Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Alison Bechdel

Houghton Mifflin, BIOGRAPHY/AUTO, HC, 9780618982509

$28.18 ex $31.00 inc

From the best-selling author of Fun Home, Time magazine's No. 1 Book of the Year, a brilliantly told graphic memoir of Alison Bechdel becoming the artist her mother wanted to be.
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel's own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother--to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

Left Turn

Antony Loewenstein/Jeff Sparrow

Melbourne University Press, AUSTRALIAN STUDIES, PB, 9780522861433

$29.99 ex $32.99 inc

In the Australian election of 2010, more than a million voters chose not to cast a ballot. Of those who did vote, almost 730,000 voted informal. The figures provide a statistical confirmation of what had already become apparent during the campaign - namely, that vast numbers of Australians find the policies of neither major party appealing. And the million-and-a-half votes for the Greens show that many of those people are now prepared to countenance ideas to the Left of the two-party consensus. Left Turn is a book aimed at such people, at the many, many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes controversial, topical and challenging essays by writers and thinkers who openly identify with the Left - from Larissa Berendht to Christos Tsiolkas, Lee Rhiannon to Nazeem Hussain, and editors Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow. They do not all agree with each other; they do not present a complete package or a consistent manifesto. But they do open some windows in Australian public life and let some much needed fresh air in. Left Turn shows why the Left should be taken seriously. It is neither a policy document for a political party or a comprehensive list of ways to improve Australia. The essays are passionate, relevant, radical, controversial and topical; voices that are dying to be heard in an increasingly barren, media landscape.

Canada

Richard Ford

Bloomsbury, LITERATURE, PB, 9781408815168

$22.68 ex $24.95 inc

In 1956, Del Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Del and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva - from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family - was shy, artistic and alienated from their father's small-town world of money scrapes and living on-the-fly. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that Del's parents decided to rob the bank. They weren't reckless people. In the days following the arrest, Del and Berner lock themselves inside the house and wait for the friend their mother said would come. When no-one does, Berner runs away. Del, a solitary child obsessed with bee-keeping and chess, does not have friends to call on. Del is saved before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across the Montana border into Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself - a landscape of rescue and abandonment. But as Del discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose own past lies on the other side of a border.

Railsea

China Mieville

Macmillan, SCIENCE FICTION, PB, 9780230765122

$27.26 ex $29.99 inc

On board the Medes, Sham yes ap Saroop watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey — and the inevitable battle that follows between human and creature that will result in one's death and the other's glory. Travelling the rails of the Railsea, Sham knows there is more to life than hunting moles — even if his philosophy-seeking captain can think of nothing else but the ivory-coloured mole she's been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a derelict train, and Sham discovers salvage aboard — everything changes for him.

Passage of Power: 4 Years of Lyndon Johnson

Robert A Caro

Knopf, US STUDIES, HC, 9780679405078

$44.55 ex $49.00 inc

A publishing event: the fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the best-selling and prize-winning The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate.

The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career. It tells the story of his volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency. It gives us for the first time the story of the assassination from the viewpoint of Lyndon Johnson himself. And with the depth of insight, the profound grasp of both the life and times of his subject that Robert Caro has consistently brought to this mesmerizing biography, it reveals what it was like to suddenly become president in a time of great crisis--an assumption of presidential power unprecedented in American history; how he stepped, unprepared, into the presidency and within weeks forced through Congress bills on the budget and civil rights that it had determined to let die; how through his singular political genius he set out to make the presidency his own, and to fulfill the highest purpose of the office. It is Johnson's finest hour, before his aspirations and his accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.

Hide Your Fires: 2012 UTS Writers' Anthology

Giramondo, LITERARY ANTHOLOGIES, PB, 9781921134210

$24.50 ex $26.95 inc

The creative writing program at the University of Technology, Sydney, is the oldest and most prestigious in Australia. The annual Anthology is a celebration of the depth and breadth of talent within the program, and brings together the work of approximately 35 of the best and brightest undergraduate and postgraduate students in one unmissable collection. Personal, dramatic and profound, the 2012 Anthology, Hide Your Fires, has been hailed as the best in years, providing readers with an unforgettable snapshot of this country’s vibrant and emerging writing talent.

The Lone Protestor

Fiona Paisley

Aboriginal Studies Press, ABORIGINAL, PB, 9781922059055

$31.77 ex $34.95 inc

The late 1920s saw an extraordinary protest by an Australian Aboriginal man on the streets of London. Standing outside Australia House, cloaked in tiny skeletons, Anthony Martin Fernando condemned the failure of British rule in his country. Fernando is believed to be the first Aboriginal person to protest conditions in Australia from the streets of Europe. His various forms of action, from pamphlets on the streets of Rome to the famous Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, distinguish this lone protestor as a unique Aboriginal activist of his time. Drawn from an extensive search in archives from Australia and Europe, this is the first full-length study of Fernando’s life and the self-professed mission that lasted half his adult life.

Deception Spies, Lies & How Russia Dupes the West

Edward Lucas

Bloomsbury, EUROPEAN STUDIES, PB, 9781408830192

$27.26 ex $29.99 inc

From the capture of Sidney Reilly, the 'Ace of Spies', by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1925, to the deportation from the USA of Anna Chapman, the 'Redhead under the Bed', in 2010, Kremlin and Western spymasters have battled for supremacy for nearly a century. In Deception Edward Lucas uncovers the real story of Chapman and her colleagues in Britain and America, unveiling their clandestine missions and the spy-hunt that led to their downfall. It reveals unknown triumphs and disasters of Western intelligence in the Cold War, providing the background to the new world of industrial and political espionage. To tell the story of post-Soviet espionage, Lucas draws on exclusive interviews with Russia's top NATO spy, Herman Simm, and unveils the horrific treatment of a Moscow lawyer who dared to challenge the ruling criminal syndicate there. Once the threat from Moscow was international communism; now it comes from the siloviki, Russia's ruthless 'men of power'.

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

Weidenfeld, CRIME, PB, 9780297859390

$27.26 ex $29.99 inc

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what did really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war.

The Hunger Angel

Herta Mueller

Ecco, LITERATURE, HC, 9780805093018

$35.45 ex $39.00 inc

A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)

It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.

In her new novel, Nobel laureate Herta Mueller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity. She has given Leo the language to express the inexpressible, as hunger sharpens his senses into an acuity that is both hallucinatory and profound. In scene after disorienting scene, the most ordinary objects accrue tender poignancy as they acquire new purpose-a gramophone box serves as a suitcase, a handkerchief becomes a talisman, an enormous piece of casing pipe functions as a lovers' trysting place. The heart is reduced to a pump, the breath mechanized to the rhythm of a swinging shovel, and coal, sand, and snow have a will of their own. Hunger becomes an insatiable angel who haunts the camp, but also a bare-knuckled sparring partner, delivering blows that keep Leo feeling the rawest connection to life.

Mueller has distilled Leo's struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man's soul.

Private Empire: Exxon Mobil & American Power

Steve Coll

Penguin, US STUDIES, HC, 9781594203350

$45.45 ex $50.00 inc

In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil's annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil's sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.

Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation's recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil's K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the God Pod (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.

The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee Iron Ass Raymond, ExxonMobil's chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney's, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymond's successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymond's programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil's public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil's colossal story.

The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Coll's indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

Fear in the Sunlight: 4th Josephine Tey Novel

Nicola Upson

Faber & Faber, LITERATURE, PB, 9780571246281

$27.26 ex $29.99 inc

Summer, 1936. The writer, Josephine Tey, joins her friends in the holiday village of Portmeirion to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, are there to sign a deal to film Josephine's novel, A Shilling for Candles, and Hitchcock has one or two tricks up his sleeve to keep the holiday party entertained - and expose their deepest fears. But things get out of hand when one of Hollywood's leading actresses is brutally slashed to death in a cemetery near the village. The following day, as fear and suspicion take over in a setting where nothing - and no one - is quite what it seems, Chief Inspector Archie Penrose becomes increasingly unsatisfied with the way the investigation is ultimately resolved. Several years later, another horrific murder, again linked to a Hitchcock movie, drives Penrose back to the scene of the original crime to uncover the shocking truth.

10 Little Insects

Davide Cali

Wilkins Farago, CHILDRENS, HC, 9780987109910

$27.26 ex $29.99 inc

10 Little Insects is a hilarious riff on that celebrated whodunnit, Agatha Christie's 10 Little Indians. In this innovative graphic novel for younger readers, ten very different insects, each with something to hide, are brought together to a mysterious house on a secluded island for the weekend. Then, one by one, they start dying in very unusual circumstances. But all is not as it seems, as Cali and Pianina delightfully subvert the whodunnit genre with a story that is at once brilliant, baffling, laugh out loud funny and somewhat surreal.

The Cat & the Bird: A Children's Book Inspired by Paul Klee

Geraldine Elschner

Prestel Verlag, CHILDRENS, HC, 9783791370996

$22.68 ex $24.95 inc

A cat lives in a house filled with toys, but every day she dreams of being free like the bird she watches through the window. Finally, with the bird's help, she is able to escape and dance on the roofs of the city by moonlight. This lovely story unfolds in a series of playful, brilliantly colourful illustrations based on the artist Paul Klee's work. Influenced by the artist's bright palette and use of shapes and line, the book culminates in a dazzling reproduction of Klee's Cat and Bird. Accompanied by information about the artist and this iconic painting, the book invites appreciation of the unfettered joyfulness that makes Klee one of the most universally loved artists of all time.

Draw Me a House: Architectural Ideas, Inspiration & Colouring In

Thibaud Herem

Thames & Hudson, CHILDRENS, PB, 9780956205377

$23.59 ex $25.95 inc

Draw Me a House is a playbook for budding architects and anyone interested in the built environment. Illustrated by Thibaud Herem, it invites people of all ages to colour in, think about, doodle and engage with architectural elements. Both educational and entertaining, Draw Me a House takes the reader on a journey through architectural styles from Gothic church spires, to contemporary eco-design and out the other side to the world of fantasy. From completing the columns on the Parthenon to thinking of an alternative top to the Chrysler Building, to drawing a deluxe doghouse or a transport system for the year 2040, this book will serve as a springboard for the imagination a fresh and playful source of stimulation and inspiration. Thibaud Herem's beautiful drawings have a warmth and a humour that jumps off the page, and the ideas have an equal lightness of touch. The book is luxuriously produced satisfyingly chunky, printed on a heavy, creamy uncoated paper, with a laser cut cover that stands out boldly. This book will delight children and adults alike.

The Adventure of French Philosophy

Alain Badiou

Verso, PHILOSOPHY, PB, 9781844677931

$36.32 ex $39.95 inc

The perfect companion piece to Badiou's Pocket Pantheon, this collection is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the 'French moment' in contemporary philosophy.From the often-quoted review of Louis Althusser's canonical works For Marx and Reading Capital to the scathing critiques of the 'potato fascism' in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and the 'grand politics' of Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau's The Angel; from talks on Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy to reviews of the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Barbara Cassin, Badiou reveals the exceptionally rich and varied adventure that is French philosophy.

The Remnants

John Hughes

Uni of Western Australia, AUSTRALIAN LIT, PB, 9781742583327

$27.23 ex $29.95 inc

The Remnants is a novel about legacy and influence. The central story deals with exile, memory and loss and a son’s terrible desire to exorcise the past and recreate himself. A manuscript written by an Australian art historian is discovered by his son after his death. Claiming to have discovered a series of lost paintings by Piero della Francesca in the small Tuscan city of Arezzo, the father’s manuscript moves between Renaissance Italy and post- Revolutionary Russia — at its core is the relationship the father has with an ageing Russian émigré, a woman who claims to have nursed the poet, Osip Mandelstam, in his final days before death. She is haunted by the ghost of her murdered son and the traumas she experiences before escaping Russia at the beginning of World War II. This central story is mediated by the son’s commentary; he makes his own journey to Italy, which opens up Australia (and his past) for him in the form of a journey he took with his father to the Simpson Desert thirty years before. Three stories, tightly interwoven, this deeply philosophical novel is about translations between languages and cultures, and ultimately, the translation of the father into the son.

A History of Books

Gerald Murnane

Giramondo, AUSTRALIAN LIT, PB, 9781920882853

$24.50 ex $26.95 inc

This new work by Gerald Murnane is a fictionalised autobiography told in thirty sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image on the writer’s mind. The titles aren’t given but the reader follows the clues, recalling in the process a parade of authors, the great, the popular, and the now-forgotten. The images themselves, with their scenes of marital discord, violence and madness, or their illuminated landscapes that point to the consolations of a world beyond fiction, give new intensity to Murnane’s habitual concern with the anxieties and aspirations of the writing life, in the absence of religious belief. A History of Books is accompanied by three shorter pieces of fiction which play on these themes, featuring the writer at different ages, as a young boy, a teacher, and an old recluse.

The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters

Mark Henderson

Bantam, SCIENCE, PB, 9780593068243

$29.95 ex $32.95 inc

There has never been a better time to be a geek (or a nerd, or a dork). What was once an insult used to marginalize those curious people (in either sense of the word) and their obsessive interest in science has increasingly become a badge of honour. And we should be crying out for them...

We live in a country where:

·Only one of our 650 MPs has worked as a research scientist. ·The Government's drugs adviser was sacked for making a decision based on scientific fact rather than public opinion ·A writer can be forced into court for telling the scientific truth ·The media would rather sell papers by scaremongering over MMR vaccines and GM crops than report the less sensational facts.

Whether we want to improve education or cut crime, to enhance public health or to generate clean energy, science and its experimental method is critical. It's time to stop the nonsense! The Geek Manifesto shows us what needs to happen to entrench scientific thinking more deeply into politics and society. And how to turn our frustrated outrage into positive action that our country's leaders cannot ignore.

The Story of the Streets

Mike Skinner

Bantam Press, MUSIC, PB, 9780593068083

$31.82 ex $35.00 inc

'This book is going to try and get as close as possible to the full story of what informed the noise of The Streets . Obviously that's something I should be fairly well-qualified to know about, and I'm going to be as honest as the publisher's lawyers will allow.' With the 2001 release of The Streets' debut single 'Has It Come To This?' the landscape of British popular music changed forever. No longer did homegrown rappers have to anxiously defer to transatlantic influences. Mike Skinner's witty, self-deprecating sagas of late-night kebab shops and skunk-fuelled Playstation sessions showed how much you could achieve simply by speaking in your own voice. In this thoroughly modern memoir, the man the Guardian once dubbed 'half Dostoevsky...half Samuel Pepys' tells a freewheeling, funny and fearlessly honest tale of Birmingham and London, ecstasy and epilepsy, Twitter-fear and Spectrum joysticks, spread-betting and growing up. He writes of his musical inspirations, role models and rivals, the craft of songwriting and reflects on the successes and failures of the decade-long journey of The Streets.

Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight

James Attlee

Penguin, TRAVEL WRITING, PB, 9780141039312

$20.86 ex $22.95 inc

For many of us the moon, and the chill light it casts, are things we either ignore or take for granted. It wouldn't enter our heads therefore to set off around the world in search of moonlight. But, as James Attlee's eccentric quest proves, we couldn't be more wrong. From Normandy to Naples, Wales to Arizona, Las Vegas to Japan, Attlee explores moonlight's many moods and meanings. Taking in the ancient and modern, art and literature, science and music, Nocturne travels far and deep to provide a portrait of an enigmatic light increasingly endangered in our over-illuminated world.

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More

Augusten Burroughs

Macmillan, SELF HELP, PB, 9781742611143

$25.45 ex $28.00 inc

From the New York Times bestselling author of Running With Scissors comes a groundbreaking book that explores how to survive the "un-survivable". Augusten Burroughs has lived an unusual life, and has faced more than his fair share of humiliation, transformation and everything in between. THIS IS HOW is his no-holds-barred book of advice on topics as varied as:- How to feel like crap - How to ride an elevator - How to be thin - How to be fat - How to find love - How to feel sorry for yourself - How to get the job - How to end your life - How to remain unhealed - How to finish your drink - How to regret as little as possible - And much more... Told with Burroughs' unique voice, black humour, and in-your-face advice, THIS IS HOW is Running With Scissors - with recipes.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity & Poverty

Daron Acemoglu/James A Robinson

Profile Books, POLITICS, PB, 9781846686108

$31.82 ex $35.00 inc

In the West are the 'haves', while much of the rest of the world are the 'have-nots'. The extent of inequality today is unprecedented. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, Why Nations Fail looks at the root of the problems facing some nations. Economists and scientists have offered useful insights into the reasons for certain aspects of poverty, such as Jeffrey Sachs (it's geography and the weather), and Jared Diamond (it's technology and species). But most theories ignore the incentives and institutions that populations need to invest and prosper: they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it - and the key to ensuring these incentives is sound institutions. Incentives and institutions are what separate the have and have-nots. Based on fifteen years of research, and stepping boldly into the territory of Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson blend economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty. And, perhaps most importantly, they provide a pragmatic basis for the hope that those mired in poverty can be placed on the path to prosperity.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Ben Fountain

Canongate, LITERATURE, PB, 9780857864529

$27.23 ex $29.95 inc

The eight surviving members of Bravo Squad are national heroes. Four months into their combat tour of Iraq, Bravo defeat an elite force of enemy insurgents in a ferocious fire-fight. The battle is captured on film by a Fox News camera crew, the footage is a viral sensation on the internet and Bravo become celebrities, virtually overnight. Seizing on this public relations gift, the Bush administration send them on a nationwide media-intensive "Victory Tour". This, the final day, takes place at Texas Stadium as the Dallas Cowboys take on the Chicago Bears in a nationally broadcast Thanksgiving Day game.

Deleuze, Altered States & Film

Anna Powell

Edinburgh University Press, FILM, PB, 9780748649358

$40.90 ex $44.99 inc

Deleuze, Altered States and Film offers a typology of altered states, defining dream, hallucination, memory, trance and ecstasy in their cinematic expression. The book presents altered states films as significant neurological, psychological and philosophical experiences. Chapters engage with films that simultaneously present and induce altered consciousness. They consider dream states and the popularisation of alterity in drugs films. The altered bodies of erotic arousal and trance states are explored, using haptics and synaesthesia. Cinematic distortions of space and time as well as new digital and fractal directions are opened up.Anna Powell’s distinctive re-mapping of the film experience as altered state uses a Deleuzian approach to explore how cinema alters us by ‘affective contamination’. Arguing that specific cinematic techniques derange the senses and the mind, she makes an assemblage of philosophy and art, counter-cultural writers and filmmakers to provide insights into the cinematic event as intoxication.The book applies Deleuze, alone and with Guattari, to mainstream films like Donnie Darko as well as arthouse and experimental cinema. Offering innovative readings of ‘classic’ altered states movies such as 2001, Performance and Easy Rider, it includes ‘avant-garde’ and ‘underground’ work. Powell asserts the Deleuzian approach as itself a kind of altered state that explodes habitual ways of thinking and feeling.

Rawshock

Toby Fitch

Puncher & Wattmann, None, PB, 9781921450617

$22.73 ex $25.00 inc

Using the Rorschach inkblots as metaphors, conjuring the wondrous and the monstrous in his poems, Toby Fitch brings a unique vision to Australian poetry. Old modes of expression—such as the mythic, the romantic, the symbolic and the surreal—are revived and reshaped in poems that mythologise love, anxiety, the self and city living, dovetailing inner and outer worlds with a healthy antipodean dose of absinthe and pattern poetry.

Love, An Index

Rebecca Lindenberg

McSweeney's, POETRY, HC, 9781936365791

$22.72 ex $24.99 inc

In her fierce, one-of-a-kind debut, Rebecca Lindenberg tells the story—in verse—of her passionate relationship with Craig Arnold, a much-respected poet who disappeared in 2009 while hiking a volcano in Japan. Lindenberg’s billowing style lays bare the poet’s sadnesses, joys, and longings in poems that are lyric and narrative, at once plainspoken and musically elaborate. This widely anticipated debut, already selected as a finalist for several prominent book awards, marks the first collection in the newly minted McSweeney’s Poetry Series. MPS is an imprint which seeks to publish a broad range of excellent new poetry collections in exquisitely designed hardcovers—poetry that’s useful and meaningful to anyone in any walk of life.

The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama

Elijah Wald

Oxford University Press, MUSIC, HC, 9780199895403

$31.82 ex $35.00 inc

Following his groundbreaking explorations of the blues and American popular music in Escaping the Delta and How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll, Elijah Wald turns his attention to the tradition of African American street rhyming and verbal combat that ruled urban neighborhoods long before rap: the viciously funny, outrageously inventive insult game called "the dozens."

At its simplest, the dozens is a comic concatenation of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it is a form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Whether considered vernacular poetry, verbal dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirty insults, the dozens has been a basic building block of African-American culture. A game which could inspire raucous laughter or escalate to violence, it provided a wellspring of rhymes, attitude, and raw humor that has influenced pop musicians from Jelly Roll Morton to Ice Cube. Wald explores the depth of the dozens' roots, looking at mother-insulting and verbal combat from Greenland to the sources of the Niger, and shows its breadth of influence in the seminal writings of Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston; the comedy of Richard Pryor and George Carlin; the dark humor of the blues; the hip slang and competitive jamming of jazz; and most recently in the improvisatory battling of rap. A forbidden language beneath the surface of American popular culture, the dozens links children's clapping rhymes to low-down juke joints and the most modern street verse to the earliest African American folklore.

In tracing the form and its variations over more than a century of African American culture and music, The Dozens sheds fascinating new light on schoolyard games and rural work songs, serious literature and nightclub comedy, and pop hits from ragtime to rap.

Self Comes To Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Antonio Damasio

Vintage, PSYCHOLOGY, PB, 9780099498025

$18.14 ex $19.95 inc

Self Comes to Mind will do for the human mind what Roger Penrose's groundbreaking 2004 book The Road to Reality (30k hbs, 55k pbs) did for the universe. Is an effort to answer two questions that have haunted philosophers, neurologists, cognitive scientists and psychologists for centuries: how do brains construct minds, and how do minds become conscious? Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In this revelatory work, he debunks the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting astounding new scientific evidence that consciousnes - what we think of as 'self' - is in fact a biological process created by the brain. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the personal, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces the evolutionary perspective, which entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told.

Rainforest Country

Kaisa & Stanley Breeden

Fremantle Publishing, TRAVEL WRITING, HC, 9781921888601

$68.18 ex $75.00 inc

Australian Photography Magazine said the Breeden’s first book pushed ‘the boundaries of digital imaging’ while Discover Australia called it a ‘radical new photographic approach’ that captured ‘images of unparalleled fidelity of colour, light and focal clarity’.

In Rainforest Country Kaisa and Stanley Breeden bring their photographic innovation and vision to Queensland’s tropical rainforest — with striking results.

Few places in Australia are of such pivotal ecological importance as the tropical rainforests of northeast Queensland. Stunning in their diversity and vigour, they tell the story of flowering plant evolution. Rainforest Country captures not only the moods and cycles of this unique area, but its very essence.

Praise for the Book ‘This gorgeous coffee-table book celebrates … the landscapes of the wet tropics … but it’s the intricate photography that most appeals. Rainforest Country is a joyous and intimate homage, as much about the Breedens’ abiding respect for nature as a showcase for their obvious technical talents.’ — The Weekend Australian