Biography of a Jewish convert to Shi'ism in Azerbaijan during WWII

 

Mint condition. PB. 464pp. Amazon retails for $26 plus postage. Our special price $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'Mixing memory with desire, this marvelous and original book once more reminds us of ways through which the imagination becomes a refuge from the uncontrollable cruelties of reality.'

Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany.

Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.

But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his "true" identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound.

Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss's quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.

As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.

The Chechen war and Putin's slaughterhouse

 Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 576pp. Amazon selling this edition for $127. plus postage. Our special price is $40 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Written in passionate prose, this is the story of the one million Chechens who, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, found themselves cast as the enemy of the new Russian state. Compelled to assert their freedom and individualism, they faced the huge Russian army in a one-sided war which destroyed their land, their homes, and their families. This updated account also covers the role of Vladimir Putin in the continuing struggle.

Memoir of a survivor of the Darfur genocide

 

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

The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world, an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time: the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.

In 2003, Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, was among the hundreds of thousands of villagers attacked and driven from their homes by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups. Though Hari’s village was burned to the ground, his family decimated and dispersed, he himself escaped, eventually finding safety across the border. With his high school knowledge of languages, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. In doing so, however, he had to return to the heart of darkness–and he has risked his life again and again to help ensure that the story of his people is told while there is still time to save them.

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.

Australian women at WWI

 

Rare book. Mint condition. Unavailable at Amazon.PB. 336pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The battlefields of WWI bring together Genevieve Howard, who becomes an Australian Army nurse, and Madeleine Aspinall, a British ambulance driver. Coming from very different beginnings, the horrors of Gallipoli and the Western Front provide the violent background to their friendship and the relationships with the men in their lives. 

Two Women Went to War is a novel about love, war and the complex bonds of friendship. Lives are challenged in numerous ways through the turbulent and dramatic landscapes of WWI and the years that follow. The battlefields of WW1 bring together Genevieve Howard, who becomes an Australian Army nurse and Madeleine Aspinall, a British ambulance driver. 

Coming from very different beginnings, the horrors of Gallipoli and the Western Front provide the violent background to their friendship and the relationships with the men in their lives. Two Women Went to War is a novel about love, war and the complex bonds of friendship. Lives are challenged in numerous ways through the turbulent and dramatic landscapes of WW1 and the years that follow. 

L.E.Pembroke was born and raised in Sydney. This, her second book, reflects her passion for history and the extraordinary stories of ordinary women and men. 

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.

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.

On the frontline fighting against ISIL

 

Mint condition. PB. 352pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

The gripping story of one woman's war against ISIS on the frontlines of Syria.

Joanna Palani made headlines across the world in 2016 when her role fighting on the front line of the Syrian conflict was revealed. She is one of a handful of western women who have joined the international recruits to the Kurdish forces in Syria and is the first woman fighter to tell her story.

Joanna was born to Iranian-Kurdish parents in a refugee camp in Iraq, before her family were accepted in to Denmark. During the Arab Spring, Joanna realised she needed to do something to protect the values she believes in, and the culture she loves. Leaving behind her life as a student, Joanna underwent considerable military training and travelled to the Middle East, where she spent time over several years fighting on the front line, including at the devastating battle for Kobani.

Despite her heroism, Joanna was taken in to custody on her return to Denmark for breaking laws designed to stop its citizens from joining ISIS, making her the first person to be jailed for joining the international coalition. Joanna now lives in Copenhagen under daily threat from ISIS supporters, as she continues her fight for women's rights off the front line.

Syria - diaries from Russia's other war

 

PB. Mint condition. 270pp. $20 including postage to anywhere in Australia.

A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. Throughout this period she kept a diary of personal reflections on, and observations of, this historic time. Because of the outspoken views she published in print and online, Yazbek quickly attracted the attention and fury of the regime, vicious rumours started to spread about her disloyalty to the homeland and the Alawite community to which she belongs.

The lyrical narrative describes her struggle to protect herself and her young daughter, even as her activism propels her into a horrifying labyrinth of insecurity after she is forced into living on the run and detained multiple times, excluded from the Alawite community and renounced by her family, her hometown and even her childhood friends. With rare empathy and journalistic prowess Samar Yazbek compiled oral testimonies from ordinary Syrians all over the country. Filled with snapshots of exhilarating hope and horrifying atrocities, she offers us a wholly unique perspective on the Syrian uprising. Hers is a modest yet powerful testament to the strength and commitment of countless unnamed Syrians who have united to fight for their freedom. These diaries will inspire all those who read them, and challenge the world to look anew at the trials and tribulations of the Syrian uprising.

An oral history of Japan in WWII

 

PB. Excellent condition. 493 pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A “deeply moving book” (Studs Terkel) and the first ever oral history to document the experience of ordinary Japanese people during World War II

“Hereafter no one will be able to think, write, or teach about the Pacific War without reference to [the Cooks’] work.” —Marius B. Jansen, Emeritus Professor of Japanese History, Princeton University

This pathbreaking work of oral history by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook was the first book ever to capture the experience of ordinary Japanese people during the war and remains the classic work on the subject.

In a sweeping panorama, Japan at War takes us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering glimpses of how the twentieth century’s most deadly conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. The book “seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between the official views of the war and living testimony” (Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan).

For decades, American and Japanese readers have turned to Japan at War for a candid portrait of the Japanese experience during World War II in all its complexity. Featuring essays that contextualize the oral histories of each tumultuous period covered, Japan at War is appropriate both as an introduction to those war-ravaged decades and as a riveting reference for those studying the war in the Pacific.

A simple guide to understanding the complexities of current events

 

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

This is a life raft for anyone who finds themselves floundering amidst a sea of ten-second soundbites, wishing they had a better grasp of complexities of world politics and global issues. 

Clear, concise language sets the record straight on a diverse range of topics as Lawrence Potter presents answers to fifty-seven questions about the world we live in, stretching from "What is jihad?" to "is fair trade a good thing?" and "Is there still a war in Chechnya?" . 

Important information including the latest research on environmental issues and the history behind current events worldwide is presented in enough detail to be useful without overwhelming readers with too much making for a balanced, informed reference guide.

Also covering... What is the problem with plastic bags? What did Sadaam do to the Kurds? What is the difference between a sunni and a shia and is it possible that global warming is not taking place 

SOLD Richard Fidler writes about the rise and fall of Constantineople

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 512pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'A brilliant reconstruction of the saga of power, glory, invasion and decay that is the one-thousand year story of Constantinople. A truly marvellous book.' - Simon Winchester

In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are brought vividly to life at the same time as a father navigates the unfolding changes in his relationship with his son.

GHOST EMPIRE is a revelation: a beautifully written ode to a lost civilization, and a warmly observed father-son adventure far from home.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.