SOLD The history of how we see India

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 432pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

From Thomas the Apostle to Slumdog Millionaire: how we imagine India, from the author of Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity.

A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India's past and present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans -- everyone really, except for Indians themselves -- came to imagine India.

His account of the engagement between foreigners and India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great toSlumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco de Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, E.M. Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles and Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller's own 25-year-long love affair with India.

The resulting is a spellbinding, 2,500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture and society, in the company of an author who informs, educates and entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies and overturns long-held stereotypes about race, identity and migration. At once scholarly and thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

Paul Keating on the Asia-Pacific

 

Mint condition. HB. 310pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

During the period of Paul Keating's Prime Ministership of Australia, relations with the countries of Asia were deepened. This insightful and controversial book examines the development of APEC, relationships with Indonesia, and with countries of the South Pacific. It also examines questions of Australia's national identity.

The inside story of one of Australia's most contentious Prime Ministers

 

PB. Excellent condition. 594pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Although he was at the forefront of Australian political life for some 13 years, Paul Keating has remained mysterious. This biography looks at the Prime Minister who did things his way, and who was not afraid to tackle the big issues, such as the economy, Aboriginal relations and the republic. Using confidential documents, policy files, and interviews with Keating, the author examines the world of Treasury and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and explores one man's controversial methods of running the country.

SOLD Travels through Myanmar

 

SOLD

Very rare book. Mint condition. PB. 265pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This expression of the pain of Burma uses novelistic techniques to weave together the patient endurance of its stricken inhabitants, together with their fragility and immense charm. 

Through his studies of the lives of the individual Burmese whom he encounters, the author makes us feel the weight of the regime under which they labour, from the girls who work on the building-sites under appallingly exploitative conditions to the drunken pirates who profit from the chaos.

About the author

Canadian Rory MacLean is one of Britain's most expressive and adventurous travel writers. His twelve books include the UK top tens Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon as well as Berlin: Imagine a City, a book of the year and 'the most extraordinary work of history I've ever read' according to the Washington Post. He has won awards from the Canada Council and Arts Council of England and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. His works – according to the late John Fowles – are among those that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he divides his time between the UK, Berlin and Toronto.

SOLD The history of Bali

 

SOLD

Mint condition. PB. 280pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Under the Volcano is dramatic history written by a master storyteller. Travellers come to Bali looking for paradise. Nehru called it “the morning of the world”. Yet this small island has seen much bloodshed - from the ritual suicides of Balinese warriors fighting the Dutch, to the massacres of 1965-66 and the bombings of 2002 and 2005.

In Under the Volcano, Cameron Forbes looks at the blood and beauty of Bali through interviews, legends, reporting and history. He tells the stories of explorers, colonisers, surfers, artists, jihadists and drug-runners and above all of the Balinese themselves. In doing so he brings the island paradise into vibrant and disturbing focus.

The definitive biography of Bob Carr as NSW Premier

 

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

Based on the author's exclusive access to Bob Carr's diaries, this book will take readers on a roller-coaster ride of political intrigue of the Australian Labor leader. It is an honest, frank account of a politician's career with all its ups and downs, spiced with Carr's own humour, opinions and frank discourse with his State and Federal colleagues. Since a landslide second-term victory in 1999, Carr has become a major force in Australian politics.

A humorous Jewish memoir of life in the Soviet Sixties

 

Rare book. Mint condition. HB. 307pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Read more about this book here.

SOLD Memoir of a young woman from Somalia

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. 368pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This is the extraordinary first-person account of a young woman's coming of age in Somalia and her struggles against the obligations and strictures of family and society.  

By the time she is nine, Aman has undergone a ritual circumcision ceremony; at eleven, her innocent romance with a white boy leads to a murder; at thirteen she is given away in an arranged marriage to a stranger.  

Aman eventually runs away to Mogadishu, where her beauty and rebellious spirit leads her to the decadent demimonde of white colonialists.  

Hers is a world in which women are both chattel and freewheeling entrepreneurs, subject to the caprices of male relatives, yet keenly aware of the loopholes that lead to freedom.  

Aman is an astonishing history, opening a window onto traditional Somali life and the universal quest for female self-awareness.

A century of advertising in Australia

 

Mint condition. PB. 312pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

But Wait,There's More ... provides a unique insight into the place of advertising in Australian society.

Catchy phrases, chants at cricket matches and jingles which consumers just can't get out of their heads-the best advertising stands out because it is creative, clever and, most importantly, funny.

Advertising in Australia can be traced back to the early 1900s, when spruikers wooed the public with appeals to vanity, health and patriotism. By the time Australia had endured two World Wars, the Depression, economic downturns, political upheavals and direct confrontations, the advertising industry had not only survived, but had become a multi-billion dollar industry, with an enormous influence over people's everyday lives and their spending habits.

But Wait, There's More. is the first detailed history of the Australian advertising industry, exploring its development over the course of the twentieth century from a disorganised group of individuals selling newspaper space to a multi-billion dollar enterprise run by giant transnationals. It follows the admen and adwomen who worked to convert their audiences into consumers and examines their ongoing quest for legitimacy in the face of new technologies and an increasingly sophisticated and media-savvy audience.

A journey through Australia's underclass

 

Excellent condition. PB. 246pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

For three decades award-winning journalist Elisabeth Wynhausen has written compelling accounts of the lives of the working poor and the downside of Australia's 'miracle economy'. In late 2001, she decided to join them. Over a period of ten months Elisabeth went undercover and worked as a factory hand, an office cleaner, a retail worker and a kitchen hand, moving from state to state and attempting to live on her meagre earnings. Caustic, courageous and often funny, this is a unique view of class, power and middle management seen from the other side of the serving counter, and a very personal experience of what it is like to be under-paid, under-appreciated and part of Australia's emerging underclass.

Personal stories behind China's economic miracle

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. 384pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Jane Hutcheon's became the ABC's China correspondent in 1995, she began a journey through an ancient and intriguing culture that is undergoing rapid change. Though China has transformed itself into a heady capitalistic republic, the country's new facade covers up a multitude of the same old problems.

Judith Lucy discovers her soul

 

Mint condition. Signed by the author. PB. 256pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

• A book about life that discusses liquor and lovemaking as much as it does the point of it all. 
• 
  
• Judith Lucy has looked everywhere for happiness. Growing up a Catholic, she thought about becoming a nun, and later threw herself into work, finding a partner and getting off her face. Somehow, none of that worked. 
• 
  
• So lately, she's been asking herself the big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? What happens when we die? And why can't she tell you which of her friends has herpes, but not what they believe in? 
• 
  
• In her first volume of memoir, the bestselling The Lucy Family Alphabet, Judith to work out her parents. 
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• In Drink, Smoke, Pass Out, she tries to find out if there's more to life than wanting to suck tequila out of Ryan Gosling's navel. With disarming frankness and classic dry wit, she reviews the major paths of her life and, alarmingly, finds herself on a journey. 
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• 'A well written, poignant, moving and naturally humorous story of one forty-something's attempt to get her life together.' Australian Bookseller + Publisher 
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• 'An often hilarious, at times disarming account of her ongoing search for spiritual awakening.' Madison 
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• 'Can she write? Heck, yeah . . . At least one laugh per page - that's about 245 laughs' Herald Sun

SOLD Historical fiction by a Saudi dissident

 

SOLD

Rare book. Very good condition. PB. 640pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

"Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, this novel records the encounter between Americans and Arabs in an unnamed Gulf emirate in the 1930s. As oil exploration begins, the destruction of an oasis community amounts to "a breaking off, like death, that nothing and no one could ever heal." The promise inherent in the creation of a city divided into Arab and American sectors provides the novel's most striking revelation: here not merely two cultures, but two ages, meet and stand apart. Alternatively amused and bewildered by the Americans and their technological novelties, the Arabs sense in their accommodation to modernity the betrayal of their own traditions. Highly recommended, if only for its cross-cultural insights." Library Journal, L.M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"The only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country." Edward W. Said

Hilarious autiographical stories from one of Australia's best female comics

 

Mint condition. PB. 240pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Should we bring back the Visible Panty Line (because wearing a g - string is sexual harassment)? Are you allergic to your friends? What is the difference between having a child and passing a camel through the eye of a needle? Why will no man ever appreciate anything a woman achieves academically unless she does it in the nude? 

Some people have an extraordinary way of viewing the ordinary. This book is a collection of wit, poignancy and silliness from one such person.

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).

Classic Australian comedic fiction

 

Very good condition. PB. 299pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

"I basically blew my university days in the pursuit of one girl."

Richard Derrington has been trashed, the sort of tragic thrashing when the take-out place's caller ID identifies you as your ex, the kind of thorough trashing that causes you to invent spontaneous trips to Melbourne and makes heartbreaking moments of junk mail. That may be why he's distracted and work and crap on the racquetball court. That may be why Greg the cat has found himself ground zero for a flea infestation and why Richard's renovation of his grandparents' home has begun and ended at the verandah railing.

But that's not altogether true. In between a complicated relationship with his boss and earning himself a Neighbor of the Month award on Zigzag Street, Richard will correct anyone who calls him Ricky, get caught up by The Spanish Tragedy, and stumble his way from perpetrator of a mild concussion to befuddled participant in a dinner party that may or may not be a first date.

Zigzag Street. It's where Richard Derrington will dance naked in the office. It's where he might just come of age in his late twenties.

And it's where it all began for critically acclaimed Brisbane author Nick Earls. Winner of the Betty Trask award, Who Weekly called Zigzag Street "A comic masterpiece." Readers called it "seriously funny" and "Great Australian writing."

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.

John Button's delightful memoir of life in politics

 

Very good condition. PB. 412pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

John Button was leader of the government in the Senate and industry minister from 1983 to 1993. He was a professorial fellow at Monash University and a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers. He edited Look Here: Considering the Australian Environment, and wrote Flying the Kite, On the Loose and As it Happened.

Mr Button died in April 2008 from pancreatic cancer. Bob Hawke, who visited Mr Button days before he died, described him as ‘a giant in the history of the Labor Party’.

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.

Coming of age in post-9/11 Afghanistan

 

Rare book. PB. 339pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Akbar recounts his pilgrimage to his home country with precocious wisdom and insight, taking readers from palaces to prisons and from Kabul to the borderlands in a revealing portrait of a country in the midst of a historic transition.

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.

What is it like to have a father who is a murderer?

 

Mint condition. Based on the award-winning podcast. PB. 272pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This was Nina Young’s shocking realisation in her mid-twenties, when she found out from online court records that her estranged father, Allan Ladd, had strangled a woman to death decades before. In prison he’d met Denise, Nina’s mother, who was his tutor. Although Denise didn’t know the extent of Allan’s crime when she fell in love with him, by the time she found out, she was in too deep. She had to flee from him before Nina turned two.

A decade after reading the court records, Nina, now a journalist, decided to release a podcast to tackle the questions she’d been asking herself ever since. How did her mother fall in love with a murderer? What happened to Conan, Nina’s estranged half-brother, who spent his formative years in Allan’s care? How much do your origins determine your destiny?

This is the story behind the podcast, taking Nina on a cross-country journey to retrace her steps. It is also Denise’s story, of falling in love with a charismatic, intelligent prisoner who turned out to be violent and callous. Unburdening herself of the stigma she carried with her for thirty years, Denise writes of what it took to leave and rebuild her life in the wake of the destruction Allan caused.

Young adult fiction from Australia

 

Mint condition. PB. 368pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Azra's dreams of finishing high school in Sydney and going to university are threatened by her uncle's plans to marry her off to an older cousin she has never met - will she have to choose between her family and her happiness?

'Reading Promising Azra prompted me to revisit stories I have heard too many times to count. Forced marriage is not bound to a certain culture or religion, it's an epidemic affecting children from many backgrounds. For real change to be possible, it’s important for us to hear these stories.’ Dr Eman Sharobeem Community Engagement Manager, SBS

Azra is sixteen, smart and knows how to get what she wants. She thinks. When she wins a place in a national science competition, she thinks her biggest problem is getting her parents' permission to go. But she doesn't know they're busy arranging her marriage to an older cousin she's never met. In Pakistan. In just three months' time.

Azra always thought she'd finish high school with her friends and then go on to study science, but now her dreams of university are suddenly overshadowed. Can she find a way to do what she wants, while keeping her parents happy?

Or does being a good daughter mean sacrificing her freedom?