Born In Hope: The early years of the Family Court of Australia
Shurlee Swain
UNSW Press, PB, 9781742232928
The Family Law Act of 1975 and the establishment of the Family Court of Australia the following year aimed to revolutionise the settlement of marital disputes in this country. Gone was the notion of divorce as a spectator sport, salacious media reports of unfaithful spouses and private investigators enlisted to stalk suspicious partners. But the court quickly became the focus of ... More/Buy
Deception: The true story of the international drug plot that brought down Australia's top law enforcer Mark Standen
Charles Miranda
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781741759648
He was a 'crooked hat', a bent copper, and he was working with a notorious Dutch crime cartel to flood Australia with millions of dollars' worth of drugs. To those who knew him, Mark Standen was a stand-up guy, a top cop who was never one to mince his words. As an assistant director for the NSW Crime Commission, he led ... More/Buy
The Kingdom and the Quarry: China, Australia, Fear and Greed
David Uren
Black Inc, PB, 9781863955669
China has rapidly become Australia's most important trading partner. It is also the rising power in our region. In The Kingdom and the Quarry David Uren takes us inside the high-stakes world of the two countries' relationship. From resource grabs to cyber-surveillance, this is an authoritative and news-breaking book that takes us inside key political and business events of recent times ... More/Buy
Left Turn
Antony Loewenstein, Jeff Sparrow (eds)
MUP, PB, 9780522861433
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 ... More/Buy
Many Worlds of R H Mathews: In search of an Australian anthropologist
Martin Thomas
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781743311066
The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews is about the life and work of the renowned 19th century surveyor turned ethnologist, R.H. Mathews, whose studies of Aboriginal Australia were path-breaking and quite controversial. His childhood in Goulburn meant that he grew up with Aboriginal children as playmates, so when he began his obsession with documenting Aboriginal life, he came to his subject ... More/Buy
Neither Power Nor Glory: 100 Years of Political labor in Victoria, 1956 - 1956
Paul Strangio
MUP, PB, 9780522861822
When Frank Hardy published Power Without Glory, his notorious novel about corruption and venality in the Victorian Labor Party, it quickly came to be seen as a true account of the party. Until now, there has been no authoritative chronicle of the struggles of political Labor in Victoria, from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to the calamitous split of ... More/Buy
Politics, Society, Self: Occasional Writings
Geoff Gallop
UWA Publishing, PB, 9781742583426
Since retiring as Premier of Western Australia in 2006, Geoff Gallop has returned to his pre- political career as an academic. In the role of public intellectual – his post-political thinking – he has focused on matters of the self in society: of contemporary politics, pragmatics, fundamentalism, fairness, and the meaning and importance of well-being for public policy and the person. ... More/Buy
Pozieres: The Anzac Story
Scott Bennett
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781921844836
In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozieres. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task. At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozieres. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having ... More/Buy
Quarterly essay 46: Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement an Angry Nation
Laura Tingle
Black Inc, PB, 9781863955645
Rather than relaxed and comfortable, Australians are disenchanted with politics and politicians. In Quarterly Essay 46 Laura Tingle shows that the reason for this goes to something deep in Australian culture: our great expectations of government. Since the deregulation eta of the 1980s, Tingle finds, governments can do less, but we wish they could do more. From Hawke to Gillard, each ... More/Buy
Regional Australia and the Great War: 'The Boys from Old Kio'
Philip Payton
University of Exeter Press, PB, 9780859898737
In this book, Philip Payton provides a vivid insight into the experiences of regional Australia during the Great War of 1914-18. Alighting upon 'old Kio', the copper-mining communities of South Australia's northern Yorke Peninsula, he describes the relationship between the 'homefront' and the 'battlefront' half-a-world away. He draws an intimate portrait of Australia at war, from the lives (and deaths) of ... More/Buy
Whackademia: An insider's account of the troubled university
Richard Hil
NewSouth Books, PB, 9781742232911
Australian universities are not happy places. Despite the shiny rhetoric of excellence, quality, innovation and creativity, universities face a barrage of criticism over claims of declining standards, decreased funding, compromised assessment, increased vocationalism, overburdened academics and never-ending reviews and restructures. In a scathing insider exposé, Dr. Richard Hil lifts the lid on a higher education system that’s corporatised beyond recognition, steeped ... More/Buy