers patrolled from the rooftops. Four soldiers took over his brother's apartment and then used him as a human shield as they went through the building, while his wife tried to keep her composure for the sake of their frightened children, ages four and six. 

This book is an account of what it is like to be under siege: the terror, the frustrations, the humiliations, and the rage of civilians becoming trapped in their own homes and at the mercy of young soldiers who have been ordered to set aside their own sense of human decency in order to bully, harass and in some cases brutalize an unarmed population. 

How do you pass your time when you are imprisoned in your own home? 

What do you do when you cannot cross the neighborhood to help your sick mother? 

And what does it feel like when occupier and occupied, who are supposed to be enemies?

Plain language for lawyers

 

Mint condition. PB. 352pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia

Professor Kimble names Michele Asprey's book Plain Language for Lawyers as one of the top publications in the history of plain language. In Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please - The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law - Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, Professor Kimble lists Michele Asprey's book as number 7 on his list of the top publications - quite an accolade. It appears alongside David Mellinkoff's book The Language of the Law (from 1963), Richard Wydick's book Plain English for Lawyers (from 1979), Rudloph Flesch's work, and Ernest Gowers's The Complete Plain Words, among others.

The idea that lawyers can - and should - write in plain language is not new. There have always been plain language lawyers. There just aren't enough of them. The plain language movement in Australia has been with us for decades. Plain language has been taught in law schools in Australia for almost 20 years. But still too many lawyers don't write in language that clients, and other readers, can understand. Plain Language for Lawyers can help. Over the 18 years it has been in print and it has established itself in Australia and overseas as a comprehensive, entertaining and enormously useful text. It includes international references, contains practical advice, and can be read and enjoyed by anyone who is interested in plain language in the law. The 4th edition has been completely revised and updated.

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.

SOLD Introductory textbook on Muslim religious law

 

SOLD to a workplace psychologist in Arncliffe

Mint condition. PB. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Biography of one of Australia's great union lawyers

 

HB. Mint condition. 339pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Maurice Blackburn brought into public life a rare character, complete indifference to personal consequences, an uncommon scholarship, great zeal for humanity, and a firm belief, which I am happy to share, that men are immeasurably more important than laws. - Robert Menzies Maurice Blackburn served the people who suffered injustice . . .

He pleaded their cause, and he engaged in the study of how best he could serve them . . . He would allow nothing to turn him from what he considered to be the right, and however unpopular he might become, however discomforting his attitude might be to his colleagues, the divine monitor within him impelled him to stand for what in his soul he believed. - John Curtin After his father died when Maurice Blackburn was a child, he was brought up by a mother who was descended from Melbourne's gentry and was determined to raise him as a gentleman who would achieve greatness as a judge or a prime minister.

However, Blackburn had humbler aims. With the support of his wife, he wanted instead 'to make life better for the ordinary men and women of the country'. He went on to do so, defending the rights of working people as a leading barrister in the courts and as a politician in the parliaments of Melbourne and Canberra, and became much loved and admired across the political spectrum. A socialist and internationalist all his life, who was twice expelled from the Labor Party for his principles, Blackburn became a leading opponent of conscription in both world wars, a supporter of rights for women, an advocate for peace, and a tireless campaigner for transforming Australia so that it served the interests of all its people.

Part love story, part gripping political thriller, the poignant story of the much-lauded Maurice Blackburn exposes a time when influence-peddling was rife, when political possibilities seemed limitless, and when a man of principle could still make a big difference to the course of Australian politics.

About the Author

David Day is a bestselling and prize-winning biographer and historian, several of whose books have been published to acclaim in the United States and Britain and have been translated into numerous languages. Among his many academic posts, David Day has been a junior research fellow at Clare College in Cambridge, a by-fellow at Churchill College in Cambridge, and a visiting fellow at the University of Aberdeen and the Australian National University. He spent three years as a visiting professor at University College, Dublin, and two years at the University of Tokyo. He is currently an honorary associate in the history program at La Trobe University. Maurice Blackburn- champion of the people is his twentieth book.

Tales from the Children's Court as told by a former magistrate

 

Excellent condition. PB. 256pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A compelling, inspiring and moving collection of Barbara Holborow's stories of hope, loss and apathy from behind the Bench as Children's Magistrate.

In this inspiring, moving and often funny collection of stories, bestselling author Barbara Holborow tells of The Good, the Bad and The Inevitable outcomes for so many of the kids she saw standing in front of her as Children's Magistrate.

There are stories of the kids who, like broken glass jars, can never be mended due to the awful beginnings they have suffered. There are stories of the kids and their parents who are willing to make changes and turn their lives around with lots of hard work. There are stories of kids and parents who just don't care and who don't change. And there are also stories of the wonderful, inspiring kids and their carers (from parents, grannies and grandpas, foster parents and adoptive parents) who will do anything within their power to keep families together, to keep families loving and safe and who instill that important sense of hope for the future.

Barbara's motto is that everyone in a community has responsibility for every child. To illustrate this, throughout the book, interspersed between the stories, are snippets of Barbara's wisdom and tips for everyone on raising kids looking out for them, and keeping them happy and safe. After all - together we are one big family of humanity, and should look out for each other.

A book about the collective guilt of a nation

 

Excellent condition. PB. 156pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The six essays that make up this compelling book view the long shadow of past guilt both as a uniquely German experience and as a global one. 

Bernhard Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. 

He considers how to use the lesson of history to motivate individual moral behavior, how to reconcile a guilt-laden past, how the role of law functions in this process, and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. 

Based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he delivered at Oxford University, Guilt About the Past is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how events of the past can affect a nation's future. 

Written in Bernhard Schlink's eloquent but accessible style, it taps in to worldwide interest in the aftermath of war and how to forgive and reconcile the various legacies of the past.

SOLD From the author who brought you Rumpole of the Bailey ...

 

SOLD

Excellent condition. PB. 372pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The creator of the irrepressible barrister-sleuth, Rumpole of the Old Bailey, presents a superb collection of classic tales of mystery and suspense. With stories by such authors as P.D. James and Charles Dickens, Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allan Poe and John Mortimer himself, this anthology explores new dimensions in crime writing.

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.

Beating Murdoch in Court

 

A piece of Australian media history.

Mint condition. HB. 358pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Man Bites Murdoch is Bruce Guthrie's explosive account of almost 40 years in the news business, his brutal dismissal from Australia's biggest selling paper, the celebrated court case that exposed the inner workings of the world's biggest media company, and the treachery of its most senior executives.

Guthrie survived tuberculosis, Melbourne's gritty northern suburbs and a boss who twice tried to sack him in his first six months in newspapers, to become a foreign correspondent and then one of Australia's feistiest and most controversial editors. His CV boasts editorships of The Age, The Sunday Age, Herald Sun, Who Weekly, The Weekend Australian Magazine, even a stint at America's celeb-news bible, People. Then, just as he claimed one of the industry's most glittering prizes, he fell foul of Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen, who promptly dispensed with his services. What would any self-respecting Broadmeadows boy do in such circumstances? Sue them, of course.

Man Bites Murdoch exposes the back rooms of Australian business, politics and media and offers a front-row seat at the many seismic events that played out over the last 20 years, including Murdoch's relentless push for growth both here and overseas, young Warwick Fairfax's ill-fated takeover of the family company and the extraordinary impact of the internet.

About the Author

Bruce Guthrie began his media career as a copyboy at The Herald in Melbourne in 1972. After completing a cadetship, he worked in a variety of reporting roles for the paper until 1985, when he was appointed US west coast correspondent for the Herald and Weekly Times, based in Los Angeles.

In 1987 he returned to Australia and became deputy editor of The Herald, leaving two years later to help launch The Sunday Age.

He was appointed editor of that paper in 1992 and editor of The Age in 1995. He joined Time Inc. as a senior editor at People magazine in New York in 1998, and became editor of Who Weekly a year later.

In 2004, he returned to News Limited to become editor of The Weekend Australian Magazine and to launch The Australian's monthly magazine, Wish.

He was appointed editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun, Australia's largest selling daily newspaper, in February 2007 - a role he filled until his dramatic and unexpected exit in November 2008.

Guthrie is married to journalist Janne Apelgren and lives in Melbourne with their two teenage children and a golden retriever named Tilly.

A critique of criminal law and justice

 

Ex-library. Very good condition. HB. 368pp. 

At a time when the crime rate has reached new peaks, criminal justice isn't working. It is no good at convicting criminals, and even worse at dealing with those it does convict. Meanwhile, the national debate about crime and criminal justice becomes even more shrill, and its participants mired ever deeper in archaic cliche.

IN THE NAME OF THE LAW challenges equally the ebbing shibboleths of the liberal left, and the terrifying revenge justice of the right. It asks what can be learned about our society from the way it treats its criminals and organises its policemen. The book concludes that criminal justice provides the starkest pointer to a twenty-first-century hell: a two-thirds/one-third society, with the comfortable defending themselves against a desperate minority with guns and fortifications. Rose argues that these are measures which can be taken to avoid the Los Angeles-like world we seem to be creating.

About the author

David Rose is a writer and investigative journalist. 

His awards include the David Watt Memorial Prize and the One World award for human rights journalism. 

His work appears in The Observer and Vanity Fair. 

Among his books are In the Name of the Law, a widely-praised examination of the British criminal justice system; and A Climate of Fear, an investigation of the Broadwater Farm case and the conviction of Winston Silcott. 

He has also written books on mountaineering, including Regions of the Heart, a biography of Alison Hargreaves, the British climber who died in her attempt to conquer K2, and he is working on a book about the US death penalty centred on a miscarriage of justice in the town of Columbus, Georgia. 

David Rose lives in Oxford with his family.

The story of a criminal lawyer turned criminal

Mint condition. PB. 256pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

From 1975 to 2001, Andrew Fraser was a leading criminal solicitor with a successful national practice. Then it all went horribly wrong. 

In 1999 he was charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine. Fraser pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing, trafficking a small quantity, and using cocaine over a period of time. He was sentenced to seven years in maximum security prison. 

Court in the Middle describes his early years - growing up in a family of lawyers, running hard to build a criminal law practice; his successful years with a national practice, and defending high profile, sometimes notorious, clients. 

He also discusses his relationship with cocaine, addiction and deals, crime and punishment, and the shocking details of his time spent in a maximum security prison.