The Churchill family

 

Excellent condition. PB. 640pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia

There never was a Churchill from John of Marlborough down who had either morals or principles', so said Gladstone. From the First Duke of Marlborough - soldier of genius, restless empire-builder and cuckolder of Charles II - onwards, the Churchills have been politicians, gamblers and profligates, heroes and womanisers.

The Churchills is a richly layered portrait of an extraordinary set of men and women - grandly ambitious, regularly impecunious, impulsive, arrogant and brave. And towering above the Churchill clan is the figure of Winston - his failures and his triumphs shown in a new and revealing context - ultimately our 'greatest Briton'.

A powerful memoir of an Indian boy adopted by an Australian couple

 

Mint condition. PB. 272pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

You can buy this book along with Latika Bourke's memoir. You will only pay $30 for both.

A moving and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds, celebrating the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit – hope.

A true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds, now a major motion picture starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara.
When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines.

Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia.

Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall. When he was a young man the advent of Google Earth led him to pore over satellite images of the country for landmarks he recognised. And one day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for.

Then he set off on a journey to find his mother.

Lion: A Long Way Home is a moving and inspirational true story that celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit – hope.

'We urge you to step behind the headlines and have a read of this absorbing account ... With clear recollections and good old-fashioned storytelling, Saroo ... recalls the fear of being lost and the anguish of separation.' Weekly Review

'A remarkable story ... [Brierley] provides an informative and fascinating insight into how Third World families live with, and somehow survive, their poverty.' Saturday Age
'I literally could not put this book down ... [Saroo's] return journey will leave you weeping with joy and the strength of the human spirit.' Manly Daily

'A feel-good read about a remarkable journey.' Sun-Herald
'As well as the tale of his quest, he provides an informative and fascinating insight into how Third World families live with, and somehow survive, their poverty.' The Age

'An incredible story of how one boy survived and prevailed through extreme circumstances to change his fortunes.' femail.com.au

A comprehensive history of London

 

Mint condition. PB. 1,111 pp, $35 including postage anywhere in Australia

Amazon is selling this for $60.

The Romans built it, the Angles and Saxons invaded it, the Vikings ravaged it, the Normans conquered it. From its beginnings as a foreign outpost on the banks of the Thames in the first century to, in the twenty-first, the teeming metropolitan sprawl of an extraordinarily cosmopolitan world capital, London has been shaped by successive waves of migration into a marvelous polyglot of a city. The history of London may indeed be a history of printing, the theater, newspapers, museums, pleasure gardens, music halls, international finance, and the novel, but for Stephen Inwood it is a history of the people whose tastes, talents, philosophies, and pocketbooks have created it -- and sometimes threatened to destroy it.

Toward a genuinely environmentally conscious capitalism

 

Mint Condition. HB. 576pp. $50 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Amazon is selling this for $86.

This book is about innovation, solutions, competitiveness and profitability. It is also about building environmental integrity and sustainability now and for future generations. The Natural Advantage of Nations pulls together for the first time a vast literature to demonstrate the need for a new paradigm of sustainable development. The book brings together the work of more than 30 leading thinkers, and fresh evidence from around the globe, to show that the drive for an ecologically sustainable world need not be in conflict with economics and business practices. This book draws a bold vision for the future and tells us how to get there by building on the lessons of competitive advantage theory and the latest in sustainability, economics, innovation, business and governance theory and practise. This is top-drawer reading for business people, economists, engineers, consultants, policy-makers, researchers, students and indeed anyone working to create a better world.

The authors incorporate innovative technical, structural and social advances, and explore the role that governance can play in both leading and underpinning business and communities in the shift towards a sustainable future. Coupled with a companion website, this book builds on from the latest in the business case for sustainability and goes beyond it. This book shows how in a tripartite world where business government and civil society all have power, how each can best play their part and better work together to achieve win win outcomes. The result is nothing less than the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to building the new ecologically sustainable economy.

A moving memoir by a brilliant Australian journalist

 

PB Mint Condition. 416 pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

'Life is not defined by the bad things that happen to us. It certainly isn't for me.'

Written for her young son so that he would know what had happened to his mother, Cynthia Banham's inspiring family memoir uncovers a true picture of what survival means:

'This book tells a story that I tried to write many times before, but couldn't. For a long time, it was too painful to tell. It is also one I hadn't known how to tell. It had to be more than a story about surviving a plane crash, a random event without intrinsic meaning.'

Unable till now to write her own story, Cynthia found that the lives of her Italian grandfather, Alfredo, and his intriguing older sister, Amelia, resonated with her own. Discovering their sacrifice, joy, fear and love, from Trieste to Germany and America, and finally to Australia, their stories mirror and illuminate Cynthia's own determination and courage in the face of overwhelming adversity.

From a remarkable writer, and told with unflinching honesty and compassion, A Certain Light speaks to the heart of what really matters in life.

From award-winning Australian novelist Peter Carey

 

HB. Mint condition. 269pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

When Catherine Gehrig, a museum conservator in London, falls into grief after her lover’s sudden death, her boss gives her a special project. She will bring back to “life” a nineteenth-century mechanical bird. As she begins to piece together the automaton, Catherine also uncovers the diaries of Henry Brandling, who, more than a hundred years prior, had commissioned the bird for his very ill son. Catherine finds resonance and comfort in Henry’s story, but it is the mechanical creature itself, in its uncanny imitation of life, that will link these two people across a century. Through the clockwork bird, Henry and Catherine will confront the mysteries of creation, the power of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

SOLD Travels through the Hindu Kush mountains

 

SOLD

PB. 400pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

High up in the Hindu Kush, between the ancient pagan Kalash people and the new medievalists of the Taliban, a charismatic young Spaniard, Jordi Magraner, made his home, mastering the local languages and customs before meeting his death in the most mysterious way. In this magisterial book, Gabi Martinez sets off in Jordi's footsteps to the land of the giants in order to try to solve the riddle of this murder and of Jordi's life.

Jordi Magraner was a brilliant student of the natural world, whose lab was the ravine and the scarp and the tent. His observational investigations led him to places where the legendary barmanu had been sighted, and he began to develop a thesis about the life of the wild man. His passion for pursuit and discovery took him onto ever more perilous terrain in the Pakistani-Afghan borderlands. And, one by one, Jordi turned his back on the Europeans who sought to assist him, preferring instead to entrust his safety to an Afghan youth fleeing the Taliban, and to a wondrous working dog called Fjord.

Jordi sought other rewards, and followed a winding, rocky path, down which Gabi Martinez resourcefully tracks him on this enthralling journey of detection and adventure in the Himalayas - where the truth is never as clear and pristine as the majestic mountains and the fast-flowing streams.

The ultimate collection of jokes

 

PB. 555pp. Good condition. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A Man Walks Into A Bar is a one-stop shop for anyone who likes to hear and tell jokes. The jokes are ordered thematically - wives, husbands, doctors, lawyers, the French, the Germans, jokes about nuns, jokes about monkeys, the lot. There are also regular panels which group jokes by type too - Essex girls, changing a lightbulb etc. Our material will turn you into the toast of your local pub or make you loathed in your own home - remember, it is all in the telling. From the sublimely erudite to stuff Frank Carson would turn down (the book has a 'world's worst jokes' section), this book can service you with every joke you'll ever need.

What do you call an eskimo chav?
Innuinnit

What did the zen student say at the hamburger stand?
Make me one with everything

What's Irish and lives in the garden?
Paddy O'Furniture

Pakistan - playing with fire?

 

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

 A volatile nation at the heart of major cultural, political, and religious conflicts in the world today, Pakistan commands our attention. Yet more than six decades after the country’s founding as a Muslim democracy, it continues to struggle over its basic identity, alliances, and direction. In Playing with Fire, acclaimed journalist Pamela Constable peels back layers of contradiction and confusion to reveal the true face of modern Pakistan.

In this richly reported and movingly written chronicle, Constable takes us on a panoramic tour of contemporary Pakistan, exploring the fears and frustrations, dreams and beliefs, that animate the lives of ordinary citizens in this nuclear-armed nation of 170 million. From the opulent, insular salons of the elite to the brick quarries where soot-covered workers sell their kidneys to get out of debt, this is a haunting portrait of a society riven by inequality and corruption, and increasingly divided by competing versions of Islam.

Beneath the façade of democracy in Pakistan, Constable reveals the formidable hold of its business, bureaucratic, and military elites—including the country’s powerful spy agency, the ISI. This is a society where the majority of the population feels powerless, and radical Islamist groups stoke popular resentment to recruit shock troops for global jihad. Writing with an uncommon ear for the nuances of this conflicted culture, Constable explores the extent to which faith permeates every level of Pakistani society—and the ambivalence many Muslims feel about the role it should play in the life of the nation.

Both an empathic and alarming look inside one of the world’s most violent and vexing countries, Playing with Fire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand modern Pakistan and its momentous role on today’s global stage.

SOLD Travels through Laos

 

SOLD

RARE BOOK. HB. Mint condition. 284pp. Amazon is selling this book for $141. I'm selling it for $35.

Nestled between Vietnam to the east, Myanmar and China to the north, Thailand to the west and Cambodia to the south, Laos has long suffered from the depredations of its larger neighbors. But the biggest bully in its history was the United States which, starting in 1964, carried on a "secret war" against Laos. By the time of the ceasefire in February 1973, Laos had become the most heavily bombed nation in the history of the world.

When renowned travel writer Dervla Murphy went to Laos in 1997, she discovered a country that had only just opened its borders to the West. What she found was a country where the people-kind, gentle, welcoming-more than compensate for everything that can go wrong. But she also discovered that the persisting problems bequeathed by its recent past are tragic and other problems threaten its immediate future. A series of chance meetings left her with a profound sense of a beautiful country and a unique culture threatened-once again-by the extreme pressures of the modern world.

How the West woos Arab dictators

 

Mint condition. HB. 416pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In A Brutal Friendship, Said K. Aburish traces the true origins of the region's present turmoil to the manner in which corrupt Arab rulers have subordinated the welfare of their subjects to their cultivation of cozy relationships with the West. Using direct evidence from his unrivaled range of Arab sources, he describes how the West -- mostly the CIA -- sponsored Islamic fundamentalism in the 1950s and '60s in an effort to contain Nasser and thwart Soviet designs on the region, how American and British leaders have turned a blind eye to repressive governments when they suit their interests (and toppled them when they do not), and how it is these very machinations that set Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on his bloody road to power.

SOLD Travels through Muslim and Buddhist China

 

SOLD

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

The early trade in silk was carried on against incredible odds by great caravans of merchants and animals traveling over some of the most inhospitable territory on Earth, including searing, waterless deserts and snowbound mountain passes. Beginning at the magnificent ancient Chinese city of Chang'an (Xi'an), the route took traders westward along the Hexi Corridor to the giant barrier of the Great Wall, then either north or south of the Taklamakan Desert to Kashgar before continuing on to India and Iran, or farther to the great cities of Constantinople, Damascus and Baghdad. For today's traveler, it is not only the weight of history that makes the Silk Road intriguing, but the incredible diversity of scenery and ethnic people along the way. This beautifully photographed and intelligent book is the authoritative guide to travel in the region.

Fully illustrated with maps.

David Marr's religious journey

 

Very good condition. PB. 319 pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A prominent Australian journalist explores themes of religion, politics and sexuality. 

Priests and preachers have returned to haunt Australian politics. The mission is to get us all to heaven by banning drugs, chopping movies and turning the criminal law against sex. This book is about the politics of salvation - and the cruelty, comedy, and pain inflicted by the enemies of freedom and pleasure.

This is also a book of stories - of murder, and chicanery, suicide and savvy bishops, of the Methodist childhood of John Howard and the ruthless Christian warriors who fight the drugs war, of bizarre censorship and bigotry on the High Court, brawls behind the closed doors of elite church schools, the endless Crusade against sodomy and the devout life of Brian Harradine.

David Marr's aim is to make sense of what's happening as this country drifts back in time, by disentangling the theology from the politics.

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 fictitious biography of Donald Trump

 

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

A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain’s greatest comic novelist, winner of the Man Booker Prize

A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain’s greatest comic novelist.

Pussy is the story of Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality shows on TV, imagining himself to be the Roman Emperor Nero, and fantasizing about hookers. He is idle, boastful, thin-skinned and egotistic; has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words in which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

MAGA no more?

 

PB. Excellent condition. 464pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A comprehensive analysis of the political, economic, cultural and technological factors that contributed to America’s decline and inadvertently paved the way for Trump’s presidency.

The presidency of Donald Trump is commonly seen as an historical accident. In When America Stopped Being Great, Nick Bryant argues that it was almost historically inescapable. In this highly personal account, drawing on decades of covering Washington for the BBC, Bryant shows how the billionaire capitalised on the mistakes of his five predecessors – Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – and how also he became a beneficiary of a broken politics, an iniquitous economy, an ailing media, a facile culture, disruptive new technology and the creation of a modern-day presidency that elevated showmanship over statesmanship. Not only are we seeing the emergence of a post-American world, Bryant fears we are witnessing the emergence of a post-American America. The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump refused to accept defeat and incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol, revealed the country’s chronic state of disunion.

The history of Donald Trump’s rise is also the history of America’s fall.

'An elegant and insightful dissection of how a great nation lost its footing and the world’s respect. The tragedy is made all the more stark by the genuine love of America in Nick Bryant’s writing' – Leigh Sales

SOLD A book about witchcraft

 

SOLD

Mint condition. PB. 470pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The Witchcraft Reader offers a wide range of historical perspectives on the subject of witchcraft in a single, accessible volume, exploring the enduring hold that it has on human imagination.

The witch trials of the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have inspired a huge and expanding scholarly literature, as well as an outpouring of popular representations. This fully revised and enlarged third edition brings together many of the best and most important works in the field. It explores the origins of witchcraft prosecutions in learned and popular culture, fears of an imaginary witch cult, the role of religious division and ideas about the Devil, the gendering of suspects, the making of confessions, and the decline of witch beliefs. An expanded final section explores the various "revivals" and images of witchcraft that continue to flourish in contemporary western culture.

Equipped with an extensive introduction that foregrounds significant debates and themes in the study of witchcraft, providing the extracts with a critical context, The Witchcraft Reader is essential reading for anyone with an interest in this fascinating subject.

SOLD The totality of Robert Burns

 

SOLD

Mint condition. HB. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia

A definitive biography of Franklin D Roosevelt the environmentalist

 

Mint condition. HB. 482pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234 million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley turns his attention to the other indefatigable environmental leader—Teddy’s distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chronicling his essential yet under-sung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of America’s public lands. FDR built from scratch dozens of State Park systems and scenic roadways. Pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades, Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, Channel Islands, Mammoth Cave, and the slickrock wilderness of Utah were forever saved by his leadership.

Brinkley traces FDR’s love for the natural world from his youth exploring the Hudson River Valley and bird watching. As America’s president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt—consummate political strategist—established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and spearheaded the modern endangered species movement. He brilliantly positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to combat the severe unemployment of the Great Depression. During its nine-year existence, the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation projects—including building trails in the national parks, pollution control, land restoration to combat the Dust Bowl, and planting over two billion trees.

Rightful Heritage is an epic chronicle that is both an irresistible portrait of FDR’s unrivaled passion and drive, and an indispensable analysis that skillfully illuminates the tension between business and nature—exploiting our natural resources and conserving them. Within the narrative are brilliant capsule biographies of such environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Rosalie Edge. Rightful Heritage is essential reading for everyone seeking to preserve our treasured landscapes as an American birthright.