New Books

LATEST POSTINGS

Petty's Parallel Worlds

Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia

The Twelfth Fish, by Labor MHR Graham Perrett

When I'm 64: The New Retirement

Petty’s Parallel Worlds: Bruce Petty

Unfinished Business: Paul Keating's interrupted revolution

Howard's End: The Unravelling of a Government

Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize

Running the Show: B.A. Santamaria Selected Documents: 1939-1996

Forgetting Aborigines

Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action

Bottlemania: how water went on sale and why we bought it

The F Word: How we learned to swear by feminism

Shattered Lives: The human face of the asbestos tragedy

Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention

Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History
Jenny Hocking
Published by Melbourne University Publishing
RRP: $59.99

Posted 26 November 2008

Acclaimed biographer Jenny Hocking's Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History is the first contemporary and definitive biographical study of the former Labor Prime Minister.

From his childhood in the fledging city of Canberra to his first appearance as Prime Minister (playing Neville Chamberlain), to his extensive war service in the Pacific and marriage to Margaret - the champion swimmer and daughter of Justice Wilfred Dovey - the biography draws on previously unseen archival material, extensive interviews with family and colleagues, and exclusive interviews with Gough Whitlam himself.

Hocking's narrative skill and scrupulous research reveals an extraordinary and complex man, whose life is, in every way, formed by the remarkable events of previous generations of his family, and who would, in turn, change Australian political and cultural developments in the twentieth century. This is a magnificent biography that illuminates the path that took one man to power.

THE AUTHOR

Jenny Hocking is Research Professor in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. She is the author of two major political biographies, Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography, shortlisted in the South Australian Festival Awards for Literature: National Non-Fiction Awards, and Frank Hardy: Politics Literature Life , shortlisted in the NSW Premier's History Awards. Jenny has also written extensively on counter-terrorism and democracy, most recently in Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-terrorism and the Threat to Democracy.

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The Dark Side: the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals
Jane Mayer
Published by Scribe
RRP: $35.00

Posted 24 November 2008

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear; but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.

The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions: U.S.-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and the US’s place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

THE CRITICS

'This book is a tour de force of reporting.'...Les Carlyon (Australian Literary Review)
'The most compelling, chilling, well-written account to date.'...Ray Bonner (Australian)
'A formidable piece of reporting. Hopefully it will bolster the case for post-election indictments for some of the injustices described here.'...David Costello (Courier Mail)

THE AUTHOR

Jane Mayer is the co-author of two bestselling and critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. She is currently a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker. Before that, she was a senior writer and front-page editor for The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Journal's first female White House correspondent.

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The Superior Person's Field guide to Deceitful, Deceptive & Downright Dangerous Language
Peter Bowler
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $29.95

Posted 19 November 2008

The Superior Person’s Field Guide is a call for the return to simple, straightforward words that say what they mean and mean what they say. Most of us know that “downsizing” means that you’re about to be fired, but have you ever heard its business-speak cousins “offshoreable” or “cash-flow episode”?

With his customary wit and clear-sightedness, Bowler cuts a swath through the thickets of popular jargon, casting daylight on such linguistic deformities as “interrogate with prejudice” (that is, torture) and “unforeseen geological event” (a mining disaster).

Impatient with euphemism, he examines ugly specimens forced into bloom in the interests of political correctness - “waitperson,” “developmentally challenged” – designed to help the squeamish avoid direct confrontation with the simple facts of sex and disability. Here are circumlocutions that make the disagreeable seem agreeable, the unacceptable acceptable, and here is Peter Bowler, as always, trying to set the record, and the English language, straight.

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Shocking the Suburbs: Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City
Jago Dodson; Neil Sipe
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $16.95

Posted 18 November 2008

Petrol prices have risen to historic highs, disrupting western economies and stretching household budgets. Australia’s overwhelming reliance on the private motor car for urban mobility makes our cities among the most oil-dependent in the world, and to date there has been little analysis of the potential social, economic and political impacts of rising fuel costs on our cities.

Shocking the Suburbs considers current urban transport problems, and identifies how new planning strategies and broader public policy can address oil vulnerability.

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Worth Fighting For: Inside the 'Your Rights at Work' Campaign
Kathie Muir
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $34.95

Posted 14 November 2008

When Labor won the 2007 election, it was widely accepted that the campaign run by the union movement against the Coalition government's Work Choices legislation was vital to the victory.

There have been few campaigns as well-resourced and extended as the 'Your Rights at Work' campaign, in which the ACTU invested $30 million. It set new benchmarks in the scale and sophistication of its advertising, the extent of activist mobilisation and a triumphant political strategy.

The campaign attracted a wide range of people as active supporters. Many had never been active in union campaigns, some were retired or were not union members, and others who had changed voting habits of a lifetime because they themselves were sacked unjustly with no protection from unfair dismissal legislation,

This book is the first to examine the details of this campaign. Kathie Muir was on the road with the campaign and provides a lively account of its strategies and outcomes, based on over 60 interviews with key union leaders, rank and file members and non-union community supporters. Her insights, observations and interviews reveal the challenges, triumphs and hard slog of the thousands of people involved.

Worth Fighting For is a compelling narrative of the largest most expensive and most sophisticated political campaign ever mounted in Australia.

THE AUTHOR

Kathie Muir is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Science at the University of Adelaide. She has worked with the labour movement as an artist and in administrative roles. She has a long-standing research interest in the ways social and political movements campaign to promote their causes and how mainstream media report such campaigns.

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Blind Conscience
Margot O'Neill
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $34.95


Posted 12 November 2008

This book reveals the untold story of the people who struggled to get asylum seekers out of detention and change government policy. Lateline journalist Margot O’Neill, who covered many of these stories while they were happening, paints a compelling and heartbreaking picture through an extraordinary cast of characters. Some, like Petro Georgiou, Julian Burnside and Phillip Ruddock, are very well-known. Others are not famous but simply felt compelled to follow their consciences and act to help desperate people in desperate situations, often to the detriment of their personal well-being.


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Andrew Fisher
David Day
Published by HarperCollinsAustralia
RRP: $49.95

Posted 5 November 2008

Andrew Fisher was one of Australia′s great nation−builders‚ yet his story is largely unknown. He left school early to work in the coalmines of Scotland‚ educating himself at night. In 1885‚ at the age of 22‚ he immigrated to Queensland where he found work as a miner and as a Sunday school teacher.

A staunch Presbyterian and fervent unionist‚ Fisher committed himself to politics and was soon elected to the Queensland parliament‚ then to the first federal parliament. In 1908 he became prime minister for the first of three stints in the job‚ serving Australia for longer than John Curtin‚ Ben Chifley‚ Gough Whitlam or Paul Keating.

As prime minister‚ Fisher launched a massive nation−building program‚ which included the establishment of the national capital‚ the Commonwealth Bank‚ old age pensions‚ and a transcontinental railway line. His most pressing concern was to populate and defend the new nation. To this end he famously pledged to back Britain in the Great War ′to the last man and the last shilling′ − a commitment that came at the heavy cost of Gallipoli and the Western Front.

Andrew Fisher was a man who hated imperial honours‚ yet enjoyed the trappings of office‚ a leader who believed in world socialism‚ yet took Australians into the First World War. In this authoritative and immensely readable biography‚ David Day reveals the man‚ his politics and his remarkable legacy.

′Fisher wanted Australians to have a surer sense of their nationality. He never lost sight of himself as a socialist whose aim was to create a fairer life for working people.′

THE AUTHOR

David Day has written widely on Australian history and the history of World War II. His biography of John Curtin won the 2000 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards Prize for History and was shortlisted for the 2000 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non−Fiction‚ while his biography of Ben Chifley was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Award for History in 2002. David Day is currently an Honorary Associate with the History Program at La Trobe University and a visiting professor at the University of Aberdeen. He lives in Eltham‚ Victoria.

THE PM’s LAUNCH SPEECH

To view Kevin Rudd’s comments on the launch of the book, click here.

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Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide
Tom Bramble
Published by Cambridge University Press
RRP: $AUD$49.95

Posted 3 November 2008

In the late 1960s Australian unionism was on the flood tide: growing in strength, industrially confident and capable of shaping the overall political climate of the nation. Forty years on, union membership and power is ebbing away despite community support for trade unionism and the continuing need for strong unions.

Even the unprecedented mobilisation against WorkChoices, which defeated a government and lost the prime minister his own seat, has done little to turn the tide. With compelling rigour, Tom Bramble explores the changing fortunes of what was once an entrenched institution.

Trade Unionism in Australia charts the impact on unions of waves of economic restructuring, a succession of hostile governments and a wholesale shift in employer attitudes, as well as the failure of the unions’ own efforts to boost membership and consolidate power.

Indeed, Bramble demonstrates how the tactics employed by unions since the early 1980s may have paradoxically contributed to their decline. Ultimately this timely book traces union-led action from the workplace to the political sphere over a period of significant change, and concludes by pointing to strategies for a renewal and revival of Australian unions.

THE CRITICS

'The history of trade unionism in Australia may well be our true history, with its decent dreams and compliant reality. In rescuing it from the political shadows, Tom Bramble has written an important and fluent reminder that nothing is gained without a fight.' John Pilger, award-winning journalist, author and documentary film maker

'Tom Bramble's book tells an exciting story of conflict, inspiring mass activity, huge mistakes, defeats and triumphs. It has no competitors in its systematic account of important decades of union activity and provides a superior assessment of specific events and episodes. Trade Unionism in Australia is indispensable to anyone interested in the current state of the Australian union movement and its future, industrial relations policy and labour history'… Rick Kuhn, Reader in Political Science, Australian National University, winner of the 2007 Deutscher Memorial Prize

''One of the great strengths of Tom Bramble's book is the way in which he conveys not just the arguments amid the changing fortunes of the union movement, but also the passions and allegiances that lay behind those arguments. This is not just a compelling analysis, but also a very human history, which starts from the strikes, bans and pickets of workers themselves.' … Diane Fieldes, Lecturer in Industrial Relations, University of New South Wales

THE AUTHOR

Troy Bramble is Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations, School of Business, University of Queensland and has been a union activist. He has lectured in Industrial Relations at tertiary level for more than twenty years.

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Calculating Political Risk
Catherine Althaus
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $44.95

Posted 1 November 2008

'Risk' is a four-letter word that inspires a lot of action in the modern world. Risk identification and risk management tasks are huge industries that are generating, as well as attempting to save, billions of dollars around the world. While political risk is a reality faced by every political actor, what is meant by 'political risk' and how it is assessed is often not clear.

Calculating Political Risk is the first attempt from within the political science community to tackle the question of how political risk is calculated.

By looking at domestic development plans like Queensland's Smart State, South Australia's Creating Opportunity and Tasmania Together, as well as overseas case studies like the Mad Cow crisis and the US response to September 11, Catherine Althaus examines the concept of political risk calculation, the way in which political actors determine whether something is politically risky, and the implications this has for policy design.

Drawing on interviews with over 100 political players from across Australia at federal, state and local governments levels - including Bob Hawke, Barry Jones, Jon Faine, Paul Bongiorno, Nick Greiner and Margot Kingston - Calculating Political Risk offers valuable lessons to politicians and their advisers, as well as making an important contribution to an exciting new area of risk theory.

Whether we are dealing with natural disasters or a visit from a Head of State, the calculation of political risk has become an increasingly important part of the political decision-making process. Calculating Political Risk is the first book to examine the concept of political risk calculation, the way in which political actors determine whether something is politically risky, and the implications this has for policy design.

THE AUTHOR

Dr Catherine Althaus has worked in central agencies of the Queensland Government engaging with political actors from a wide array of backgrounds. She has acted as a consultant to a number of organisations in the field of public administration and public policy as well as providing economic advice to private sector clients. She was recently an ANZSOG Research Fellow with the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and in 2008 became Assistant Professor in Strategic Leadership and Organizational Change at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

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My Story: the tale of a terrorist who wasn't
Mamdouh Habib & Julia Collingwood
Published by Scribe
RRP: $32.95

Posted 31 October 2008

In the early hours of 2 October 2001, Mamdouh Habib and two young German men were taken off a bus traveling between Quetta and Karachi by Pakistani security officers. It was shortly after 9/11, and only days before the United States attacked Afghanistan. The Pakistanis were rounding up anyone who looked foreign or in any way suspicious, interrogating them, and passing them on to the Americans.

A few unlucky ones were then ‘rendered’ to a third-party country to be further interrogated and tortured, where they either disappeared into a web of secret prisons or were sent to Guantanamo Bay.

This is what happened to Mamdouh Habib. Branded as a terrorist, accused of attending al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and of training the 9/11 terrorists in martial arts, Mamdouh Habib was incarcerated and tortured — first in Pakistan, and then in Egypt, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.

Eventually, after three-and-a-half years, he was released without charge from Guantanamo, and reunited with his wife and four children in Australia.

Here, for the first time, Mamdouh Habib reveals the full story of his journey to hell and back. He exposes the complicity of the Australian government in his abduction and maltreatment, as well as its subsequent neglect of him while in Guantanamo. He also describes his encounters with other well-known alleged terrorists, including his meetings with David Hicks both in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo.

My Story is also the account of a young Egyptian man who migrated to Australia in 1982 in order to settle down and to make a good life for himself. It is about his marriage to Maha, a remarkable young woman originally from Lebanon, who was to become his steadfast companion and who, throughout the years of their ordeal, tirelessly fought for the release of her husband and the restitution of his name.


THE CRITICS
'A gripping story of one man’s descent into hell on earth – and of the country that betrayed him.'…Stephen Grey, author of Ghost Plane

'While John Howard advocated Aussie mateship and a fair go, this Australian was being secretly handed over to rendition and torture. Mamdouh Habib's harrowing story will leave fair-dinkum Australians feeling nauseated by the double standards.'…Senator Bob Brown

'An unrelentingly stomach churning account of maltreatment, torture, and persecution ... Was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Whatever the truth, Australian politicians and officials were complicit in his detention, and ignored his inhumane treatment’... Bookseller & Publisher

THE AUTHORS

Mamdouh Habib is an Egyptian-born Australian Muslim best known for his extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, on suspicion of his having been involved in terrorism. He was born in 1955 in Egypt, moved to Australia in 1982, met and married Maha, a young Lebanese–Australian woman, had four children, became an Australian citizen, and owned a café and ran a cleaning business. After being released from Guantanamo without charge, he ran as an independent political candidate in the New South Wales state election of 2007.

Julia Collingwood has worked in publishing since 1975 as a senior editor, acquisitions/commissioning editor, managing editor, and publisher. She has also run her own editorial services company, and has taught editing and book production. She is the co-author of three other books.

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The Garnaut Climate Change Review
Ross Garnaut
Published by Cambridge University Press
RRP: $79.95

Posted 29 October 2008

Professor Ross Garnaut was commissioned by all of the Governments of Australia’s Federation to examine the impacts of climate change on Australia and to recommend policy frameworks to improve the prospects of sustainable prosperity.

The Garnaut Climate Change Review is one of the most important reports to be published in Australia for many years. It examines the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, the costs of adaptation and mitigation, and the international context in which climate change is experienced and negotiated.

It analyses the elements of an appropriate international policy response, and the challenges that face Australia in playing its proportionate part in that response.

The Garnaut Climate Change Review is highly relevant to the global problem that is climate change. It considers what policies the international community should adopt in responding to climate change, and urges humanity to act now, and in concert, to develop the required policy response in time.

THE CRITICS

‘The Garnaut Review is of special importance in its combination of a global view and the perspective from one country. It adopts a way forward for global action on climate change and how Australia can and should manage its own role.’ …Sir Nicholas Stern

‘The signing of the Kyoto Protocol by the new Australian Government at the time of the UNFCCC meeting in Bali in December 2007 provided a clear signal of Australia’s political commitment on the issue of climate change. The Garnaut Climate Change Review provides yet another example of Australia’s seriousness in not only addressing the issue, but coming up with solutions and actions.’… Mari Pangestu, Minister of Trade, Indonesia

‘Garnaut’s work on climate change has raised the level of understanding to a higher plane. Heeding the GCCR will help PNG and other developing countries to manage their development in ways that will reduce their own carbon emissions, while taking advantage of opportunities presented by participating in carbon trading schemes.’ … Sir Mekere Morauta, Former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (1999–2002)

‘Ross Garnaut brings to this seminal book on climate change policy the intellectual clarity and close knowledge of the developing world and the international economy that distinguish his work. This is an outstanding contribution to sorting out a complex global problem.’ … Justin Lin, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of The World Bank, Foundation Director of the China Center for Economic Research

‘For business to play a constructive role it must have access to the right information and clear-minded analysis. Professor Garnaut 's work provides a valuable resource for all contributors to the debate.’ … Don Argus, AO. Chairman of BHP Biliton

THE AUTHOR
Ross Garnaut has been a Professor of Economics in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University since 1989. In 2008, he was appointed as Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is currently Chairman of a number of international companies and research organisations, including the International Food Policy Research Institute, and a board member of several others. From 1985-88, Professor Garnaut was the Australian Ambassador to China.
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Cruel Conflict: The triumph and tragedy of HMAS Perth
Kathryn Spurling
Published by New Holland
RRP: $26.95


Posted 27 October 2008

This is a story of courage, tragedy, humour and strength in the face adversity. This is the story of HMAS Perth during World War 11.

Of the HMAS Perth's crew of 681, only 214 were alive at the end of the war. Over half were killed when the ship was sunk while 106 died while prisoners of war - many working on the notorious Burma Thailand Railway.

Cruel Conflict is not just the history of HMAS Perth and its service in World War 11, it details the true personalities of those on board. Kathryn Spurling has extensively researched the HMAS Perth, interviewing the survivors and their families as well as mining thousands of documents to weave together a moving tale.

It is ultimately a story of chance, endurance and the power of the human spirit.

THE AUTHOR

Or Kathryn Spurling served with the Australian Navy. After attaining her PhD she taught history and strategic studies with University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, where she remains a Visiting Fellow. She has lectured extensively overseas and was the first Australian invited to speak at NATO HQ, Brussels.

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Behind the Exclusive Brethren
Michael Bachelard
Published by Scribe
RRP: $32.95

Posted 23 October 2008

Out of nowhere in 2004, an obscure religious sect burst onto the political stage in Australia. Almost unheard of until then, the Exclusive Brethren was suddenly spending up big in election advertising in support of conservative political parties. But its members were shy to the point of paranoia about who they were — preferring, as they said, to ‘fly under the radar’. Brethren members assiduously lobbied politicians, but did not vote. And they were very close to the-then prime minister John Howard.

What exactly was their interest in politics? Why did their activism suddenly blossom almost simultaneously across the world, from Canada and the United States to Sweden and Australia? And how did a small, fringe group, whose values are utterly detatched from those of most Australians, infiltrate the highest office in the land?

Michael Bachelard uncovered the facts about this secretive sect for more than two years while working as an investigative reporter at The Age. The results of his inquiries are the most comprehensive book ever written about the Exclusive Brethren. It’s a fascinating story of politics and power. But it’s a very human story, too — of damaged lives, of broken families, and of hurt and anger that stretches back decades.

THE CRITIC

'Shocking and compelling. Michael Bachelard has written an eye-opening account of power and cruelty in a tiny Christian sect that enjoys a privileged existence in Australia.'…David Marr

THE AUTHOR

Michael Bachelard is an Australian journalist and author. His first book, The Great Land Grab: what every Australian should know about Wik, Mabo and the Ten-Point Plan was published in 1997. In 1998 he joined The Australian to work in its Melbourne bureau, where he was the workplace relations writer, the Melbourne business and finance editor, and the Victorian political reporter. In 2005 he was awarded a Jefferson Fellowship in journalism, and travelled to the US, China, and Japan for a study tour into China’s growth and burgeoning influence. Michael Bachelard was formerly part of The Age’s investigative team, and he now writes for The Sunday Age. In 2008 he won a Quill award for best news report in print.

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Making Women Count: A History of the Women's Electoral Lobby
Marian Sawer
NSW Press
$39.95

Posted 20 October

In 1972 the Women’s Electoral Lobby changed the political agenda forever. Australian political parties began producing women’s policies, equal employment acts were passed, women’s policy units were set up in government and women’s services were funded. It became legal to advertise contraceptives and women became entitled to the minimum wage. This ambitious history explores the effect of WEL both on politics and on the lives of women who discovered the power of sisterhood.

Founded by Beatrice Faust who felt the need for the women’s movement to move beyond talk, WEL began with a group of ten women meeting at Faust’s Melbourne home. A survey of federal electoral candidates led to outrage as women discovered how little candidates knew about the subjects such a childcare. This agenda-setting intervention led to the demand for women-friendly policy at all levels of government.

This first full-scale history of Australia's best-known women’s political organisation is told through the stories of women who participated in the movement, and extensive archival, survey and media evidence.

THE CRITIC

“The story of WEL deserves to be told…Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of WEL was the enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm people threw into pressing for change. And the seriousness. And the impatience. And the intelligence. And the affection. And the sheer excitement of it all.”…The Hon Carmen Lawrence.

THE AUTHOR

Marian Sawer is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Science at ANU where she leads the Democratic Audit of Australi. She has published a number of books on gender, politics and public policy.

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Doing Health Policy in Australia
Paul Dugdale
Published by Allen & Unwin
RRP: $45.00

Posted 10 October 2008

Paul Dugdale argues that Australia's health policy scene is in rude health, with regular debates about major reform and a steady stream of minor reforms. What motivates these debates and reforms? How can nine governments, and scores of professional associations, charities and businesses interact effectively without a master plan? Why are some health policy changes met with widespread enthusiasm and others enormous resistance?

Dugdale traces the history of the economic and social forces which have shaped Australia's health system. He examines the thinking of government as it is expressed through contemporary health policy, and the roles of the key players including hospitals, the medical profession and health departments. He also discusses major current concerns including Indigenous health, health finance, the medical labour market, health protection and safety issues.

With its insider's perspective on the health system and policy debates, Doing Health Policy in Australia is essential reading for health professionals working in management and policy roles.

THE CRITICS

Paul Dugdale's account of health policy in Australia is engaging, philosophical, reflective and socially informed. - Professor Stephen Leeder, University of Sydney

A distinctive addition to the pantheon of Australian books on health policy, weaving together social theory, history and philosophy with reflective commentaries on the Australian health system and health policy, and on being an activist within the policy-making world. It challenges convention and standard expectations. - Professor Vivian Lin, La Trobe University

THE AUTHOR

Associate Professor Paul Dugdale BMBS, MA, MPH, PhD, FAFPHM has twenty years experience in health policy. He is Director of the ANU Centre for Health Stewardship and a former Chief Health Officer of the ACT.


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Destination Australia: Migration to Australia Since 1901
Eric Richards
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $39.95


Posted 30 September 2008

In 1901 most Australians were loyal, white subjects of the British Empire with direct connections to Britain. Within a hundred years, following an unparalleled immigration program, its population was one of the most diverse on earth. No other country has achieved such radical social and demographic change in so short a time. Destination Australia tells the story of this extraordinary transformation. Against the odds, this change has caused minimal social disruption and tension. While immigration has generated some political and social anxieties, Australia has maintained a stable democracy and a coherent social fabric. One of the impressive achievements of the book is in explaining why this might be so.

THE AUTHOR

A British migrant to Australia, Eric Richards is historian of the British Diaspora over four centuries. He has taught in universities in UK, US and Australia and lives in Adelaide. He has written many books on British and Australian history and is the leading expert on the story of the Highland Clearances, for which he has won Scottish book prizes.

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Global Citizens: Australian Activists for Change
Edited by Geoffrey Stokes, Roderic Pitty & Gary Smith
Published by Cambridge University Press
RRP: $39.95


Posted 27 September 2008

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Volunteering: Why we can't survive without it
Melanie Oppenheimer
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $39.95

Posted 25 September 2008

If volunteers on any single day in Australia decided not to turn up - to coach local sporting teams, stuff envelopes, make cups of tea, plant trees, take minutes - we would all feel the effects very soon. In this new book, fourth generation volunteer and well-known commentator Melanie Oppenheimer takes the first comprehensive look at why Australians give so much of their time for free.

Australia is a nation of volunteers. Without volunteers our cultural, social, political and economic lives would be dramatically different. Still, as Oppenheimer points out, the invisible work that thousands of Australians do for each other and their communities are deemed 'unproductive' in national account keeping and mostly left out of government philosophies. Only the ALP had a policy on volunteering leading up to the 2007 elections.

This book is both a history of the largely untold story of volunteering in Australia, as well as a powerful call for valuing volunteers much more than we do. Timely, lively and unflagging in its coverage of an extraordinary range of organisations and individuals, Volunteering attempts to define what's unique about 'the Australian' way of volunteering.

THE AUTHOR

Melanie Oppenheimer's great-grandmother was founding President of the Country Women's Association in NSW in 1922; her grandmother formed and ran the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment in her hometown during WWII; and her mother was recognised for her volunteer work with an Order of Australia in 2003. Taking up their mantle, Melanie created Vita Aetiva, a series on volunteering as part of ABC Radio National's 'Life Matters' program. She has written extensively on 20th century Australian history, especially on women, volunteering and war. Her books include All Work, No Pay: Australian civilian volunteers in war (2002), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards. She teaches at the University of Western Sydney and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New England.

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Human Rights Overboard: seeking asylum in Australia
Linda Briskman & Chris Goddard & Susie Latham, with a foreword by Julian Burnside
Published by Scribe
RRP: $35.00

Posted 23 September 2008

In 2005, in the wake of the Cornelia Rau scandal, a citizen’s inquiry was established to bear witness to events in Australia’s immigration-detention facilities. Until then, the Howard government had refused to conduct a broad-ranging investigation into immigration detention, and the operations within detention centres had been largely shrouded in official secrecy. The People’s Inquiry into Detention (as it came to be called) heard heartbreaking evidence about asylum seekers’ journeys to Australia, the refugee determination process and their lives in and after detention. In total, around 200 people testified to the inquiry, and a similar number of written submissions were received.

Human Rights Overboard draws together, for the first time, the oral testimony and written submissions from the inquiry in a powerful and vital book that stands as an indictment of Australia’s refugee policy under John Howard. Clearly and comprehensively presented, the book is a haunting journey guided by voices from every side of the fence: former and current immigration detainees, refugee advocates, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists and former detention and immigration staff. Taken together, their stories record a humanitarian disaster that sounds a warning to current and future policy makers, both here and overseas.

With a foreword by prominent humanitarian lawyer Julian Burnside, Human Rights Overboard is an essential book that will resonate for years to come.

THE AUTHORS

Professor Linda Briskman is the Dr Haruhisa Handa chair of human rights education at Curtin University.Professor Chris Goddard is the director of Child Abuse Research Australia, Monash University.Susie Latham is an adjunct research associate at the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, a registered migration agent and a social worker. Julian Burnside, QC, is an Australian barrister who specialises in commercial litigation and is also deeply involved in human rights work, in particular in relation to refugees.

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Eating Between the Lines: Food and Equality in Australia
Rebecca Huntley
Published by Black Inc
RRP: $24.95

Posted 22 September 2008


Why is childhood obesity on the rise, especially among the poor? Is the traditional family dinner really dying out – and if so, does it matter? Jamie Oliver and Bill Granger have marched confidently into the family kitchen, but have Aussie blokes followed? What do the contents of our shopping trolleys tell us about the fair go in Australia today?

In Eating Between the Lines, Rebecca Huntley embarks on an inquisitive tour of the nation’s food courts, supermarkets and suburban kitchens – and uncovers some startling trends. Join her on a thought-provoking trip through the deep-fried, sun-dried, cold-pressed world of Australian eating.

THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Huntley is a writer and social researcher. She is the director of the Ipsos Mackay Report, Australia’s longest-running social trends report. She is the author of The World According to Y: inside the New Adult Generation, and also writes regularly for Australian Rebecca Huntley.

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Buckley's! Ken Buckley, Historian, Author, Civil Libertarian
Berenice Buckley
A&A Book Publishing
RRP: $29.95


Posted 18 September 2008


Ken Buckley — historian, academic and enemy to thoughtless bureaucrats — was rarely silent, fearlessly standing up to injustice and oppression in any of its manifestations against those in power who trampled on individual rights.

Best known as the founding member and leading activist of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (CCL) he was a tenacious fighter against censorship and police corruption and the intrusive powers of ASIO. He supported students during the anti-conscription protests of the Vietnam War, resisted erosions of academic freedom and challenged discrimination in all its forms.

This autobiography is published posthumously by his widow, Berenice Buckley, also a CCL founding member and active worker for immigrant rights and social diversity. In Buckleys!, Ken Buckley gives a candid and vividly lived-in account of his professional and personal life, revealing his vulnerabilities as well as his unswerving commitment to "natural justice".

Says Berenice, 'Ken was a more complex man than often showed up-front. He had a sharp-and often rashly interventionist!-sense of justice, a formidable and driving intellect and a robust, highly infectious sense of humour. I want people to see, and perhaps be inspired by, the man behind the accolades and the brickbats gathered over his long career as a soldier, historian, teacher and political activist.'

THE CRITIC
'Ken always confronted injustice-barging in where most prudent angels would fear to tread. Every free society needs people like him.' ... The Honourable Justice Michael Kirby.

THE CO-AUTHOR
Invited to the inaugural meeting of the CCL, because of her expertise in immigration matters, Berenice Granger impressed Ken Buckley with her feisty efficiency and intellect. Married in 1965, Ken and Berenice were life partners in civil libertarian and human rights issues, campaigns against censorship and for homosexual law reform.. Berenice was particularly active in the area of migrant rights and immigration and citizenship issues. Though retired from the NSW State Civil Service, she remains an active member of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.

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My Guantanamo Diary: the detainees and the stories they told me
Mahvish Khan
Published by Scribe
RRP: $29.95

Posted 16 September 2008

Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents in Michigan. Outraged that her country was illegally imprisoning people at Guantanamo, she volunteered to translate for the prisoners. She spoke their language, understood their customs, and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home. And they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away.

For Mahvish Khan the experience was a validation of her Afghan heritage—as well as her American freedoms, which allowed her to intervene at Guantanamo purely out of her sense that it was the right thing to do. Mahvish Khan’s story is a challenging, brave, and essential test of who she is —and who we are.

THE CRITICS
'(Mahvish Khan’s) portraits of these dignified, bewildered prisoners are unforgettable… Of all the many books about the evil that is Guantánamo - by released detainees of various nationalities, as well as some of the most distinguished lawyers in America - this one, though full of pain, has enough joy, jokes and insight to make it my recommendation for anyone who still wonders what Guantánamo is really like.'…Victoria Brittain (The Guardian)

'My Guantanamo Diary provides a valuable account of what we can now recognise as one of the most shameful episodes in the war on terror. It is hard to read this book without a growing sense of embarrassment and indignation.' …Jeffrey Rosen (New York Times Book Review)

'Revealing near-universal abuse, both mental and physical, inflicted on the prisoners, Khan’s account is plenty powerful — and that’s before she travels alone to war-torn Afghanistan in order to prove her clients’ innocence. Khan also divulges her poignant reunions with several prisoners following their release, a bittersweet breath of fresh air amid a nightmarish, eye-opening and important account.'…(Publishers Weekly)

THE AUTHOR
Mahvish Khan is a recent law school graduate and journalist. She has been published in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media. She lives in San Diego.

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Climate Wars
Gwynne Dyer
Published by Scribe
RRP: $32.95

Posted 15 September 2008

From one of the world’s great geopolitical analysts, here is a terrifying glimpse of the none-too-distant future, when climate change will force the world’s powers into a desperate struggle for advantage and even survival.

Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead, and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Prescient, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research and interviews, Climate Wars promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.

THE AUTHOR
Gwynne Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, author, broadcaster, and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years. His twice-weekly column on international affairs is published by 175 newspapers in some 45 countries and is translated into more than a dozen languages. He is the author of several books, including War, Future: Tense, and The Mess They Made.

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The Airport Economist
Tim Harcourt
Published by Allen&Unwin
RRP: $24.95

Posted 9 September 2008

From Sydney to Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul, St Petersburg, Seattle, Sao Paulo, Santiago and back again, Tim Harcourt plays economic tour guide in this a witty and information rich guide examination of how Australian businesses are exploring and developing new markets for their wares.

Did you know that Australia is helping Singapore 'be creative' to address its imbalance of ballet dancers to engineers and that there is a Transylvanian Cricket Club full of Aussies in Romania? Or that Israeli youngsters are crazy for Tim Tams and the French are buying Billabong board shorts in Bordeaux on Bastille Day?

Join Tim Harcourt - the airport economist - as he travels the globe in chase of the whys and wherefores of Australian international business success and unravels the economic life of the many countries he visits. He talks to business leaders, entrepreneurs, workers, government officials, academics, farmers and even a celebrity or two to uncover the world of export beyond economic text books and financial spreadsheets. He even manages to interview Megan Gale in Milan, watch Sachin Tendulkar build an innings in Mumbai and dodge swarms of motorcycles in Asia's newest tiger, Vietnam, all for the sake of research, of course.

With a clever turn of phrase, witty observations, and the grunt of supporting data, The Airport Economist proves that there is an export dimension to almost everything and that not all economics writing has to leave you high and dry.

Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia

Tess Lea
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $49.95


Posted 4 September 2008

This book takes you on an intimate journey into the lives of people armed with the task of ending Australian Aboriginal disadvantage in the frontier north of Australia. Taking a fresh look at longstanding issues, Lea examines the culture of bureaucracy, its need to create the look of action, how intelligent inhabitants uphold the apparatus of government even whilst they critique it, and how benevolent efforts to improve health have brought about unexpected co-dependencies and tragic failures. She paints a sympathetic yet discomforting portrait of those who, working on behalf of and for Aboriginal health, fiercely defend the ideas and principles that paradoxically reinstate the primary need for greater levels of government intervention.

THE AUTHOR
The daughter of a bush surveyor, Tee Lea was norn in the NT but left as a young woman to pursue tertiary studies and a policy career in the federal government. Returning to Darwin in the mid 1990s she was struck by the tremendous heartache of social improvement efforts in the field. In 2003 she established the School for Social and Policy research at the Charles Darwin University to drive applied work on some of the pressing social problems besetting northern Australian communities.

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The Twelfth Fish
Graham Perrett (Labor MHR for Moreton)
Published by Vulgar Press
RRP: $ 32.95

Posted 3 September 2008

In the small rural Queensland town of Lawson, where the people are still reeling from the arrival of the 1990s and modernity, surfie teacher Lawrence Lalor is condemned to servitude by the Catholic Education League. From his veranda and the pub, he quickly learns the secrets of life in the bush. While Lawson is just another ‘dead- kangaroo-on-the-side- of-the-road’ country town with its streets named after saints, Lawrence is quick to learn that beneath its simple surface, it is a town of depth and deception. Drunken mistakes, accidental friendships, adultery, love, murder and the arcane practice of fish counting lead Lawrence to the discovery that courage and dignity are more rare than precious. Lawrence Lalor’s journey through Lawson – the jewel of the west – gouges a scar on his emotional landscape that will stay with him forever.

THE AUTHOR

Born in St George, Queensland in 1966, Graham Perrett was the seventh of ten children. He’s been counting the numbers ever since. In 1985, he received a diploma for teaching with which he taught for three years in Darling Downs and far north Queensland and for a further eight years in Brisbane. In 1993, Graham was awarded with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours through the University of Queensland and completed his thesis on The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He began his law degree in 1995 and completed it in 1999 through the Queensland University of Technology. During the same year he became a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland. After working with the Queensland Independent Education Union as an organiser Graham was admitted as a Senior Policy Advisor with the Queensland Government. He was the ALP candidate for Moreton in the 2004 Federal Election and was elected to the Commonwealth House of Representatives in November 2007. For more info, click here.

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When I'm 64: The New Retirement
Donna Gibbs
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $32.95

Posted 2 September 2008


We think of retirement as something to be celebrated, even envied, a time when you are finally free to do your own thing. But what do people do for twenty or thirty years without the structures and restrictions of work? Does it mean someone is no longer important if they are not an active member of the workforce? Or is retirement a time for reinvention and refocussing? When I’m 64 explores the experience of retirement from the point of view of those not yet retired, those newly retired, and those who are further down the track. Donna Gibbs’ conversations, insights and reflections on her own experiences offer a window into the new retirement with all its contradictions and complexities. With warmth, humour and insight she shows the upsides and downsides, the challenges to your sense of identity and issues for couples and singles. It is an inspiring guide to the ways people deal with this new phase of their lives.

THE CRITIC

‘Teases out the minutiae of issues, concerns, fears and joys of retirement and lays it bare for all to see and to understand.’…Bernard Salt.

THE AUTHOR

Dr Donna Gibbs is a writer and educator who has written about topics as diverse as Elizabethan love poertry, children’s literature, film and cyberculture. Very busy for a person allegedly retired, she is an honorary associate of the Australian Centre for Educational Studies at Macquarie University.

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Petty’s Parallel Worlds
Bruce Petty
Published by High Horse*
RRP: $39.95

Posted 1 September 2008

For nearly half a century, Bruce Petty's anarchic and brilliantly incisive art has enlivened the pages of our newspapers and magazines. This rich compilation — much of it previously unpublished and edited by Russ Radcliffe — showcases the range of Petty's artistic styles as well as his intellectual and moral concerns. Whether in the directness of his editorial cartoons, the immediacy of his street sketches, the ambition of his films, or the sophistication and beauty of his recent printmaking, Petty is an acute observer of our ambitions and our follies who has never been afraid to engage with the big ideas of our time and the complexity of our condition. From the inanity of the internet to the genius of Mozart, from the chicanery of Australian domestic politics to the global manoeuvrings of superpowers and the clandestine world of international finance, from first world consumerist excess to global environmental degradation, Petty's unruly pen traces the deep and unexpected interconnections between things to reveal the inner workings of the world.

THE AUTHOR
Bruce Petty is one of Australia's most loved artists. Though he is best known in Australia for the political cartoons he has contributed to Melbourne's Age since 1976, Bruce's work has appeared regularly in some of the world's most prestigious magazines such as The New Yorker and Punch. Bruce is extraordinarily prolific in a wide range of artistic pursuits from etching to film-making. He won an Academy Award for his film Leisure in 1977, and several AFI awards for his satirical documentary Global Haywire in 2007. Bruce's previous books include An Australian Artist in South East Asia, The Money Book, and The Absurd Machine. Bruce lives in Balmain and has 4 children.

* New publisher High Horse’s name was inspired by a comment frequently ascribed to Gore Vidal who said that in any argument he always liked to keep his high horse tethered conveniently by...

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Howard's End: The Unravelling of a Government
Peter van Onselen and Philip Senior
Published by Melbourne University Publishing
RRP: $34.95

Posted 8 August 2008

THIS BOOK takes us behind the scenes of both parties on the announcement of the election campaign and traces the stunning collapse of the Coalition in its last year in government.

Peter van Onselen and Philip Senior piece together the events in the year leading up to the 2007 federal election, following the protracted downfall of Australia's second longest-serving Prime Minister and the unraveling of the government as it lurched from crisis to crisis.

In the tradition of Pamela Williams' The Victory, this book analyses and makes sense of the result and its far-reaching implications for the people of Australia.


THE AUTHORS
Peter van Onselen is Associate Professor of Politics and Government at Edith Cowan University. Philip Senior is completing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Sydney.


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Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize
Christine Jackman
Published by Melbourne University Publishing
RRP: $34.95

Posted 3 August 2008

INSIDE Kevin 07 is an unprecedented revelation into how a modern political party works - and succeeds.

Meet the dedicated band of political and creative strategists who engineered Labor's reversal of fortune. See first-hand the birth of a new style of campaigning. Discover who was responsible for Kevin07.

When Kevin Rudd became ALP leader in December 2006, few people picked that a year later, Labor would be in government and Rudd in the Lodge.

Inside Kevin07 takes readers into the campaign war room and shows how a rookie team won an election from one of the most successful and experienced political leaders in Australian history.

All of the key Labor players in the 2007 campaign, including Kevin Rudd and ALP National Secretary Tim Gartrell, cooperated with the writing of this book. Christine Jackman draws on her exclusive access to party research and strategy documents from campaign headquarters.

Inside Kevin07 is the inside story of a modern political party machine and what it takes to succeed.

THE AUTHOR
Christine Jackman began her career as a journalist with the Courier-Mail in Brisbane in 1993, where she first began writing about politics, including the rise of Pauline Hanson and One Nation. She has worked in New York as a foreign correspondent for News Ltd, in the Canberra press gallery and as the Australian's social issues writer. She is now a feature writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine.


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Running the Show: B.A. Santamaria Selected Documents: 1939-1996
Patrick Morgan (ed.)
Published by Melbourne University Publishing
RRP $59.95 (hardback)

Posted 31 July 2008

RUNNING the Show reveals new material on matters which are still the subject of controversy today. B.A. (Bob) Santamaria was perhaps the most controversial figure in recent Australian politics.

An anti-Communist and devout Catholic, he was also one of the most prolific writers in Australia's history and a strong campaigner for social justice, and his impact on this country's social conscience was profound.

In the 1940s he founded the Movement in Australia, an anti-Communist organisation. He was known to earlier generations as a key figure in the tumultuous Split in the Australian Labour Party in the 1950s, and to later ones as a public commentator on his TV program Point of View and in his weekly column in the Australian.

Fiercely independent, he maintained his traditionalist stance, combatting Communism in Asia and permissive and nihilistic trends in Western society, particularly in the field of bio-ethics.

Writing was a key part of his political activity--on every matter of importance to him he turned out exhaustive analyses and rejoinders. Running the Show features some of the many unpublished documents Santamaria produced during his six decades of continuous public activity. It includes speeches, strategic papers, reports to his superiors, memos to politicians, positions papers, personal statements, aides-mémoire and political analyses.

Running the Show brings together a selection of documents written by B.A. Santamaria, and throws new light on a number of crucial episodes in his career. In the poet James McAuley's words, he 'set a match against the age's mind'.

THE AUTHOR

B.A. (Bob) Santamaria (1915-1998) was employed for his whole working life of six decades by four organisations: Catholic Action, the 'Movement' to oppose Communist union influence, the National Catholic Rural Movement, and the National Civic Council. He was educated at St Joseph's and St Kevin's Christian Brothers Colleges, and at the University of Melbourne.

In 1939 he married Helen Power; they had eight children (five daughters and three sons) and lived their married life in the Melbourne suburbs of North Balwyn and Kew, with a holiday house at Mornington. His wife Helen died in 1980, and he married Mrs Dorothy Jensen, his long-time secretary, in 1983. He died on 25 February 1998 at the age of eighty-two and was given a State Funeral.

Patrick Morgan, the editor of this volume, is a Victorian writer and academic who has published an award-winning regional history, edited texts on Australian literature, and written regularly in magazines such as Quadrant on current affairs, including on the connections between religion and politics. He is also the editor of the bestselling book, Your Most Obedient Servant: B.A. Santamaria Selected Letters, 1938-1996.


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Forgetting Aborigines
Chris Healy
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $$39.95

Posted 23 July 2008

FORGETTING Aborigines explores a central paradox in Australian history: Aborigines are often remembered as absent in the face of a continuing and actual indigenous historical presence.

Chris Healy argues that in the ways we remember our history, Aborigines keep disappearing. They are present and central at certain moments but then fade from memory. Aboriginal issues can be on the front page for weeks prompting white Australians to ask questions like ‘why weren’t we told?’ and then recede again.

These amnesic patterns aided colonial practices of dispossession, philosophies like Terra Nullius, and the governance of what was thought to be a dying race.

The book examines ways in which we can stop this dishonest and destructive cycle.

Alongside key political and social landmarks of the past 40 years, including PM Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, this book makes personal, reflective and intellectual observations about the ways in which we remember and forget.

Examining the way "Aboriginality" is conceived in art, television, museums, tourism and various other cultural and historical domains, Healy argues with lucidity andinsight that breaking this pattern of forgetting is essential for an ethical future.

THE CRITIC
'Locked in a cycle of forgetting, then remembering, Aborigines, the whitefella mind is playing tricks. Is there a way off this trail of destruction? Chris Healy offers a new way of history writing that looks beyond the paper archive to other places where the historical sensibility is formed: the TV screen, the embodied situation, or the heritage trail. You emerge in the end all the wiser, for to forget ‘Aborigines’ is to remember real people, in real situations. Brilliant.' -Stephen Muecke.

THE AUTHOR
Chris Healy teaches cultural studies at teh University of Melbourne. He has written on history, popular memory and contemporary culture. His previous book is From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory.


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Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action
David Spratt & Philip Sutton
Published by Scribe
RRP: $27.95

Posted 18 July 2008

IN THIS meticulously documented call-to-action, David Spratt and Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence showing the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports have indicated — and that we’re almost at the point of no return.

Serious climate change impacts are already happening, more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. As the USA’s most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, told colleagues in December 2007, significant climate ‘tipping points’ have already been passed. These include large ice-sheet disintegration, significant sea level rises of up to five metres this century, and devastating species loss. The Arctic will soon be free of summer sea-ice — a century ahead of projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and the Greenland ice sheet is in imminent danger.

The tipping point for the loss of the Arctic sea-ice was around two decades ago, when temperatures were about 0.3°C lower than at present. Climate Code Red shows that further temperature increases of 2 degrees are effectively already in the system. Even a temperature increase cap of 2–2.4°C, which is proposed within the United Nations framework (and is far below what most governments are prepared to aim for), would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years.

David Spratt and Philip Sutton show that the unofficial projected speed of climate change — with temperature increases greater than 0.3°C per decade, and a consequent rapid shifting of climatic zones — will result in most ecosystems failing to adapt, causing the extinction of many species. The oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life.

The dangers we all face are already much greater than the headlines indicate. According to climate scientists such as James Hansen, it is no longer a case of how much more we can ‘safely’ emit, but whether we can stop emissions and produce a deliberate cooling before the earth’s climate system reaches a runaway trajectory that is beyond any hope of human restoration.

These imperatives are incompatible with ‘politics as usual’ and ‘business as usual’. Climate Code Red argues there is an urgent need for all of us to recognise that we face a sustainability emergency requiring a clear break from the politics of failure-inducing compromise. Even scientifically moderate goals (such as reducing emissions by 25–40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020) now require immoderate rates of technical and social change that are only achievable by shifting formally to an emergency footing.

Spratt and Sutton believe we now need to think the unthinkable, because the case for emergency action is not so much a radical idea as an indispensable course we must embark upon if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.

THE CRITICS:

‘The book draws on a vast array of information to build a cogent and compelling case that we do have a genuine emergency on our hands if we are to limit the rise of greenhouse gas emissions to a level at which we can limit the degradation of our planet to manageable levels.’…Professor David de Kretser, A.C., Governor of Victoria

‘Climate Code Red is a sober, balanced analysis of this challenge, unadorned by political spin, proposing a realistic framework to tackle the emergency.'…Ian Dunlop, former international oil, gas, and coal industry executive

‘Climate Code Red is a superb, visionary blueprint for development in a new century which tackles the tough questions of how humanity can, in practice, rapidly secure a sustainable future. But it is also a work in progress, a draft strategy, which is primed to be shaped and developed by those who step up to meet the challenge we all now face.'… Professor Barry W. Brook, Director of Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, The University of Adelaide

THE AUTHORS

David Spratt is a Melbourne businessman, climate-policy analyst, and co-founder of Carbon Equity, which advocates personal carbon allowances as the most fair and equitable means of rapidly reducing carbon emissions. He has extensive advocacy experience in the peace movement, and in developing community-campaign communication and marketing strategies.

Philip Sutton is the convener of the Greenleap Strategic Institute and founder and director of strategy for Green Innovations.he has worked on advisory and policy committees for state and federal governments, was the architect of the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, and is a former president of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics (2001–2003).


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Bottlemania: how water went on sale and why we bought it
Elizabeth Royte
Published by Scribe
RRP: $32.95

Posted 5 July 2008

BOTTLEMANIA is an incisive, intrepid, and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialisation of our most basic human need: drinking water.

Having already surpassed milk and beer, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the United States. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we’re hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we’re drinking and why.

Elizabeth Royte finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town’s source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What’s the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?

This is a riveting chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call.

THE CRITICS
‘Ms Royte is a dogged reporter and a vivid writer, which means her catalog of crimes against nature hits the senses hard.’ (New York Times)

THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Royte has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and the New Yorker. She is the author of Garbage Land and The Tapir’s Morning Bath.


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The F Word: How we learned to swear by feminism
Jane Caro & Catherine Fox
Published by UNSW Press
RRP $29.95

Posted 30 June 2008

LEAVING SHCOOL just as the second wave of feminism reached fever pitch, Jane Caro and Catherine Fox were part of the first generation of girls sent out into the world by their teachers, mothers and older sisters with instruction to make something of themselves.

Through this honest, wry and personal account of the perils of the modern woman, Caro and Fox challenge the notion that feminism is past its use-by-date.They demonstrate that the hype and negativity about feminism has little to do with the reality of women's lives.

When it comes to the work/life balance, modern women continually find themselves in a no-win situation where they are criticised regardless of the path they choose. The authors argues that the pervasive idea that women will never be able to effectively combine work or interests outside the home with marriage, a social life and parenting is a furphy.

Caro and Fox combine both personal experience and the stories of a range of women with the big picture, and provide practical suggestions for forgiving ourselves, having fun and not giving up while holding it all together.

THE AUTHORS

Jane Caro is an award-winning advertising writer with 25 years experience. She also writes on educational and other issues for a range of publications, and is a regular commentator on radio.

Catherine Fox is deputy editor of AFR Boss magazine and writes a weekly column, `Corporate Woman', for the Australian Financial Review. She joined the AFR in 1989 and has held a variety of positions, including marketing and Smart Money editor, and court reporter.


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Shattered Lives: The human face of the asbestos tragedy
Miriam Miller
Published by Wakefield Press
RRP $29.95

Posted 19 June 2008

IN POST-WAR Australia, with a growing population and increased need for housing, governments and construction companies couldn’t get enough of asbestos, the ‘magic mineral’. Australian medical experts were already beginning to warn of the dangers but by the time most people discovered they were at risk, they were already doomed.

Shattered Lives tells the personal, harrowing stories of asbestos victims and their families, while illustrating their remarkable resilience, humour, love of life, and devotion to family and friends. These are ordinary people caught up in a modern tragedy – a tragedy that was ignored until it was too late.

Where previous corporate-focused publications on asbestos sufferers have been mainly about the James Hardie compensation claims, and Bernie Banton in particular, Shattered Lives extends to other victims’ stories. They are real and powerful accounts that bring home the devastating impact of asbestos-related illnesses, including the deadly mesothelioma.

Joanna Ball, a mesothelioma sufferer, will never forget her specialist’s comments: Asbestos fibres go in and out of the bloodstream but all it takes is for one fibre, just a tiny speck like a pinhead, to get into your lung and then, thirty or forty years later, it can activate. Mesothelioma generally kills people within months of diagnosis. Joanna is one of the lucky ones. Her sister Riete was less fortunate.

THE CRITIC
Australia needs to understand asbestos diseases like mesothelioma, its victims – working people and their families – and its causes and effects a whole lot better. This timely book inspires such an understanding. – John Gordon

THE AUTHOR
Born in Scotland, Miriam Miller graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in German and English literature. She worked as a conference interpreter and translator for 10 years – at the European Commission in Belgium, and in Italy and Germany. Since then she has written books and papers for multinational organisations and speeches for corporate executives and political leaders in Asia and Australia. Early in the new millennium, Miriam decided to try writing of a different kind: books with a significant human interest component. Shattered Lives has evolved from this effort. Miriam lives with her husband in Perth, Western Australia, where she continues to write.


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Quarterly Essay Issue 30
Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention
By Paul Toohey
Published by Black Inc.
PB $15.95

Posted 6 June 2008

WHEN then Minister Mal Brough and then PM John Howard announced the Northern Territory intervention in mid-2007, they proclaimed a child abuse emergency. In this riveting piece of reportage and analysis, Paul Toohey unpicks the rhetoric of emergency and tracks progress.

One year on, have children been saved? Will Labor continue with the intervention? What are the reasons for the social crisis - the neglect and the violence - and how might things be different?

Toohey argues that the real issue is not sexual abuse, but rather a more general neglect of children. He criticises the way both white courts and black law have viewed violent crime by Aboriginal men. He examines the permit system and the quarantining of welfare money and argues that due to Labor's changes to these, the intervention is now effectively over - though the crisis persists.

In Last Drinks, Paul Toohey offers the definitive account of how the Territory intervention came about and what it has achieved.


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Supercapitalism: The transformation of business, democracy, and everyday life
Robert Reich
Published by Scribe
RRP $32.95

Posted 31 May 2008

MID 20TH-century capitalism has turned into global capitalism, and global capitalism — turbocharged, Web-based, and able to find and make almost anything just about anywhere — has turned into supercapitalism.

But, as Robert Reich makes clear in this eye-opening book, supercapitalism enlarges the economic pie, while democracy — charged with caring for all citizens — is becoming less and less effective under its influence.

Reich explains how widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and the spreading effects of global warming are the logical outcomes of supercapitalism.

He shows us why companies, fighting harder than ever to maintain their competitive positions, have become even more deeply involved in politics; and how average citizens, seeking great deals and invested in the stock market to an unprecedented degree, are increasingly loath to stand by their values if it means biting the hands that feed them.

He makes clear how the tools traditionally used to temper social problems — fair taxation, well-funded public education, trade unions — have withered as supercapitalism has burgeoned.

Reich sets out a clear course to a vibrant capitalism and a concurrent, equally vibrant democracy. He argues forcefully that the spheres of business and politics must be kept distinct.

And he calls for an end to the legal fiction that corporations are citizens, as well as the illusion that corporations can be ‘socially responsible’ until laws define social needs.

THE AUTHOR
Robert Reich is professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and is a former secretary of labor under president Bill Clinton. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Václav Havel Foundation Prize for pioneering work in economic and social thought.


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Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s First Colony
John Hirst
Published by Black Inc
RRP$ 36.95

Posted 9 May 2008

THIS TITLE brings together John Hirst's two classic books on the early history of New South Wales, Convict Society and Its Enemies and The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy. This combined edition includes a new foreword by the author.

These are works that bring to vivid life the early days of convict Australia. They change our sense of how a colony that was also intended to be a prison actually worked, and how Australian democracy came into being, despite the opposition of the most powerful. Both are classic accounts which have had a profound effect on the understanding of our history.

THE CRITICS
"Colonial Australia was a more 'normal' place than one might imagine from the folkloric picture of society governed by the lash and the triangle, composed of groaning white slaves tyrannised by ruthless masters.The book that best conveys this is Hirst's Convict Society and Its Enemies." - Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore.

"Anyone with an interest in Australian political culture will find The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy invaluable." –Professor Colin Hughes, former Commonwealth Electoral Commissioner.

THE AUTHOR
John Hirst is a widely respected historian and social commentator. Reader in History at La Trobe University, he is the author of several books, most recently The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 (Black Inc, 2007).


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Rights and Redemption: History, Law and Indigenous People
Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese, & Alexander Reilly
Published by UNSW Press
RRP $49.95

Posted 1 May 2008

HISTORY IS a thorny topic in the public domain in Australia, its contested nature most recently displayed in the response to the Prime Minister's apology to the stolen generations. After Mabo, Indigenous people held high hopes for redress through the law for land claims, stolen generations, and native title cases among others, but as the authors of Rights and Redemption observe, the process has been challenged by the problematic role that history plays in the courts.

When it comes to Indigenous litigation, historical evidence is often the only evidence at hand. To what extent can historical evidence be admitted in the courts? Might lawyers and historians understand each other better than they do now? Can these two disciplines -be reconciled in order to offer fair legal means to Indigenous Australians?

Written by an expert team of historians and lawyers, this pioneering study explores the crucial but under-examined issue of how history fares in the judicial system in Australia.

Analysing high-profile cases in which Indigenous litigants have relied on history as evidence, the authors critique how that evidence is interpreted and used. The dramatic evocation and narration of each case, including native title and stolen generations cases and claims of genocide and identity, means that the book will resonate with a wider public intrigued by questions of law, history and truth, especially as they have affected our understanding of Indigenous history.

THE CRITICS
"An ambitious task but one that has great significance and topicality" - Antonio Buti

"Exploring the tensions in the relationship between law and history, as Rights and Redemption does, is extremely important. Greater understanding of how the legal system can use this historical knowledge and how historians can give evidence will enhance the way in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander litigants navigate the complexities of the Australian legal system." - Larissa Behrendt

THE AUTHORS
Ann Curthoys is Manning Clark Professor of History at the Australian National University and an ARC Professorial Fellow. She has written about many aspects of Australian history, historical theory and historical writing.

Ann Genovese is Senior Lecturer and ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in law at the University of Melbourne. She has worked for the Justice Research Centre NSW, and researches in the areas of Australian law and history, feminist legal theory and family law.

Alexander Reilly is Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide. He teaches and researches in public law and Indigenous legal issues. He is a project partner in the Gilbert and Tobin Public Law Centre Indigenous Rights, Land and Governance project.


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History's Children: History wars in the classroom
Anna Clark
Published by UNSW Press
RRP: $29.95

Posted 14 April 2008

WHAT IS it about Australian history? Students dismiss the subject for being boring while politicians and concerned parents fret over their lack of historical knowledge. The classroom has become the battleground of the ‘history wars’, yet no-one ever asks the children what they think about Australian history and what they like – or don’t about learning it. Through interviews with around 250 Australian students from a wide variety of schools, Anna Clark asks how teachers and students teach and learn Australian history. This book is a lively and often surprising read that throws all kinds of challenges to students, teachers and indeed, politicians.

THE CRITIC
Anna Clark report from the obscure core of the history wars exposing what actually happens in classrooms in which Australian history is taught. Despite eager teachers and engaging students ‘Australian History’ seems to be regarded as one long yawn. The objections are not political: ‘Indigenous Studies is loathed equally with ‘Federation’. If we want history to be an obligatory school subject, we will have to start again.” - Inga Clendinnen.

THE AUTHOR
Anna Clark is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow in history education at Monash University. She authored The History Wars with Stuart Macintyre and is a winner of the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australian History.


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Morality and Political Violence
C. A. J. Coady
Published by Cambridge University Press
RRP: $47.95

Posted 1 April

POLITICAL VIOLENCE in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism, and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge today as it has so often in the past. It is a challenge not only to life and limb, but also to morality itself. In this book, C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective to the subject. He places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics.

In clear and accessible language, Coady reexamines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking. The problems examined include the right to make war, the right way to conduct war, terrorism, revolution, humanitarianism, mercenary warriors, conscientious objection, combatant and noncombatant status, the ideal of peace and the right way to end war, pacifism, weapons of mass destruction, and supreme emergency exemptions from just war prohibition.

Coady attempts to vindicate the relevance of the just war tradition to contemporary problems without applying the tradition in a merely mechanical or uncritical fashion.

THE AUTHOR
C.A.J. Coady is an Australian philosopher with an international reputation for his research in both epistemology and political and applied philosophy. In addition to his academic work, he is a regular contributor to public debate on topics having to do with ethical and philosophical dimensions of current affairs. A professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne, he has served as the founding director of the Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues and the deputy director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and head of its University of Melbourne division. In 2005, he gave the Uehiro Lectures on practical ethics at Oxford University.


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Australian Journal of International Affairs
Published 4 issues per year, by Routledge
For subscriptions, visit: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/subscription.asp

Posted 28 March 2008

ESTABLISHED in 1946 (as Australian Outlook) the Australian Journal of International Affairs (AJIA) is the journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) and Australia's leading scholarly journal in this area.

The AJIA is edited by Professor Michael Wesley of Griffith University and aims to publish high quality scholarly research on international political, social, economic and legal issues, especially (but not exclusively) within the Asia-Pacific region.

The journal publishes two types of articles: 'Commentaries' and 'Articles'. 'Commentaries' are extended opinion pieces on a current topic of major interest, and are succinct with a clear line of argument. 'Articles' are traditional scholarly articles.

The journal also publishes research notes, book reviews, review essays, notes and news from the Institute, and an annual review of Australian foreign policy.

This authoritative scholarly journal analysing international issues of interest to the Australian community, is published four times a year by Taylor and Francis. The contents page of the latest issue is available as soon as it is finalised.

Tables of contents for the last six years' issues are available from the publishers, Taylor and Francis. Membership of the Institute in Australia includes receipt of the Journal.


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Violence

Slavoj Zizek
Published by Allen & Unwin
RRP: $35.00

Posted 22 March 2008

INTELLECTUAL icon and enfant terrible, Slavoj Zizek, examines the hidd