SOLD Travels in Indonesia

 

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Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 280pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Norman Lewis was eighty-three years old when in 1991 he embarked on a series of three arduous journeys into the most contentious corners of Indonesia: into the extreme western edge of Sumatra, into East Timor and Irian Jaya. 

He never drops his guard, reporting only on what he can observe, and using his well-honed tools of irony, humour and restraint to assess the power of the ruling Javanese generals who for better or worse took over the 300-year old dominion of the exploitative Dutch colonial regime. 

An Empire of the East is the magnificent swan-song of Britain's greatest travel writer.

Graham Greene called Lewis "one of the best"; Pico Iyer said he's "one of the world's last unguarded secrets"; and Anthony Burgess said "his prose is almost edible." 

And yeah, he's pretty good. 

Lewis visits deep into the leafy and political jungles of Sumatra and East Timor, describing the lurking perils of Indonesian restaurants that cook their food once a week and political land mines as well. 

"Empire" is a scholarly and well-written treatment of Indonesia.

How to make reporting from war zones laugh-out-loud funny

 

You'd better be quick for this one. It will go like a flash! PJ O'Rourke is America's finest satirist. This book is a set of his dispatches from various war zones when he was foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine. What I love about O'Rourke is that although he is politically conservative, he loves poking fun at both himself and his own side of the ideological divide.

Good condition. PB. 221pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A re-issue of the original classic in which P.J. O'Rourke takes on the role of tour guide with hilarious results.

P.J. O'Rourke travels to hellholes around the globe in Holidays in Hell, looking for trouble, the truth, and a good time. After casually sight-seeing in war-torn Lebanon and being pepper-gassed in Korea, P.J. checks out the night life in communist Poland and spends the Christmas holidays in El Salvador.

Taking a long look at Nicaragua, P.J. asks, Is Nicaragua a Bulgaria with marimba bands or just a misunderstood Massachusetts with Cuban military advisors?; has a close encounter with a Philippine army officer he describes as powerful-looking in a short, compressed way, like an attack hamster; and concludes, Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun.

About the author

P.J. O'Rourke is the author of 13 books, including Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. His most recent book is Holidays in Heck.

SOLD Life in an Iraqi village

 

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Very good condition. PB. 368pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. This volume gives a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.

"A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]--simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." --Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity. 

SOLD The wealthy colonialists of Britain

 

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Good condition. PB. 240pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The late Dr Percival Spear (1901-1982) taught history at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and was the author of The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1975.

An objective but not reverential biography of the prophet of Islam

 

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

A life of the prophet Muhammad by best-selling religious writer Karen Armstrong

Most people in the West know very little about the prophet Muhammad. The acclaimed religious writer Karen Armstrong has written a biography which will give us a more accurate and profound understanding of Islam and the people who adhere to it so strongly. Muhammad also offers challenging comparisons with the two religions most closely related to it - Judaism and Christianity.

Muhammad was born in 570 C.E. Over the course of the following sixty years, he built a thriving spiritual community and laid out the foundations of a religion that has changed the course of world history. There is more historical data available about his life than that of the founder of any other major faith, and yet, particularly in the West, his is a consistently misunderstood story.

An acclaimed authority on religious and spiritual issues, Karen Armstrong offers a balanced portrait of this revered figure. Through comparison with other prophets and mystics, she illuminates Muhammad's spiritual ideas; she uses the facts of his life, from which Muslims have drawn instruction for centuries, to make the tenets of Islam clear and accessible for modern readers of all faiths. This vivid and detailed biography strips away centuries of distortion and myth to reveal the man behind the religion.

Karen Armstrong, bestselling author, scholar, and journalist, is among the world's foremost commentators on religious history and culture. Post-9/11, she has become a crucial advocate for mutual understanding between the world's major faiths. Her books include Buddha: A Biography, The Battle for God, and Islam: A Short History.

"Respectful without being reverential, knowledgeable without being pedantic, and, above all, readable. It succeeds because [Armstrong] brings Muhammad to life as a fully rounded human being." -The Economist

SOLD Children of British India

 

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Mint condition. HB. 362pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The children of the raj are legion, yet their story has never previously been told. 

Like Katie Hickman's 'Daughters of Britannia' it is dramatic and traumatic involving dangerous voyages, vivid experiences in exotic places and profound emotions springing from the sudden, unexplained and lengthy separation of children from their parents. 

'We Indian children', the novelist Thackeray called himself when packed off back to England aged 4. 

The tragic plight of such youngers is epitomised by two well-known fictional characters. Punch in Kipling's semi-autobiographical 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep' is bereft of his parents and victimised by his guardian during a five-year exile from India, and Mary Lennox in 'The Secret Garden' is orphaned and transplanted abruptly from a garden full of scarlet hibiscus to a bleak Yorkshire moor. 

Brendon's evocative, at times heart-tugging book, runs from the 18th century and the East India Company, through the Afghan wars, the Indian mutiny and the more settled era of the Queen Empress, and culminates in the conflict leading to Britain's hurried exit in 1947. 

Its subject is the young progeny of traders, soldiers, civil servants, missionaries, planters, engineers and what should be done with them. 

Until the coming of air travel these children often only saw their parents every few years. Then there were the children, often half caste, born of Anglo-Indian marriages and affairs. Sent back to Britain they were often reviled as 'darkies', 'a touch of the tar-brush'. 

And then there were the children educated in India. Brendon reveals appalling stories of abuse at the hands of servants. What frequently unites Brendon's wildly different subjects is their loneliness--drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs and interviews, she portrays children who had to discipline themselves to adapt (often ingeniously) to unfamiliar cultures, far away from family and forced to spend term time in boarding schools and holidays with unfamiliar families.

Hilarious travel journalism

 

Very funny and in very good condition. PB. 241pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Collection of humorous articles on various topics, by a well-known journalist. Some of the stories have previously been published in the 'Sydney Morning Herald' and the London 'Daily Telegraph' and in 'Basking in Beirut', the author's previous collection of articles.

SOLD A rare collection of travel journalism

 

SOLD

Rare collection. Excellent condition. PB. 196pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A collection of writing on travel from across the globe: Jan Morris drops into the fabled Harry's Bar in Venice; a hapless Redmond O'Hanlon battles the insect population of the Amazon; Colin Thubron declines to partake of steamed sheep's head for tea in Tajikistan; Frank Moorhouse laments the tyrany of tipping in New York; in Cairo, Michael Palin finds himself cast as a movie extra; P.J. O'Rourke seeks refuge from eco-tourism in Peru; Robyn Davidson dons a leather jacket and motorbikes it across America; and after years of reflecting on the absurdities on life on other planets, Douglas Adams finds out what's happening to life on this one, visiting the famous Komodo dragons of Indonesia.

Helen Reddy on Helen Reddy

 

Excellent condition. PB. 358pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

With her song ‘IAm Woman', Helen Reddy provided the feminist anthem of the 1970s. In this highly anticipated memoir, Helen reveals that she is much more than the entertainer who first graced the stage at the age of four.

Helen Reddy became the first Australian to win a Grammy, to have her own prime-time variety show on a US television network and to have three number-one hit singles in the same year. then, at the height of her career, Helen's world was shattered by the death of both her parents and also the news that she had a rare, incurable disease.

In this riveting, frank and ultimately brave memoir, Helen reveals the emotional highs and lows that have shaped her as an artist and as a complex woman with a rich inner life sustained by a strong spiritual faith.

Growing up for girls

 

Mint condition. PB. 280pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This book prepares girls for what to expect from puberty and offers advice on what they can do to cope with the emotional, psychological and physical changes and stay happy and confident as they go through their early teens. 

It covers all the topics that girls want to find out about, including moods and feelings, periods and how to survive them, what happens to boys, diet, eating disorders, exercise, body image, sex and relationships, contraception, sexual health, self-confidence, drink and drugs, exam stress, cyberbullying, and staying safe - both out and about and online. 

It guides young teenagers through this exciting and sometimes daunting stage as they start taking full responsibility for many aspects of their own lives for the first time.

SOLD An anthology of the best travel writing

 

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Excellent condition. PB. 528pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The topics in this book range from letters from ancient Egypt to a terrifying hyena attack in Kenya. The authors question the idea of travel writing and argue that travel writing can span many styles and ideas, as well as continents.

About the author

Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle property in Queensland, Australia. She went to Sydney in the late sixties, then spent time studying in Brisbane before moving to Alice Springs, where the events of this book begin. Since then, she has traveled extensively, living in London, New York, and India. In the early 1990s, she migrated with and wrote about nomads in northwestern India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.

On the path of snakebites

 

Rare travelogue in search of snakes! Excellent condition. PB. 352pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia. 

Snakes are Jeremy Seal's fascination, and his greatest fear. In an attempt to overcome his phobia, he decides to journey into America, Australia, Africa and India in search of the most notorious and deadly snakes, and to meet the people who live among them. 

His travels take him to Kenya's snake man, whose entire life seems like a preparation for a bite from the terrible black mamba, and to witch doctors, who use snakes as instruments of vengeance. 

He recalls the stories of Australian convicts condemned to prison in the land of the world's deadliest snake, and the story of a Southern preacher who tries to murder his wife with his church's rattlesnakes. 

Mixed in with all these bizarre tales are fascinating scientific facts, snake lore and ancient legends.

An erudite but highly entertaining travel narrative, The Snakebite Survivors' Club taps into our general fear of snakes to tell a funny and somewhat gruesome account of the world of snakes and the people they repel, mesmerize, and sometimes kill.

SOLD Journey through the Moroccan Desert

 

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Another rare travelogue, this time through the Moroccan desert. PB. Mint condition. 335pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The 450-mile-long Draa River Valley in the Moroccan Sahara contains some of the most sumptuous oases and searing desert of the Arab world. Jeffrey Tayler follows the Draa by foot and on camel, recounting stays in casbah homes, visits to mosques and marabouts, and nights in hashish dens.

About the author

Jeffrey Tayler is a U.S.-born author and journalist. He is the Russia correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and a contributor to several other magazines as well as to NPR's All Things Considered. He has written several non-fiction books about different regions of the world which include Facing the Congo, Siberian Dawn, Glory in a Camel's Eye, and Angry Wind, the latter being a portrait of a journey through the Muslim portion of black Africa. His most recent book, River of No Reprieve, is about a challenging raft trip down Russia's Lena River.

Tayler is an accomplished linguist; in addition to his native English, he is fluent in Russian, Arabic, French, and modern Greek, and has a functioning knowledge of Spanish and Turkish.

SOLD Travels through Xinjiang

 

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Very rare book. A classic travelogue through parts of Xinjiang that are now forbidden to outsiders. PB. 288pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This is a first-hand account of how a tall blonde Western woman travelled in disguise as a Chinese man (in Pathan cap, old grey jacket and big padded trousers), through the remote, forbidden and perilous parts of Southern China, in search of an ancient kingdom and the fabulous 2nd-century wall paintings left untouched for thousands of years. 

Christa Paula, a young German student of Central Asian art and archaelogy has something of the same adventurous spirit as her friend Nick Danziger. 

The area she set out to discover in 1989/90 was under military rule, closed to Westerners as well as to most Chinese, and it was in the company of Chang, a taxi-driver and self-styled Chinese James Dean, that she continued her journey. 

They travelled through an area dotted with nuclear testing sites, forced labour camps, and mines in which prisoners dig and process asbestos without protective clothing.

The real Mrs Brown

 

Excellent condition. PB. 295pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The bestselling authorised biography of Brendan O'Carroll, based on extensive interviews Brian Beacom conducted with the hugely popular star of Mrs Brown's Boys.

Who'd have thought a potty-mouthed Dublin mammy with a cream cardigan and elasticated tan tights could storm British TV screens and leave a nation helpless with laughter?

Brendan O'Carroll performs to tens of thousands of people a night in packed-out stadiums across the country. In the last four years, his TV show has become a No.1 ratings success and he's even making a movie.

But Brendan has had to battle hard for success. The youngest of eleven children, his mother was Maureen O'Carroll, a former nun who went on to become the first woman to be elected to the Irish parliament. Brendan adored his strong, widowed mother - and she later became the inspiration for his indomitable character Agnes Brown.

However, the family endured poverty reminiscent of Angela's Ashes and Brendan saw no option but to leave school at 12 to work. He married young and for decades struggled to make ends meet. Eventually, bankrupt and desperate, Brendan went to see a fortune teller who told him she could see his future achieving worldwide success as a comedian and actor. At first Brendan laughed at the notion, but then he thought of how much his friends loved his gags, and decided to give it a go...

This is the magical story of how a loveable Irishman with a wig and a wit as caustic as battery acid surprised everyone - most of all himself - by becoming one of the best-loved comedians in the world.

It is a story of hardship, heartbreak, and talent and will remind readers afresh that sometimes the facts can be even more extraordinary than the fiction.

About the Author

Brendan O'Carroll was born in Dublin in 1955, the youngest of eleven children. He left school aged twelve and over the years worked in a variety of jobs before turning to stand-up comedy in his forties.

Since then the father-of-three has become a bestselling novelist and is now one of the world's most successful comedians. Brian Beacom is an award-winning entertainment writer at the Herald and Times group of newspapers based in Glasgow. He has written four books and two plays.

Roy Kyle's ANZAC story

 

Good condition apart from a slight tear on the side cover.

PB. 308pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Many books have been written by officers, historians and military experts on the part the Anzacs played in the Dardanelles campaign during the First World War.

There are very few by the ordinary soldier.

Roy Kyle started writing this memoir at the age of 89 and almost completed it before he died.

A typical Anzac, fiercely patriotic, he enlisted in the A.I.F. in 1915, several months under-age.

He spent his eighteenth birthday in the terrible trenches of Gallipoli and then went on to serve on the Western Front.

An Anzac's Story is an honest, poignant account of a young man's experience of war.

It is much more than this, though, for Roy Kyle's story begins with his colourful, classic Australian childhood in country New South Wales and Victoria in the early years of last century.

Bryce Courtenay, who helped get Roy Kyle's memoirs published, has provided a moving introduction to his life and times.

About the author

Albert Roy Kyle (or Roy, as most people knew him) was born at Corowa, NSW in 1897, the third of four children.

He was working as a bank clerk in Terang when, at the age of 17 and with his parents' reluctant approval, he enlisted in the A.I.F.

He served first at Gallipoli and later in France and Belgium.

After the war he rejoined the bank and in 1920 he married Jessie Johanssen, with whom he had two children.

After Roy retired in 1960, he and Jessie moved to Geelong in Victoria, where they remained for the rest of their lives.

A tragic story of child abuse in Australian TV

 

Slight water damage otherwise mint condition. PB. 271pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD Searching for faith in modern Britain

 

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Mint condition. PB. 200pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Contemporary pilgrim Peter Stanford visits some of the most ancient religious sites in Britain, taking the spiritual temperature of our apparently secular and sceptical age.

“'Stanford's sometimes humorous account of these evocative places, and of the present-day pilgrims who visit them, comprises an intriguing investigation of what faith might mean in our apparently secular age.” –  London Review of Books

“A highly illuminating study...his selection may be domestic but it is by no means parochial...Particularly welcome is his ability to laugh at himself.” –  The Independant

“Stanford offers a personal and at the same time historical and geographical investigation into what he sees as a deeply ingrained spirituality in Britain.” –  John Cornwell, The Financial Times

Predicting the strategic situation of the next century

 

Mint condition. PB. 253pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A fascinating, eye-opening and often shocking look at what lies ahead for the U.S. and the world from one of our most incisive futurists.

In his thought-provoking new book, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR--the preeminent private intelligence and forecasting firm--focuses on what he knows best, the future. 

Positing that civilization is at the dawn of a new era, he offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century all based on his own thorough analysis and research. 

For example, The U.S.-Jihadist war will be replaced by a new cold war with Russia; China's role as a world power will diminish; Mexico will become an important force on the geopolitical stage; and new technologies and cultural trends will radically alter the way we live (and fight wars). 

Riveting reading from first to last, "The Next 100 Years" is a fascinating exploration of what the future holds for all of us.

A short scholarly biography

 

Published in 1983. Good condition. PB. 94pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A classical satire of English sea travel

 

Mint condition. PB. 322pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD A history of interactions between Maori and Westerners

 

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

Come On Shore and We Will Kill And Eat You All is a sensitive and vibrant portrayal of the cultural collision between Westerners and Maori, from Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 to the author's unlikely romance with a Maori man.

An intimate account of two centuries of friction and fascination, this intriguing and unpredictable book weaves a path through time and around the world in a rich exploration of the past and the future that it leads to.

Bold, absorbing and utterly original, this book will take its place on the shelf next to Bruce Chatwin (Songlines), Bill Bryson (Down Under) and Doris Pilkington (The Rabbit-Proof Fence). Occupies the same territory as Jane Campion's film The Piano and Rose Tremain's novel The Colour.

Ruth Cracknell on Ruth Cracknell

 

Excellent condition. HB. 308pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

'Ruth Cracknell: A Biased Memoir' goes behind the scenes into the fascinating world of Australia's first lady of theatre, film and television.

From performing in radio soap operas in evening wear to dancing a wild tango in the famous Phillip Street revues to subverting the 'old dear' stereotype in Mother and Son, Ruth Cracknell has led an acting life that embraces Australian theatre history since World War Two.

Her personal account beautifully evokes the endless summers and long verandahs of childhood, the wild adventure of London in the 50s, the fun and desperation of rehearsals in many theatres - and always the richness of a life hugely enjoyed and lived to the full.

SOLD Magical Mathematics

 

SOLD

Mint condition. PB. 321pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The world's greatest mental mathematical magician takes us on a spellbinding journey through the wonders of numbers (and more)

"Arthur Benjamin ... joyfully shows you how to make nature's numbers dance."--Bill Nye (the science guy)

The Magic of Math is the math book you wish you had in school. Using a delightful assortment of examples-from ice-cream scoops and poker hands to measuring mountains and making magic squares-this book revels in key mathematical fields including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and calculus, plus Fibonacci numbers, infinity, and, of course, mathematical magic tricks.

Known throughout the world as the "mathemagician," Arthur Benjamin mixes mathematics and magic to make the subject fun, attractive, and easy to understand for math fan and math-phobic alike.

"A positively joyful exploration of mathematics."

-Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Each [trick] is more dazzling than the last."

-Physics World