A book about Bogans

 

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

Based on the popular website, Things Bogans Like is a revolutionary manifesto that lifts the lid on the secret sect of 'the bogan'. You don't have to come from QLD, WA or South Australia to understand this book.

The word bogan has a bad rap; first impressions are still associated with flannelette, VB, utes and mullets. But this would be wrong. The bogan has advanced and needs new explanation, evolution has cursed (or blessed, depending on your thinking) us with a modern version. The bogan with money. The bogan with aspirations. The bogan with Ed Hardy T-shirts. The new bogan will not rest until it owns a plasma TV so large that Rove McManus becomes six feet tall for the first time.

Today s bogan defies income, class, race, creed, gender, religion and logic. Now the bogan is defined by what it does, what it says and, most importantly, what it buys. Those who choose to deny the bogan on the basis of their North Shore home, their stockbroking career or their massive trust fund choose not to see the real bogan. Many bogans are affluent and perhaps are working in that same stockbroking firm and sharing a Corona with you over Friday night drinks. They set themselves apart by their efforts to stand out by conforming as furiously, and conspicuously, as possible.

The authors, six self-confessed snobs, have drawn on their friends, family, neighbours, workmates and that guy who always jumps the queue at the bar, to show the evolution of the much-loved Australian bogan, their modern desires, and how we can either join them or mock them.

This will be a groundbreaking sociological publication and, far more importantly, the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who has ever bought a Buddhist-themed water feature, Ed Hardy T-shirt or watched Today Tonight.

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.

A memoir of the famed city of Egypt

 

Excellent condition. PB. 276pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Victoria Thompson fuses history, mythology and autobiography to create a marvellous portrait of an unforgettable city and one of its rebellious daughters.

The scandals of a Tory businessman

 

Excellent condition. PB. 436pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This title tells the tale of how the wannabe aristo Conrad Black and his ambitious wife Barbara made their way into the City, the Tory party, Wall Street and High Society. This is an entertaining account of gullibility in high places.

Good health for blokes

 

Excellent condition. PB. 372pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This informed and sympathetic guide to men's health is a book that every man should own. It provides detailed information for on-site maintenance of the average four- to six-cylinder adult male- in bed, in the bathroom, at the table, at the doctor, in marriage, in crisis, in mid-life and after.

Learn Hindi the easy way

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. CD included. PB. 288pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Hindi for Beginners is a Hindi self-study guide and language learning package aimed at helping students learn Hindi in a natural manner.

It engages them to actively use the Hindi language in the real life situations. An accompanying audio CD with clearly annunciated dialogues spoken by native Hindi speakers ensures correct pronunciation and builds listening comprehension. Clear task-based instructions, concise and to the point explanation of grammatical structures and lesson plans help enhance student's understanding and speed up their ability to learn Hindi.

Geared towards all learning styles, the subject matter is organized around day today conversations such as:

• Self- introduction
• Pleasantries
• Describing home
• Hiring transportation
• Hotel booking
• Reporting a theft
• Shopping
• And many more

Hindi for Beginners can be used for instruction purposes in a classroom setting or to maintain individual linguistic capabilities such as reading, listening, speaking and writing through wide array of activities. This book also includes the Romanization of vocabulary and dialogues as they are pronounced, to help learners pronounce them correctly and clearly in the absence of a Hindi speaker or a teacher, without any difficulty.

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.

Hilarious and wise short stories from the Middle East

 

Mint condition. PB. 208pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Classic warped and wonderful stories from a genius (The New York Times) and master storyteller.

Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Etgar Keret's stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best writers of fiction, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain - from a father's first lesson to his boy to a standoff between soldiers caught up in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens.

Great American travel writing

 

Rare book. Mint condition. HB. 320pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In this arresting book, Larzer Ziff traces the history of distinctively American travel writing through the stories of five great representatives. John Ledyard (1752–1789) sailed with Captain Cook, walked across the Russian empire, and attempted to find a transcontinental route across North America. John Lloyd Stephens (1805–1852), who today is recognized as the father of Maya archaeology, uncovered hundreds of ruins in two expeditions to the Yucatan and Central America, and he also was one of the first Americans to reach the Arabia Petrae. Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) invented travel writing as a profession. The only writer on Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, he traveled also to Europe, Africa, India, and the Arctic Circle solely for the purpose of producing books about these journeys. Finally, in Mark Twain’s unabashed concentration on the haps and mishaps of the tourist and Henry James’s strikingly different cosmopolitan accounts of European sites and societies, travel writing conclusively emerged as great art.

Ziff explains the ways in which the American background of these writers informed their impressions of foreign scenes and shows how America served always as the final object of the critical scrutiny they brought to bear on other people and their lands.

Memoirs of a fat bastard

 

Mint condition. PB. 281pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Chris Gibson, is one fat, drunk, angry bastard.

He's tried every diet: Atkins, South Beach, Pritikin... Problem is he still can't get his pants on in the morning. And he got none of the genes of his movie star brother Mel. In his early 40s with a job he hates and a lifestyle that is killing him, Chris is having more than a mid-life crisis. He's having a life and death crisis..

Memoirs of a Fat Bastard is a bittersweet account of how a middle-aged man on the road to destruction turned his life and health around on his own terms. It's a telling and frequently hilarious story of the ways in which some men can lose their way, and the way back to finding meaning and happiness amid the competing pressures of being provider, family man, and all-round good Aussie bloke.

SOLD Niki Savva's political memoir

 

SOLD

Mint condition. PB. 305pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

From one of the most senior correspondents in the Canberra Press Gallery comes a rare account of life as a political insider.

Born in a small village in Cyprus, Niki Savva spent her childhood in Melbourne's working-class suburbs ­— frontiers where locals were suspicious of olive oil, and Greek kids spoke Gringlish to their parents.

Only a few decades later, despite all the challenges of being a migrant woman in Australia, Savva had risen through the ranks of political journalism at The Australian, and had gone on to head the Canberra bureaus of both the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Age.

Then in 1997, family tragedy struck, and she was forced to reassess her career. In spite of her own Labor convictions, she became Liberal treasurer Peter Costello's press secretary, a role that she kept for six years before moving on to join John Howard's staff.

This is one of the few books about Australian political life written by an insider with decades of exposure to its major players. Hilarious, moving, and endlessly fascinating, Savva's is a story that moves between countries, cultures, careers and, ultimately, political convictions.

Japan - history in a nutshell

 

Mint condition. HB. 208pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in his black ships, this insular, preindustrial realm mutated into an expansive military dictatorship that essentially supplanted the British, French, Dutch, and American empires in Asia before plunging to utter ruin, eventually emerging under American tutelage as a pseudo-Western-style democracy and economic dynamo.

What explains the seismic changes that thrust this small island nation so violently onto the world stage? In part, Ian Buruma argues, the story is one of a newly united nation that felt it must play catch-up to the established Western powers, just as Germany and Italy did, a process that involved, in addition to outward colonial expansion, internal cultural consolidation and the manufacturing of a shared heritage.

SOLD Dumbing down Australian democracy

 

SOLD

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

'After spending much of my life dedicated to the serious craft of politics, I have to admit that I am distressed by what it is becoming. Under siege from commercial pressures and technological innovation, the media are retreating into an entertainment frame that has little tolerance for complex social and economic issues. In turn, politicians and parties are adapting their behaviour to suit the new rules of the game -- to such an extent that the contest of ideas is being supplanted by the contest for laughs.'

'The two key rules that now govern the practice of Australian politics are: (1) Look like you're doing something; and (2) Don't offend anyone who matters. These imperatives are a direct consequence of the interaction between media coverage and political activity -- the aggregated outcome of countless individuals acting rationally in pursuit of their own interests. The sideshow syndrome, the overall result of these actions, is a direct threat to the nation's well-being.'

When Lindsay Tanner resigned in 2010 as the ALP's federal minister for finance and member for Melbourne, having had an 18-year career as an MP, he notably managed to retire with his reputation for integrity intact. In Sideshow, he lays bare the relentless decline of political reporting and political behaviour that occurred during his career. Part memoir, part analysis, and part critique, Sideshow is a unique book that tackles the rot which has set in at the heart of Australian public life.

Opus Dei

 

Mint condition. PB. 416pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Opus Dei is one of the most talked about but least known religious organizations of our time. For years no one has been allowed access to its secrets. Until now . . .

Here, Vatican insider John Allen uncovers its true nature. Granted unlimited access to those within its ranks, gaining a wealth of interviews with the heads of Opus Dei around the world, Allen finally separates the myths from the facts: the actual use of whips and the cilice; the true extent of Opus Dei's funds; the identities of its influential members in politics, banking and high office; and how much power this shadowy group really has.

Juices & Smoothies to die (or rather, live) for

 

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

200 Juices & Smoothies is part of Hamlyn's hugely successful All Colour Cookbook Illustrated series, which has sold over 1500,000 copies since its launch in 2008. Over 200 delicious, easy-to-make juices and smoothies.

Drinking daily juices and smoothies is a great way to get all the vitamins and nutrients you need to maintain a balanced diet, as well as being an easy and delicious way to keep hunger at bay. Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook: 200 Juices & Smoothies gives you a huge choice of quick, simple recipes that use all your favourite fruits and vegetables to ensure that your diet will never get dull! Every mouthwatering recipe is accompanied by fantastic colour photography, and it's all bound in a handy format, making this great-value book ideal for all!

Beautiful photographs and clear instructions make this book perfect for every cook.

This book includes: Fruit Juices; Vegetable Juices; Super Smoothies; Smoothies & Juices for Kids.

An unconventional account of Israel

 

Very good condition. PB. 512pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST

Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today
 
Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family’s story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.

 
We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country.

As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

The classic work of religion ad politics in America

 

Very good condition. PB. 448pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In Under God, Garry Wills, one of America's liveliest and most eminent political observers, moves through the tapestry of American history, illuminating the instances where American politics and American religion have collided.

Beginning with the 1988 presidential contest, an election that included two ministers and a senator accused of sin, Wills surveys our history to show the continuity of present controversies with past religious struggles and argues that the secular standards of the Founding Fathers have been misunderstood. He shows that despite reactionary fire-breathers and fanatics, religion has often been a progressive force in American politics and explains why the policy of a separate church and state has, ironically, made the position of the church stronger.

Marked by the extraordinary quality of observation that has defined the work of Garry Wills, Under God is a rich, original look at why religion and politics will never be separate in the United States.

The history of Sesame Street

 

Ex-library. Mint condition. HB. 380pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Now an acclaimed documentary from Screen Media, the New York Times bestselling account of the story behind one of the most influential, durable, and beloved shows in the history of television: Sesame Street.

“Davis tracks down every Sesame anecdote and every Sesame personality in his book . . . Finally, we get to touch Big Bird's feathers.” —The New York Times Book Review

Sesame Street is the longest-running-and arguably most beloved- children's television program ever created. Today, it reaches some six million preschoolers weekly in the United States and countless others in 140 countries around the world.

Street Gang is the compelling, comical, and inspiring story of a media masterpiece and pop-culture landmark. Television reporter and columnist Michael Davis-with the complete participation of Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the show's founders-unveils the idealistic personalities, decades of social and cultural change, stories of compassion and personal sacrifice, and miraculous efforts of writers, producers, directors, and puppeteers that together transformed an empty soundstage into the most recognizable block of real estate in television history.

Seeking refuge in Australia from the Taliban

 

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

The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif traces an Afghani refugee's extraordinary journey – from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, to his forced exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, to incarceration in an Australian detention centre ... and finally, to freedom.

Understanding Murdoch and his power

 

Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 563pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The ongoing News Corporation scandals have catapulted Murdoch and his global media empire into the public eye as perhaps never before. 

In the English-speaking world, and increasingly in 'untapped' but potentially lucrative markets such as China, Murdoch wields an influence as political kingmaker second to none.

How did he do it? How did this empire, a loose 'archipelago' of media islands large and small, come to be so successful and influential? How did it all come to the current, disastrous state? And will the empire survive scandals that have outraged people around the world and rocked the media?

Building on many years' research and featuring many previously undisclosed revelations, THE MURDOCH ARCHIPELAGO is the definitive survey of Murdoch's life and times; how power flows from influence; and whether this should (or if it can) be regulated.