Now in another place, I am finding lighter words. At times, I may not need to speak at all. I smile; I nod. I seek permission to speak. Please, do you mind? Will you allow me?
In an important book for our times, Stan Grant one of Australia's most prominent writers on identity, nationhood and belonging reflects on how we struggle to speak to one another today, and the importance of listening, silence and philosophy, from Plato to Simone Weil to Radiohead.
]]>Australia is a country celebrated for its wildlife, yet native species are in crisis. In the last 200 years, Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation.
In this book, award-winning science writer Justine E. Hausheer encounters pygmy possums that live high in the Snowy Mountains, hears the booming calls of bitterns from their adopted home in the Riverina's rice fields, crouches after dark in the spinifex grasslands listening for the elusive night parrot and meets adorable fat-tailed dunnarts who might hold the answers to reviving the Tasmanian tiger.
The Vanishing Wild immerses us in the harsh reality of the extinction crisis and shows us the future of conservation and what can be done to save Australia's native species.
'Australia's wildlife is iconic, but its list of threatened species has only ever got longer. With her engaging and impassioned accounts, Justine Hausheer takes readers with her as she visits conservationists in the field and lab working tirelessly to save a series of incredible animals from extinction, while the world waits for politicians to take the environment seriously.' Jack Ashby, author of Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals
'A lively and engaging account of Australia's most compelling wildlife conservation challenges. Justine Hausheer shares stories of lost and vanishing birds, mammals and reptiles along with the desperate hope and determination of those working so hard to save them.' Danielle Clode, author of The Enigmatic Echidna: Secrets of the World's Most Curious Creature
'Extinction equates to a silencing of nature. Justine Hausheer beautifully gives voice both to the animals on the precipice as well as those dedicated to bringing them back.' Sean Dooley, BirdLife Australia
'Riveting, deeply alarming, shocking yet hopeful. Written in a way that encourages curiosity and engagement, full of impossible-to-forget-or-unlearn scenes and entangled quandaries, tragic and timely, a vitally important contribution to popular science, essential for anyone who wants to understand Australia's conservation dilemmas.' Darryl Jones, author of Curlews on Vulture Street: Cities, Birds, People and Me
]]>We live in troubled times, marked by a sinister trend gaining the upper hand everywhere: the triumph of despotism not only in countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also in states run by popularly elected demagogues Orbn and Erdoan, Netanyahu and Trump.
John Keane shows why this new despotism defies the laws of political gravity. Instead of relying on fear or raw force, it fosters a strange, pseudo-democratic type of government, led by rulers skilled in winning public loyalty through government handouts, election-rigging, legal trickery, weaponised lying and talk of enemies. And, alarmingly, these leaders hunt in packs.
What's so good about democracy? Keane explains that it's much more than popular self-government based on free and fair elections. Democracy is a collective insistence that unaccountable power is always dangerous and that it's the best way to stop demagogues and despots from ruining life on our planet.
]]>'Deeply humane and quietly transformative' Professor Ophira Ginsburg, Chair of the Lancet Commission on Women, Power and Cancer
'You don't need to be a goody two-shoes if you're receiving cancer care. In fact, as this uniquely insightful book will tell you, among many other things, it sometimes helps if you aren't.' Norman Swan
]]>Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionised the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness?
Australian historian Rosa Campbell combines original research and sharp cultural analysis to explore the complicated life and literary legacy of Shere Hite. Expanding on her ideas about sex namely, that sex is sexist the book explores Hite's fraught childhood, struggles working in the porn industry, and eventual cancellation by the far-right Evangelical movement. All the while, Campbell holds Hite and The Hite Report to account for their own failings and absence of intersectionality.
In a post-MeToo world, with the far-right on the march globally, The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared's examination of shifting ideological movements is essential to understanding both the current feminist movement, as well as how conservative and reactionary efforts can silence even the most successful of women.
'An essential account of an oft-overlooked feminist pioneer.' Publishers Weekly
]]>We've made a selection of remarkable letters from those millions, and passed them on to modern Australians to write new letters, inspired by those from our collection.
The original letters may have shaped history, confessed love, covered philosophical matters like aging or creativity, or given an insight into the writers' lives. The modern letters do the same. By turns moving, funny and challenging, this is a collection of letters that will engage and enlarge readers' sense of empathy and may inspire them to pick up the pen themselves. This book is a testament to the particular power of a letter (or an email, fax or telegram) to shock us, to move us and to warm us.
Authors include:
Imagine stumbling upon a fossil or an Indigenous artefact during a walk in the bush, on a quiet beach or across your family farm what would you do next? While fossils and artefacts are different in their formation, preservation and significance, they're both part of the incredible array of heritage objects and sites we can find across the Australian landscape.
Found a Fossil bridges the gap between curiosity and action, providing an accessible guide to uncovering Australia's rich prehistoric and cultural heritage. Combining palaeontology, archaeology and science communication, this book explores the stories behind fossils and Indigenous artefacts, how they connect us to the past and the responsibilities we hold in preserving them.
Drawing from the groundbreaking Found a Fossil Project, palaeontologist Sally Hurst shares her research and engaging stories of Australian fossils and dinosaurs, her experiences doing fieldwork and the curious finds people sometimes send her.
Whether you're a seasoned science enthusiast or a curious newcomer, Found a Fossil offers a fascinating journey into Australia's deep past and the role you can play in safeguarding its future.
]]>Leaving the familiar birds and bees behind, Bernhardt uncovers stories of reward, cooperation and deception between plants and animals. The author also pays homage to an earlier generation of naturalists who first investigated these unusual relationships during the first half of the 20th century. He explores how flowers have evolved in structure and function, and how pollination systems have emerged and diversified over time. Discover the remarkable 'fit' between animal senses and floral signals, and see how flowers advertise their secret rewards. Stunning colour plates bring you face-to-face with overlooked pollinators and their flowers from an amber fossil of the bee-like crabronid wasp that flew millions of years ago, and a modern chloropid gnat wearing an orchid's pollinia on its back, to the elaborate lip petals of hammer orchids luring male wasps, and the long tongue of a tube-lipped nectar bat reaching for its prize.
This is a captivating glimpse into the wonders of an unseen and unsung world.
]]>He remains a foreign correspondent and commentator for 'The Science Show' on Radio Australia. In 2022, Peter received the scientific outreach award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists for outstanding contributions to public education in Systematic Botany. Peter remains a supporter of the Nutcote Museum in Neutral Bay, NSW and the Kunming Institute of Botany in Yunnan, China.
]]>Occupying an entire kingdom of their own, fungi comprise over 155,000 species that include yeasts, rusts, and moulds as well as the more familiar mushrooms and toadstools that we see in the wild and on our plates. Found widely across the globe, they represent a diverse group of organisms, some living freely in soil and water, and others forming parasitic or symbiotic relationships with plants, algae, and animals. This book presents a broad and accessible overview of fungal diversity, evolution, and ecology. It describes the various forms of fungi and covers topics ranging from fungal origins and reproduction to the historical and cultural significance of fungi for humankind. Blending stunning illustrations with a lively and engaging text, The Complete Fungi is a must for fungi enthusiasts and armchair naturalists alike.
]]>The three peaks are Tawonga Gap, Mt Hotham and Falls Creek in the Victorian high country. Organisers describe the Peaks Challenge as the most demanding one-day cycle event in Australia the ultimate personal challenge. In her late fifties, Saskia Beudel decided to take that challenge.
Peaking is her genre-defying record of the hundred and eleven days spent preparing for Peaks and of the event itself. An accomplished writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Saskia weaves together her training notes and wide-ranging reflections, the history of the bicycle and her own personal stories of cycling. She tussles with the state of contemporary life and the questions that come after long hours in the saddle.
What does it mean for a woman to enter this male-dominated event? As our bodies age, what new things can we ask of them? How do we take pleasure from our bodies and nature at a time when the world seems to be collapsing around us? How far can body and mind respond? Ultimately, what does it mean to 'peak' (or not)?
]]>Lose yourself in this edition of Griffith Review as we go in search of answers.
]]>Allanah Hunt is a Barkindji and Malyangapa writer, editor and academic. She is passionate about social justice, mental health and First Nations storytelling.
]]>At its heart, Danshari is about release. It's about removing what no longer serves you emotionally as well as physically. Discarding clutter frees you from outdated beliefs and emotional burdens that are holding you back. The word Danshari literally means 'reduce, release and relieve' or, in other words, lightness, clarity and freedom.
This isn't just about throwing out old stuff. It's about creating space in your life for clarity, peace and joy with other people. Whether it's stressing about money, difficult relationships, family expectations or the fear of aging Danshari offers you a way forward!
Ms. Yamashita's real-life stories illustrate the life-changing power of Danshari, for example:
In a recent New York Times interview, Ms. Yamashita explains how her philosophy differs from that of other decluttering experts, such as Marie Kondo. She says the Danshari method encourages people to think about why they are attached to certain items and to examine the impact old belongings and obsessions can have on their emotional state. 'For me, Danshari is not about tidying up, organising or tossing away things that don't spark joy...It is about returning to a state in which parting with things feels natural.'
This is far more than a guide to cleaning up your house. It's a roadmap to a whole new life!
'Meet Japan's original decluttering guru (no, not that one)! Before Marie Kondo stormed into the global consciousness, Hideko Yamashita taught Japan the art of creating tidier spaces.' The New York Times (January 16, 2025)
]]>These all-new translations of four landmark essays by Junichiro Tanizaki bring fresh insights to the work of one of Japan's most acclaimed writers. The translations by Michael P. Cronin bring together Tanizaki's famous meditation on Japanese aesthetics with three other fascinating cultural commentaries that appear here in English for the first time:
'In Praise of Shadows belongs to that special order of slim, enormously powerful books that enchant the lay reader with an esoteric subject, leaving a lifelong imprint on the imagination.' Maria Popova
]]>Michael P. Cronin is a translator, scholar of Japanese literature and cinema, and Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at The College of William & Mary. He is the translator of Junichiro Tanizaki's final novel, The Maids and the author of Osaka Modern.
John Einarsen's photography books include Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate and Small Buildings of Kyoto vol. 1 & II. He is the founding editor and publisher of Kyoto Journal and has lived in Kyoto for over 40 years.
]]>From Jane Eyre to Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Bronte's heroines think deeply on how to live a fulfilling life, often expressing passionate beliefs, heartfelt advice and pragmatic philosophy. This inspirational selection of short quotations, revealing their and their author's innermost thoughts on early Victorian times, remains surprisingly relevant to us today. Drawn from Jane Eyre, Villette, Shirley and The Professor, the quotations cover a wide range of themes including happiness, love, feminism, work, truth, feelings and prejudice. This thought-provoking book, first published in 1912, is a delightful gift for anyone who loves to read Bronte's novels.
]]>Grace Milne Rae (18851987) was the daughter of Scottish novelist Janet Milne Rae.
Polly Teale was the former artistic director of Shared Experience Theatre Company for whom she wrote and directed an award-winning trilogy of Bronte themed plays: Jane Eyre, Bronte and After Mrs Rochester (Nick Hern Books). She is now an arts psychotherapist.
]]>Across his 90 years on planet Earth, David Suzuki has inspired generations of his followers to fight for environmental and social causes with courage and conviction. In Lessons From a Lifetime, Suzuki shares pearls of wisdom and hard-earned lessons for the next generation of activists, alongside personal stories and heartfelt contributions from his friends and family, his admirers, and even his opponents, including:
In words and photographs, Lessons From a Lifetimeshares David Suzuki's journey from surviving internment camps as a Japanese-Canadian child to becoming North America's most trusted voice in science communication. The book charts his years as a geneticist and superstar professor at the University of British Columbia; his dedication to demystifying complex science through his public broadcasting work, especially his beloved CBC Television program, The Nature of Things; his founding of The David Suzuki Foundation; and his unparalleled dedication to standing up for Indigenous and environmental rights, a dedication that continues today.
A stunning tribute to a fearless truth-teller who transformed how we understand our relationship with the natural world, Lessons From a Lifetimebelongs on every bookshelf.
Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
]]>Ian Hanington is a writer and editor. As Senior Editor and Writer at the David Suzuki Foundation, he co-wrote a weekly syndicated column, Science Matters, with David Suzuki. They also co-authored Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet and Just Cool It: The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
]]>In this clear-sighted volume, Woodroofe argues that Australia needs to elevate climate change to our top foreign and economic policy priority. And we need to speak about it in a way that makes sense from the Cabinet Room to every lounge room across the mortgage belts and beyond. Because the ingredients that made us the lucky country reliable power, economic prosperity and the beauty of our part of the planet, are at risk.
]]>Digital media is sometimes blamed for stunting early language development; other times it's lauded for supporting children's language and imaginations. Restricting access is thought to protect children, but research suggests that fostering responsible internet use is more effective. What is the way forward, through the dire warnings and doubts? Is there a possible policy reset that allows parents to worry less?
In the wake of Australia's social media ban, Lelia Green draws on many years of research into digital parenting to examine online safety and screen time in the digital age. First-time parents often discuss schooling, religion and diet, but rarely talk about how to parent with technology. Parents can guide their child on a digital journey to become confident, competent internet users.
Professor Lelia Green is Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child at Edith Cowan University, where she leads a team of researchers from across health, education and social welfare. Green was an early pioneer of research with children (rather than about children) and has been chief investigator on international projects including on toddlers' internet use. She has consulted for UNESCO Asia-Pacific and belongs to several international networks, including the European Commissionfunded DigiLitEY and EU Kids Online. Green serves on the editorial board of leading publication Journal of Children and Media.
]]>This sensational sequel goes even deeper in its analysis of royal finances, examining where the money comes from, how it is used and what has changed with the arrival of a new king.
Amongst many other things, it reveals how a family that was effectively bankrupt in 1760 is now one of the richest in the country; how they lobby governments and the media to maximise their profits from the public purse; and how they take advantage of a uniquely beneficial tax and legislative regime. Packed with details on the acceptance of dodgy donations; the appropriation of official gifts for personal use; and the exploitation of public bodies including the NHS, churches and charities, who are charged punitive rates for the use of Duchy-controlled land, this eye-opening expose also includes a chapter on Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and his money-making endeavours, including his friendships with convicted fraudsters, paedophiles and spies. Pulling no punches, this is the book the royal family really don't want you to read.
]]>When Worlds Quake is a fascinating account of how scientists around the globe seek to use quakes to answer tantalising questions about the structure and inner dynamics of our planet and to discover the deepest secrets of our nearest neighbours in the solar system.
Briefly traversing the history of seismology, Hrvoje Tkali describes the women and men who sought to understand major seismic events from the catastrophic 1556 Shaanxi earthquake and the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 to more recent events such as the 2020 earthquakes in Tkali's native Croatia and thus shaped the field. Modern global seismologists now not only study the behaviour of earthquakes but also use seismic waves as tools to image Earth's deep interior. To do this work, they need seismographs positioned around the globe, including in remote, challenging regions. Tkali takes the reader along on his own daring expeditions to install seismographs and collect seismic wave data from the wilds of the Australian Outback to the rough depths of the Southern Ocean, and even farther afield to the Moon and Mars, where quakes can be used to image the interiors of these worlds.
A riveting and often personal narrative about the cutting-edge science of global and planetary seismology, When Worlds Quake reveals how quakes can help scientists to understand the mysterious inner architecture and ongoing evolution of our planet, as well as worlds beyond our own.
]]>This masterpiece remains unsurpassed in its keen observations about Japanese culture. By shedding light on the core values that make the Japanese unique, it reveals a great deal about culture in general and provides a lens through which to view ourselves.
This new edition has been completely redesigned for greater readability and features a new foreword by Lois Banner, a pioneer in the field of women's studies.
'One of the best books ever about Japanese society...[A] thoughtful, nuanced study of the Japanese character.' U.S. News & World Report
'A classic of Japanese cultural studies...debunks the stereotype of the Japanese as hopelessly rigid and incapable of change.' The New York Times
]]>Lois Banner is professor emeritus of history at the University of Southern California and one of the first academics to concentrate on women's studies. She has won several prestigious awards for her scholarship including a Rockefeller Fellowship. She is the author of many books and articles, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women's Rights, and Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle.
]]>Keane is one of the world's leading designers of Japanese-style gardens and he describes in detail the historical influences of Confucian, Shinto and Buddhist ideas that have linked poetry and philosophy to the tangible forms of gardens in Japan. Creative inspiration is found in prehistoric Japanese conceptions of nature, gardens of the Heian-era aristocrats, world-renowned Zen Buddhist temple rock gardens and tea gardens; compact courtyard gardens and large-scale Edo-era stroll gardens.
Detailed explanations of these basic forms identify and interpret the symbolism and principles behind them and explain how they are still in active use today. Topics covered include:
Filled with gorgeous photographs and expert text by a leading garden designer, this book explains the theory and practice of Japanese gardening from an insider's point of view. It will be treasured by all Japanese garden lovers and visitors to Japan.
'Marc Peter Keane is the undisputed American master of Japanese garden scholars; he is also an educator and garden designer in his own right. Two of his previous books Japanese Garden Design and The Art of Setting Stones are indispensable.' The New York Times
]]>Online romance fraud is a problem across the globe. It causes financial and emotional devastation, yet many people refuse to take it seriously. This is the story of one middle-aged woman in a cardigan determined to understand this growing phenomenon.
No other woman has had so many online romances from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William and Becky Holmes is a favourite among peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers. By winding up scammers and investigating the truth behind their profiles, Becky shines a revealing, revolting and hilarious light on a very shady corner of the internet.
Featuring first-hand accounts of victims, examples of scripts used by fraudsters, a look into the psychology of fraud and of course plenty of Becky's hysterical interactions with scammers, this is a must-read for anyone who needs a reminder that Keanu Reeves is NOT in love with them.
'Clever, pertinent and very, very funny...Striking journalism.' -Danny Finkelstein
'A funny, sweary, absurd delight that knows just when to take the subject seriously too. I loved it.' - Dave Gorman
'A brilliant read. Moves effortlessly between hilarious and informative and back again.' - Ed Byrne
Stefan Stern draws on the major themes of Macbeth and discusses how they can be applied to ambition in modern life. From the success of the first US woman vice president, Kamala Harris, the obstacles she faced and the possibilities that still lie ahead, to Boris Johnson's young aspirations to be 'world king' and the pathological intensity of his ambition, Stern considers the careers and personal lives of politicians, sports stars and business people, to name a few, to illuminate this strange and powerful driver. Expect to discover how ambition and success work together, how attitudes have shifted over time, and how gender roles have an impact on our goals.
Incisive, contemporary and accessible, this book is for anyone who is looking for a change of direction or emphasis on how to move forward. It will also provide consolation, amusement and plenty of insightful meditations on the complex nature of ambition.
]]>His first two books were Myths of Management: What people get wrong about being the boss (Kogan Page, 2017, with Cary Cooper), and How to be a better leader (Bluebird, Pan Macmillan 2019). He is a Visiting Professor at Bayes Business School, City, University of London, and a Fellow of the RSA.
]]>The dawn prayer calls echo through the streets. As many make their way to mosques, for some it signals the end of another illegal gay party. Under the cover of darkness, smiles on lips and sweat on foreheads, the gays of Tehran blend back into daily life. Hidden in plain sight, they plan when and where they will meet again.
In an unparalleled true story, Majid Parsa recounts how a childhood of war, prayer and obedience was upended by a teenage sexual awakening and ultimately, pride. He lifts the heavy veil of persecution to reveal the fabulous and flamboyant gay scene right at the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran, flourishing under the ever-present shadow of the grand Ayatollah and morality police. Eye-opening and at times laugh-out-loud funny, The Ayatollah's Gaze is a story of self-discovery in a country where Sharia is the law.
'Powerfully eye-opening' Attitude Magazine
]]>What if we responded to death...by throwing a party? Journalist Erica Buist travels to seven death festivals around the world (Nepal, Madagascar, Indonesia, Sicily, Japan, Mexico and New Orleans)
By the time Erica Buist's father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies.
With Mexico's Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world one for every day they didn't find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia - with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one - This Party's Dead is the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they're going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death - and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn't seem so scary after all. Now available in paperback.
]]>@Craftivists
]]>Dreams inspire positive action, so stitch a Dream Cloud to hang up at home or work and prompt you to think past a problem to the solution. Sew a Gentle Nudge Label to help keep your conscience sharp and your spirit strong. Craft your own Mini Protest Banner to turn heads and influence change, or fly solidarity's flag for those suffering as a result of the world's injustices. Stitch a Handmade Hedgerow to champion one of the solutions to the climate crisis or if you are nervous about protesting in public or if there's a ban on public rallies where you live, let a doll speak your truth by creating a Toy Protest.
This handbook is for everyone, wherever you are in the world: whether you are a skilled crafter or a burnt-out activist, an introvert, highly sensitive person, or struggling with anxiety or overwhelm. These 20 projects and tools use the slow, soothing and thoughtful process of craft to help channel feelings of sadness, anger or powerlessness into proactive, encouraging effective actions to help make hope possible.
]]>@craftivists
]]>This was the great rallying cry of the pioneers who, in 1919, created the Women's Engineering Society. Spearheaded by Katharine and Rachel Parsons, a powerful mother and daughter duo, and Caroline Haslett, whose mission was to liberate women from domestic drudgery, it was the world's first professional organisation dedicated to the campaign for women's rights.
Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines tells the stories of the women at the heart of this group - from their success in fanning the flames of a social revolution to their significant achievements in engineering and technology. It centres on the parallel but contrasting lives of the two main protagonists, Rachel Parsons and Caroline Haslett - one born to privilege and riches whose life ended in dramatic tragedy; the other who rose from humble roots to become the leading professional woman of her age and mistress of the thrilling new power of the twentieth century: electricity.
In this fascinating book, acclaimed biographer Henrietta Heald also illuminates the era in which the society was founded. From the moment when women in Britain were allowed to vote for the first time, and to stand for Parliament, she charts the changing attitudes to women's rights both in society and in the workplace.
]]>Twitter: @ian_livingstone
Instagram: ianlivingstoneff
Since starting out in 1975 as a part-time mail-order business in a modest third-floor flat in West London, Games Workshop has grown from its humble beginnings to become a FTSE 250 company listed on the London Stock Exchange. From distributing Dungeons & Dragons, to living in the back of a van, to opening Games Workshop stores, to creating Fighting Fantasy, to launching Warhammer, co-founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson tell their remarkable story for the first time.
Dice Men is the fascinating, never-before-told story of an iconic company which changed the world of tabletop gaming for ever. It's an insight into the rollercoaster first year of Games Workshop and the birth of the industry.
]]>Twitter: @ian_livingstone
Instagram: ianlivingstoneff
]]>Twitter: @ian_livingstone
Instagram: ianlivingstoneff
Each artist is profiled along with select examples of their best work in vibrant full colour, the astonishing detail on display in all its glory. It features the work some of the world's best fantasy artists including Chris Achilleos, John Blanche, Jim Burns, Les Edwards, Karl Kopinski, Iain McCaig, Martin McKenna, Ian Miller and Russ Nicholson, among others.
Written by Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone and Fighting Fantasy historian Jonathan Green, Magic Realms is a Who's Who of fantasy art an absolutely essential collector's item for any Fighting Fantasy fan.
]]>Jonathan Green is a writer of speculative fiction, with more than 80 books to his name. Well known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, he has also written fiction for Doctor Who, Star Wars, Warhammer and Marvel. He lives in Somerset, UK.
]]>There aren't many computer games that can justify an entire book, but for superfans, Alien: Isolation is truly extraordinary and Perfect Organism reveals all there is to know about every aspect of this masterful game.
Discover the rationale and authenticity of the set design and art direction, learn about the alien's unnerving abilities to second-guess the players and the importance of its unique height, find out more about the importance of the dynamic audio and the use of seventies archive soundbites, as well as the darkly beautiful music. And immerse yourself in the technical brilliance of the level design and the user interface, before reading about the deleted content, and the scenes and features that never made the final cut.
Alien: Isolation is a game of remarkable depth, complexity, and detail, and together with a level-by-level mission guide, this book will answer all of your questions, as well as many you haven't yet thought to ask!
]]>"Packed full of approachable and inspiring recipes...thoroughly modern and highly rewarding.' Ravinder Bhogal
"Every recipe is packed with flavour.' Dan Lepard
Sanjana Feasts is a collection of dazzling recipes of modern Indian diaspora vegetarian and vegan food.
Sanjana Modha's flavourful and vibrant recipes are rooted in her Indian heritage, East African family background, and Yorkshire childhood. This book showcases the varied ingredients and unique combinations that are authentic to Sanjana's upbringing, and includes signature dishes such as Ruffled Biryani, Madras Mac and Cheese with Naan Crumbs, Desi-inspired French Bread Pizza and Sticky Toffee Gulab Jamun, as well as delicious Indian classics.
Over the last few years Sanjana has seen a visible shift in the Western understanding of what Indian food is. It's gone from curry-house creations, to an exploration of regional food, to fusion cuisine and more recently, an appreciation of street food and casual dining. Today, Indian food is a cacophony of all these elements and more, and Sanjana is forging yet another new direction with the food of diasporic communities, and the flavours of a new generation.
Sanjana Feasts will inspire you both to incorporate these delicious recipes into your everyday cooking, and to raise your game in the kitchen with her tips for the classics.
]]>Hedges are as old as civilisation and as emblematic of the British countryside as chalk streams, hay meadows and oak trees. But unlike woodland and rivers, farmland hedges remain on the periphery of the public consciousness, often going unnoticed and almost always underappreciated. Wielding his pen as deftly he does a billhook, professional hedgelayer Richard Negus takes us on a journey that reveals these ribbons of thorn and barb are so much more than mere decoration or boundary markers. They are essential for much-needed wildlife recovery. If we don't get our hedges right, there is little hope for species like the almost-extinct turtledove.
And yet, no hedge is truly 'wild'; each one is a testament to generations of human skill and labour, requiring ongoing maintenance to survive and thrive. But there is a problem: we need more hedgelayers, and this is something Negus is trying to solve.
Introducing a lively band of fellow countrymen and countrywomen along the way, Negus explores everything from the practical complexities of modern farming and land ownership to the challenges faced by conservationists. Written with vigour and humour, as well as rare insight and honesty, Words from the Hedge is a timely exploration of how we can use hedges to make the British countryside a place where nature has a home.
]]>What did it mean to be a 'rebel woman' in the interwar years? Historian Sarah Lonsdale traces the struggles, passions and achievements of a set of fearlessly determined women who stopped at nothing to make their mark in the traditionally masculine environments of mountaineering, politics, engineering and journalism.
From the motorist Claudia Parsons to the 'star' reporter Margaret Lane, the mountaineer Dorothy Pilley and the journalist Shiela Grant Duff, the women charted in this book challenged the status quo in all walks of life, alongside writing vivid, eye-witness accounts of their adventures.
Recovering their voices across a range of texts, including novels, poems, journalism and diaries, Rebel women between the wars reveals the inch-by-inch gains these women won through courageous and sometimes controversial acts.
'Truly inspiring reading.' Daily Express (Books of the Year 2020)
'Lonsdale's subjects are [...] pioneering journalists who weaponise words to attack the citadels of the Establishment. This, with their energy, is what draws them together.' Times Literary Supplement
]]>The globe-trotting tales of five women who fought for the right to enjoy the wild places of the earth.
For millennia the 'wild' was a place heroic men went on epic quests. Women were prevented from joining them, either through physical control or powerful myths about what would happen if they ventured beyond the city wall or village boundary. So how did women claim their place in the remote and lovely parts of our planet?
In Wildly different, historian Sarah Lonsdale traces the lives of five women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the earth's wild places. We'll meet Mina Hubbard, who outraged the exploration community when she stepped into a canoe in northern Labrador. Evelyn Cheesman, who became the first female keeper of insects at London Zoo. Dorothy Pilley, who shocked polite society by donning men's climbing breeches. Ethel Haythornthwaite, who helped make the Peak District Britain's first National Park. And Wangari Maathai, who started a movement to plant millions of trees across sub-Saharan Africa.
Drawing on interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Wangari Maathai's daughter and others, Lonsdale recounts the women's adventures across five continents. Evocative and inspiring, this book shows how women can be 'wildly different'.
'Spellbinding,' Daily Express
'Well worth reading.' Bookmunch
'It's a deeply felt, splendidly told, long overdue celebration of five wild, witty and wise voices who make a compelling case, now as then, for conservation, compassion and community.' Dan Richards, author of Climbing Days
]]>Does art have to be beautiful? What if it can be useful instead? In this cutting-edge book, John Byrne shows how the concept of 'Useful Art' is helping artists and communities fight back against the neoliberal takeover of our spaces, services and lives.
Byrne demonstrates that networks of artist-led activism and community-based direct action can provide a collaborative playbook of impactful and inclusive alternatives. From Turner Prize-winning urban regeneration projects to bakeries, vegetable gardens and multi-use arts spaces, Useful Art has enormous potential for bringing people together, recovering and preserving local skills and knowledge and reclaiming artistic endeavour for real-world good.
Exploring an international selection of projects, exhibitions and activism, this important new work champions the shift from aesthetics to use value, challenging traditional ways of seeing the world symbolically through art. Reaching beyond the financial logic of the art world, Byrne shows how Useful Art can offer an artistic toolkit for implementing radical change.
]]>Shakespeare's plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him? Using the latest techniques in textual analysis Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers a fresh look at William Shakespeare and reveals the influence of a community of playwrights that shaped his work. This compelling book argues that we need to see early modern drama as a communal enterprise, with playwrights borrowing from and adapting one another's work.
From John Lyly's wit to the collaborative genius of John Fletcher, to Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers fresh insights into Shakespeare's artistic development and shows us new ways of looking at the masterpieces that have enchanted audiences for centuries.
'This is a long way from the Romantic image of Shakespeare as isolated genius, and it is entirely convincing.' Peter Holland, Times Literary Supplement
'As this new book expertly shows, [Shakespeare] did not write alone. Shakespeare's borrowed feathers is less about the "upstart crow" who upset the gossipy, close-knit world of Elizabethan theatre, and more about those other writers whose influence, rivalry and collaboration shaped the canon we attribute to Shakespeare solo.' Emma Smith, The Telegraph
'Persuasive and precise, this exceptionally well-researched book is an invaluable addition to scholarship that examines how literary collaborations shaped the modern Shakespeare canon.' Kirkus Reviews
]]>The United States and Iran have been locked in a decades-long standoff, fuelled by missteps, misunderstandings, and clashing ambitions. In these pages a leading Iranian expert clarifies the dynamics driving a conflict that has devastated the Middle East and destabilised the world.
Behrooz Ghamari explores the history of US intervention in the region, focusing on the continuing sanctions imposed on Iran and, behind them, US policymakers' persistent perception of the Islamic Republic as a major obstacle to American power. Despite the repressive policies of the Iranian state, he contends, Iranian society has remained vibrant with active intellectual, cultural, and social justice movements. The roots of US-Iranian rivalry lie elsewhere.
Challenging the conventional image of Iran as a monolithic totalitarian regime, this timely study calls for a more informed, nuanced approach to Middle East diplomacy.
]]>Unmask the shadowy world of Russian espionage with this riveting exploration of the Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) and their global clandestine operations. With decades of experience as a CIA operations officer, author Sean M. Wiswesser takes readers deep into the heart of Maskirovka the Russian art of denial, deception, and manipulation. Using historical examples and firsthand accounts, this book reveals the tactics employed by the three main services of Russia's intelligence apparatus: the SVR, GRU, and FSB. Learn about the RIS' use of double agents, surveillance, and 'street work', honeytraps, sabotage, active measures, assassinations, the RIS roles in the Russo-Ukraine War, and much more.
Wiswesser's unparalleled expertise comes from years of sitting across from Russian intelligence officers, operating overseas, and using their own methods against them. As a member of the CIA's expert cadre in the Directorate of Operations, he worked closely with the U.S. intelligence community and foreign allies, gaining a unique perspective on the RIS' global reach. Now, he shares that knowledge in a candid, plain-speaking style designed to inform and galvanize readers from all walks of life.
This book is more than an expose it's a toolkit for understanding and countering the RIS' manipulative tactics. Wiswesser breaks down ten key elements of their tradecraft, offering invaluable insights to intelligence professionals, academics, business leaders, NGO workers, and private citizens alike. With a deep grounding in Russian language, culture, and intelligence traditions, he provides readers with the context they need to grasp the RIS' methods and motivations.
Written for the general reader, this compelling account combines expert analysis with real-world stories, making it both accessible and deeply informative. Whether you're a practitioner in the field or simply curious about the world of espionage, the author's narrative will open your eyes to the global threat posed by Russian intelligence and equip you with the knowledge to recognise and resist their tactics. Prepare to be captivated, informed, and empowered.
]]>But, shaken by the apparent futility of Western activism in the face of inertia and corruption, she began to question her choices, both material and emotional. Instead of seeking outward answers she went inwards, creating an alternative Eat, Pray, Love for the polycrisis.
Inner prepping, or altering your private, interior world as a form of civil resistance, is an oblique way of coming at the classic feminist idea that the personal is political. Grose takes us on an exhilarating, funny, erudite and ultimately uplifting tour of the practices she tried out, including ego-dismantling retreats, animal communication, and tantra, offering myriad ways to revolutionise ourselves and others.
'These revolutionary pages blew me away with extraordinary pleasure.' Devorah Baum, author of On Marriage
'Interesting and intriguing, inspiring and amusing.' Adam Phillips, author of On Giving Up
'Luminous, accessible and fascinating.' Josh Cohen, author ofAll the Rage
'Funny, clever and wise, self aware.' Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch
'Many a reader will be transformed by this handbook-memoir-manifesto.' Chloe Aridjis, author of Book of Clouds
'I found this book to be such a delight. Grose takes us through a fantastic array of ideas and practices that we're in dire need of if we want to get through these terrifying times. Moreover, she does so with both erudition and wit, and with a conversational verve and charm that are irresistible. The book is a completely winning combination of profundity and liveliness and it will leave you feeling galvanised, hopeful, and excited. If Grose has got anything to do with it, I think we'll get through!' Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell
'Inspiring, smart and very funny, this book offers a hopeful and, more importantly, fun path forward. In a world where so much feels grim, it's a gem. Anouchka weaves together big ideas in a way that feels effortless to take in. I now want to move to the Portugal commune, write letters to rats, and have sex with sexy world-changers.' Marianne Power, author of Love Me! One Woman's Search for a Different Happy Ever After
]]>She has contributed to The Guardian, Granta, Harpers Bazaar, and Radio 4, as well as appearing in Josh Appignanesi's documentary My Extinction.
]]>Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch the former director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts perhaps audaciously a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realises its highest aspirations.
In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, but also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch's arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection.
In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them.
]]>Friendship can be the foundation of our earliest memories and the source of our most formative moments. So why is it often seen as secondary to romantic or familial connection, something we age out of and sacrifice to other relationships? In BFFs, Anahit Behrooz considers female friendship not as something lesser, but as a site of radical intimacy.
From the joys of shared coming-of-age stories and sisterhood, through the pain of break-ups and parting of ways, the vast significance and intensity of feeling within our friendships is explored through depictions in the work of Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Booksmart and Grey's Anatomy, Insecure, The Virgin Suicides and beyond.
]]>Before turning to teaching full-time, Bernie had a successful career in science and technology, where his fascination with systems and structure laid the foundation for his later explorations of the body, breath, and mind. His teaching is informed not only by years of practice and study in yoga, meditation, and philosophy, but also by a lifelong curiosity about the human experience.
In Prana, Bernie turns his attention to one of yoga’s most elusive and profound concepts—breath as life force—tracing its meaning across cultures, eras, and disciplines. Blending personal story with philosophical reflection, ancient wisdom, and modern science, he invites readers into a multidimensional investigation of what it means to be alive.
Bernie lives and teaches in Vancouver, Canada and shares his teachings through trainings, writings, and the website www.yinyoga.com.
]]>Is it just breath? A metaphor for spirit? A biological energy? Or something more?
InPrana: One Breath, Many Worlds, Bernie Clark author of the bestsellingThe Complete Guide to Yin Yoga invites readers on a journey through ancient myths, spiritual practices, and cutting-edge science in search of one of yoga's most mysterious and foundational ideas: prana. Blending historical scholarship with personal experience, Clark weaves a tapestry of stories that explore prana as fire, wind, water, and breath moving from shamanic roots to temple rituals, from the Upanishads to Theosophy, from early Greek philosophy to modern yoga retreats.
Combining rigorous research with captivating storytelling, the book offers:
Part memoir, part history, part philosophical reflection,Pranaoffers an illuminating exploration of the life force that animates us all. Whether you are a yoga teacher, student, philosopher, or simply a seeker of deeper truths, this book will expand your understanding and your breath.
]]>Before turning to teaching full-time, Bernie had a successful career in science and technology, where his fascination with systems and structure laid the foundation for his later explorations of the body, breath, and mind. His teaching is informed not only by years of practice and study in yoga, meditation, and philosophy, but also by a lifelong curiosity about the human experience.
InPrana, Bernie turns his attention to one of yoga's most elusive and profound concepts breath as life force tracing its meaning across cultures, eras, and disciplines. Blending personal story with philosophical reflection, ancient wisdom, and modern science, he invites readers into a multidimensional investigation of what it means to be alive.
]]>This is an updated version of the book that has become the go-to resource for Yin Yoga teachers all over the world and has been required reading in many teacher training programs. All forms of yoga can provide benefits physically, emotionally, and mentally, however Yin Yoga works the deeper levels of the body/heart/mind: the yin tissues of fascia, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones, as well as the energetic channels of the meridians, nerves and blood system. One big difference noticed by students of Yin Yoga is the long-held, passive nature of the posture, which gives time for a deeper journey to unfold, a journey into the meditative aspects of yoga, a bridge to living life mindfully. The second edition includes-a more functional approach to the practice of yoga, emphasising the concept of targeted areas; the importance of stress in reducing fragility and building antifragility; understanding the nature of creep and the importance of counterposes, with a revised list of effective counterpostures; many new photographs of the postures and their variations for different body types; a more current overview of the physiology of tissues and the energy body reflecting new understanding in the science of fascia and cellular signaling; and many other enhancements. As in the first edition, the book presents comprehensive information on how to do the practice, including how to get into and out of the pose, contraindications and warnings for those who may have trouble with particular aspects of the posture, and other important information. Why we do the practice is discussed by looking at its benefits in three main sections: the physiological, energetic and mental/emotional benefits.
'Bernie Clark's The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga is one of the best yoga resources now available.' - Paul Grilley, author of Yin Yoga: Outline of a Quiet Practice
]]>This groundbreaking volume brings together a rich collection of primary sources letters, essays, travelogues written in Chinese and now translated into English, spanning from the gold rush era of the 1850s to the postwar reflections of the 1950s. Each chapter includes primary sources translated into English and preceded by an academic introduction written by a historian who has engaged with these sources. In this respect, Sinophone Australia revises the Anglo-hegemony of historical writing, providing glimpses of non-English historical documents with the hopes that this will lead to the expansion of Australian history, just as a new multilingual generation of historians stands up to interpret the vast amount of source documents written in other languages.
Beyond its contribution to Australian history, Sinophone Australia positions these narratives within the broader framework of the global Sinophone, addressing themes that resonate across settler colonies and Chinese-speaking communities worldwide. Sharing analysis from historians who have extensive experience working with Chinese-language sources on Australian history, Sinophone Australia invites scholars and readers to reconsider the intersections of language, migration and identity in shaping historical knowledge.
]]>Fungi have a long history of association with death, decay and dark forces. But contrary to this negative image fungi are at the heart of crucial 'life-support' processes. For example, decomposition releases nutrients for reuse fungi really are the ultimate recyclers.
Filled with images of the extraordinary diversity and beauty of fungi, this revised and updated book provides a fascinating introduction to a group of organisms whose lifestyle means they remain largely out of sight, overlooked and forgotten. The reality is that there is much for which fungi should be thanked.
]]>The exhibitionexplores how plants moved over oceans and lands, transported in the hulls of ships, all part of the colonial legacies of the British Empire. Specifically, these stories link Australia, India and the UK and shows us that the entanglement of plants and people are tied to understanding place and belonging. This book includes high quality photography of the exhibition as well as essays and recipes by numerous contributors.
]]>Fungi have a long history of association with death, decay and dark malevolent forces. They also cause serious economic loss through diseases of plant crops in particular. They can easily be cast as the 'monster'.
]]>Hidden World of Mosses explores the tiny, intriguing environments of these plants that have their own miniature forests filled with grazers and predators, and their own ecological norms and mechanics.
]]>From objects that tell tales of daring plant collectors, to specimens of plants now extinct, historical maps and diaries, a letter from Charles Darwin and innovative nature printing techniques, this book showcases an international collection that reflects the rich scientific history of Scotland and is still used every day in our work to explore, explain and conserve the world of plants.
This book won runner up in the Best New Publications category of the Association for Cultural Enterprises Awards 2015.
]]>In the book's 80 pages, Simon highlights some of his favourite objects, plants and buildings from RBGE's Living, Herbarium, Library and Archive collections.
]]>America today is being torn apart by the struggle over a single concept, deeply rooted in the country's sense of self: freedom. Battered by wave after wave of crises, ordinary people of all political persuasions have come to feel that their freedom is under threat and with it, nothing less than the soul of the nation.
In The trouble with freedom, journalist and researcher Melissa Butcher takes a trip into the ferociously polarised world of American politics, hoping to find out what's going on beneath the surface. Criss-crossing the country, she talks to a wide range of people: Democrat and Republican, gay and straight, urban and rural, immigrants, First Nations, Black, white, the incarcerated.
What she discovers is that political conflict is often the outcome of very personal experiences of managing cultural change. Exploring the different ways freedom has been used to define what it means to be American, Butcher encounters anger and distrust, but also untapped possibilities for empathy and care.
]]>The Ottoman Empire's collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so-called Sick Man of Europe succumbed to its ailments incompetent management, nationalism, and ethnic and religious conflict. In The War That Made the Middle East, Mustafa Aksakal overturns this conventional narrative. He describes how European imperial ambitions and the Ottoman commitment to saving its empire at any cost including the destruction of the Armenian community and the deaths of more than a million Ottoman troops and other civilians led to the empire's violent partition and created a politically unstable Middle East.
The War That Made the Middle East shows that, until 1914, the Ottoman Empire was a viable multiethnic, multireligious state, and that relations between the Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians of Palestine were relatively stable. When war broke out, the Ottoman government sought an alliance with the Entente but was rejected because of British and French designs on the Eastern Mediterranean. After the Ottomans entered the fight on the side of Germany and were defeated, Britain and France seized Ottoman lands, and new national elites in former Ottoman territories claimed their own states. The region was renamed 'the Middle East', erasing a robust and modernising 600-year-old empire.
A sweeping narrative of war, great power politics, and ordinary people caught up in the devastation, The War That Made the Middle East offers new insights about the Great War and its profound and lasting consequences.
]]>Transforming battlegrounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America into veritable hellscapes, the surrogate wars of the Cold War era left behind a legacy of collective trauma and social conflict that have persisted into the present. In this ambitious work, Alfred W. McCoy uses a bottom-up, outside-in approach to offer an unexpected new perspective on the longest, most consequential conflict in modern history.
McCoy renders an intimate portrait of both embattled covert operatives and committed antiwar protesters, thus humanising the history of the Cold War a history that has too often been told in impersonal terms of economic growth, nuclear arsenals, or diplomatic ententes.
As today's great powers devote humanity's scarce resources toward ratcheting up a 'new cold war' in the face of a worsening climate crisis, McCoy's history is an important reminder that otherwise- ordinary individuals once helped end a global conflict that threatened nuclear holocaust.
]]>Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? Why don't they quit out of self-concern? Why does the rat in the experiment, alone in a cage, press the lever again and again for cocaine to the point of death? In this pathbreaking book, Hanna Pickard proposes a new paradigm for understanding the puzzle of addiction. For too long, our thinking has been hostage to a false dichotomy: either addiction is a brain disease, or it is a moral failing. Pickard argues that it is neither, and that both models stifle addiction research and fail people who need help.
Drawing on her expertise as an academic philosopher and her clinical work in a therapeutic community, Pickard explores the meaning of drugs for people with addiction and the diverse factors that keep them using despite the costs. People use drugs to cope with suffering but also to self-harm, or even to die. Some identify as 'addicts', while others are in denial or struggle with cravings and self-control. Social, cultural, and economic circumstances are crucial to explaining addiction but brain pathology may also matter. By integrating addiction science with philosophy, clinical practice, and the psychology and voices of people with addiction themselves, Pickard shows why there is no one-size-fits-all theory or ethics of addiction. The result is a heterogeneous and humanistic paradigm for understanding and treating addiction, and a fresh way of thinking about responsibility, blame, and relationships with people who use drugs.
]]>Most of these firms were able to stabilize their situations after experiencing crises, but none has fully regained industry-shaping dominance: Amazon remains caught between its low-margin retail core and its high-growth cloud unit, Pepsi has pulled back from the healthier alternatives it started to sell, and Tesla's global lead in EVs is weakening under assault from rising Chinese competitors. Advancing the invaluable lesson that while downturns of different types in business are extremely common and full resurgence is rare, author Alfred A. Marcus investigates what held these companies back from restoring their past glory. Drawing on decades of expertise in strategy and business analysis, Marcus presents a compelling framework for understanding corporate renewal.
Comeback explores the paradoxes that underperforming businesses must navigate and reveals the challenges of innovation, competitive pressures, and shifting consumer expectations. The book demonstrates how the companies it describes hedged their bets, adapted to evolving conditions, and wrestled with the uncertainty of transformation. It sheds light on their accomplishments and setbacks, providing key insights into the paths that any company needs to take to make a comeback.
Whether you're an investor, strategist, or business leader Comeback provides essential lessons about resilience, transformation, and the difficult path from survival to sustained success.
]]>Beginning on the night in November 1963 when his mum took him to see the Beatles live at Manchester's ABC Cinema, Mike Pickering takes the reader through sixty years of clubs, clothes, gigs, record labels, football matches and politics.
Pickering has lived through decades of rapid change in popular music. As an influential DJ he introduced house music into the legendary Hacienda. He signed Happy Mondays and James to Factory Records before working with Kasabian, Gossip and Calvin Harris at Sony. His Mercury Prize-winning, multi-million-selling group M People transformed the music industry's attitude to dance music. As he tells his remarkable story he introduces an array of friends and collaborators, many of whom would become important and sometimes notorious figures in music history.
Manchester must dance is a revelatory insider's account that moves from the cramped back streets of 1950s north Manchester on a journey deep into music, the city and the wider world. It features forewords from some of those Pickering inspired: Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Calvin Harris.
]]>Paul Morley is a writer, broadcaster and cultural critic who has written about music since the 1970s. A founder member of Art of Noise and Art of This, his books include From Manchester with Love: The Life and Opinions of Tony Wilson, The North and Joy Division: Piece by Piece. He also collaborated with Grace Jones and Island Records' Chris Blackwell on their memoirs.
]]>'Suicides have a special language', Anne Sexton wrote in her 1964 poem 'Wanting to Die'. But is it a language we can learn to read?
In The poetry of suicide, J. T. Welsch interweaves stories of poets who took their own lives with the long history of suicide in his own family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths. Beginning with Hamlet's 'To be or not to be?', he delves into the work of Dante, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Mayakovsky and others, asking what it can teach us about suicide's messy reality.
Suicide is more like poetry than we realise, Welsch argues. Both are filled with ambiguities, contradictions and unknowable intentions. Both demand and resist interpretation. Recovering the personal dimension often lost in our medicalised public discourse, Welsch finds practical ways of confronting suicide's poem-like difficulties.
]]>Neil Young on Neil Young: Interviews and Encounters is a revealing anthology of Young's most significant, fascinating, and entertaining discussions, declarations, and dreams, chronicling fifty years of conversations, feature stories, and press conferences.
With many interviews widely available for the first time including new transcriptions and first-time translations into English the book spans Young's words and ideas from 1967 onward: his early days with Buffalo Springfield and 1970s Harvest-fueled celebrity apex, an artistic rebellion and 1980s commercial dip, and the unexpected 1990s revival as the Godfather of Grunge through to his multi-decade victory lap as a living legend.
Across the decades, Young's own words tell the story as he perpetually reinvents himself as a master of music and film, a technology pioneer and innovator, and a bold political observerand strident environmental advocate.
]]>At the Limits of the Gaze collects the writings of photographer and critic Takuma Nakahira in English for the first time. A crucial figure within the history of Japanese photography, Nakahira is best known outside of Japan as a founding member of Provoke, the experimental magazine of photographs, essays, and poetry, first published in 1968, and for his important photobook For a Language to Come (1970). Throughout a decades-long career, Nakahira raised incisive questions about visual culture and politics in both his photography and his writing. As part of a dynamic moment of artistic and political experimentation in Tokyo, he wrote on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, literature, politics, television, and more. Nakahira's essays brim with urgency, relentlessly interrogating photography's relationship to power, the connection between language and images, and the gaze. As editors and translators Daniel Abbe and Franz Prichard write, Nakahira's essays 'both suggest doubt about, and possibilities for, a photographically mediated reckoning with the world'.
]]>Daniel Abbeholds a PhD from the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and is a lecturer at Osaka University of Arts.
Franz Prichardis an associate professor at Florida State University, author of Residual Futures: The Urban Ecologies of Literary and Visual Media of 1960s and 1970s Japan (2019), and has taught at UCLA, Harvard University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Princeton University.
]]>Covering all the bases for beginners, Make a Zine! hits on more advanced topics like Creative Commons licenses, legality, and sustainability. Says Feminist Review, 'Make a Zine! is an inspiring, easy, and digestible read for anyone, whether you're already immersed in a cut-and-paste world, a graphic designer with a penchant for radical thought, or a newbie trying to find the best way to make yourself and your ideas known.'
Illustrated by an army of notable and soon-to-be-notable artists and cartoonists, Make a Zine! also takes a look at the burgeoning indie comix scene, with a solid and comprehensive chapter by punk illustrator Fly (Slug and Lettuce, Peops). Part history lesson, part how-to guide, Make a Zine! is a call to arms, an ecstatic, positive rally cry in the face of TV show book clubs and bestsellers by celebrity chefs. As says Biel in the book's intro, 'Let's go!'
]]>Ymani Wince is an entrepreneur, literacy worker and writer from St. Louis, MO. She is the founder and creator of The Noir Bookshop, a bookstore turned community minded mission. Wince is passionate about Black history and heritage, eliminating book deserts, and all things diy publishing. Through Noir Print Co, Wince's publishing vertical, storytelling and community memory keeping are at the forefront. Her creative practice incorporates zine making to tell stories of family and presence. Wince's writing has been featured in the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Riverfront Times, Manrepeller and several others. When she's not writing or promoting literature, you can find her browsing through books, or spending time with her little dog, Riesling.
]]>A sparkling, funny, and often wrenching portrait-in-essays on the dairy industry, queer intimacy, family, fluidity, whiteness, and cows.
For decades, Megan Milks has wondered what it means to share a last name with the classic white American beverage. Now, Milks takes on their namesake subject in all its dimensions, venturing into the worlds of small dairies, bovine genetics, and manure while also turning their eye on their family and themself. The resulting essays connect the dots between human lactation, Big Dairy, being queer and lonely, climate change, transmasculinity, the bull semen industry, the milky roots of white supremacy, and the best practices for giving and receiving a hug. WithMega Milk, Megan Milks confirms their place as one of our most exciting queer thinkers and writers.
]]>Organisation guru Laura Wittmann is here to tell you that turning your chaotic disaster of a home into a well-organised safe haven doesn't have to be a terrible undertaking it can be fun, exciting, and ultimately, rewarding! Featuring tried-and-true quick solutions that have been tested by the loyal readers of the popular blog Organizing Junkie, Clutter Rehab offers simple plans and fun projects to help minimise stress and maximise space by:
For many centuries, Chinese migrated to the ports, cities and provinces of Thailand. These immigrants included traders, skilled labourers, adventurers and the neardestitute who dreamed of a better life. Over time, they came to form one of the largest and most influential diasporas in the world. From tin mining to railway-building to rice trading, their skills helped the country develop and prosper. Some came to advise Thai monarchs, intermarry, and run businesses integral to the economy. One son of a Chinese father and Thai mother even became king. This community overcame many personal, cultural and social challenges to eventually become an integral part of almost all the kingdom's affairs all the way through to the present day. This book tells the extraordinary history of the Thai-Chinese.
'No country in Southeast Asia has been as successful as Thailand in integrating its Chinese community. This book provides deep insights into this process and should provide illumination reading for anyone interested in Southeast Asian success stories. It is a must-read.' -Kishore Mahbubani, author of The Great Convergence
]]>Designed for artists who are starting out on their journey, or those who just need a refresher on the basics, this handy and ultra-portable reference guide helps artists utilise colour effectively no matter the medium. Including:
Art instructor Michelle Tabares demystifies how to apply colour theory so anyone can make thoughtful and informed artistic choices.
]]>How do writers and animators turn ideas into animated films or series? What's the animation development process? Are animated stories only for kids? What makes animation characters iconic? Can animated short films and web series launch your animation writing career? Writer and script editor Alizee Musson steps behind the scenes to find answers.
From Hollywood and independent cinema to TV, meet the creators of Pixar and Walt Disney's Inside Out and Brave, Peppa Pig, Wolfwalkers, Chicken for Linda!, Netflix's Supa Team 4, Mars Express, American Dad! and many more. In over 25 case studies and interviews with writers, animators and producers including an exclusive interview with the producer of Studio Ghibli's The Tale of The Princess Kaguya discover all the storytelling tricks of the trade to write your own animated film or series and start your animation writing career.
]]>Fodor's 'Essential' guides were named by Booklist as the Best Travel Guide Series of 2020!
Fodor's Essential Italy 2026 travel guide includes:
Planning on visiting nearby European countries? Check out Fodor's Essential France, Fodor's Essential England, Fodor's Essential Spain, and Fodor's Essential Switzerland.
]]>Fodor's 'Essential' guides were named by Booklist as the Best Travel Guide Series of 2020!
Fodor's Essential France travel guide includes:
Planning on spending more time in France? Check out Fodor's Paris, Fodor's Pocket Paris, and Fodor's Provence & the French Riviera.
]]>Fodor's Seoul travel guide includes:
Planning on visiting Asia? Check out Fodor's Essential Japan, Essential Thailand, and Essential Vietnam.
]]>Alongside the text, dozens of vivid photos showcase these special places as well as the design-forward resorts, ships, glamping communities, and other lodgings that provide hospitality in the wild. Evocative images range from close-ups of wildlife on African savannahs, to monks going about their business in Bhutan, to desert landscapes deep in Egypt and Jordan, to polar bears prowling the ice in the islands of Svalbard. Not only a book to dream on, 'Comfort in the Wild' will help readers create enriching, authentic adventures of their own.
]]>She is a past president of the Society of American Travel Writers and former travel editor at The Miami Herald, where she has also served as an executive, business editor, columnist, arts journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning team member. Jane writes frequently about cruising, soft adventure and upscale travel for a variety of national publications. A popular moderator and public speaker, Jane often appears at corporate, civic, arts and travel conferences.
She is co-author of the 2011 book, The 100 Best Affordable Vacations to Enrich Your Life. A long-time Miamian, Jane grew up in North Carolina and graduated from Duke University after winning a prestigious Angier B. Duke Scholarship. She has lived in New York and spent extended periods in England. While she has frequently traveled alone, her favourite companions are her husband, Stetson Glines, and their Westies, Ziggy and The Coconut.
]]>France's next presidential election is due by 2027, if not sooner; and its far-right Rassemblement National is on course to win it. Such a victory would trigger shockwaves internationally, with profound implications for allies and neighbours including the UK and the US.
Founded by the antisemitic Jean-Marie Le Pen, the RN previously the Front National was confined to the fringes until his daughter Marine took over in 2011. She 'detoxified' the party's image, bringing in telegenic young protege Jordan Bardella as the modern face of the RN. Together, they have focused on voters' economic grievances while condemning 'mass immigration' of Muslims and foreign 'criminals' a strategy starkly reminiscent of Donald Trump's own route, twice, into the White House. Right-wing nationalists were already gaining ground worldwide and across the EU before Trump's re-election gave them another boost. Now France at the core of the European project is the far right's next greatprize.
In both rounds of 2024's parliamentary elections, the RN won more votes than any other party. In vivid, sharp prose, Victor Mallet explains how the French far right has won over the country and become a government in waiting one preparing to transform France, Europe and the world.
]]>The world's third-largest island, and the only one administered by three different sovereign nations, Borneo is something of a mystery. Home to an incredibly diverse indigenous population, once infamous for headhunting; a hotbed of military activity during World War II; a poster child for the ecological movement even as its rainforest is destroyed; and the host of Indonesia's planned new capital city, Nusantara Borneo's past, present and future are nothing if not eclectic.
But hidden under its enigmatic facade is an extraordinary island at the centre of world affairs in ancient times, yet often aloof from them. From early visitors bringing new religions to the island, to a fluctuating relationship with China, to a time when piracy ruled, Olivier Hein's sweeping tale uncovers the little-known events that shaped not only Borneo but the whole Malay Archipelago.
Linking Indonesian, Malaysian and Bruneian history, Hein brings together, for the first time, all the elements that make this island so unique. With Borneo sitting uncomfortably in the firing line of today's great global power shift from Trans-Atlantic to Trans-Pacific, and now attracting millions of visitors a year, the story of this rich and complex island has never been more relevant.
]]>Masterfully crafted and surprisingly modern, History of the Peloponnesian War has long been celebrated as an insightful, eloquent, and exhaustively detailed work of classical Greek history. The text is also remarkable for its deep political and military dimensions, and scholars have begun to place the work alongside Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Clausewitz's On War as one of the great treatises on strategy. The perfect companion to Thucydides' impressive History, this volume details the specific strategic concepts at work within the History of the Peloponnesian War and demonstrates, through case studies of recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the continuing relevance of Thucydidean thought to an analysis and planning of strategic operations. Some have even credited Thucydides with founding the discipline of international relations. Written by two scholars with extensive experience in this and related fields, Thucydides on Strategy situates the classical historian solidly in the modern world of war.
'I read Thucydides on Strategy with considerable interest, pleasure and care. The authors have made an original contribution to scholarship...and have managed to synthesise a coherent whole that goes far to explain how Athens lost and the Peloponnesians won this war.' Karl Walling, Professor of Policy and Strategy, U.S. Naval War College
'An excellent companion to the History, and an aid to the essential reflection that Thucydides's work requires.' Lieutenant General (Retd) Sir John Kiszely, author of General Hastings 'Pug' Ismay: Soldier, Statesman, Diplomat A New Biography
'The wisdom in this splendid book could save our current politics from many follies. If only our politicians, civil servants and soldiers took the time to read and understand it.' Colin S. Gray, Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies, University of Reading
'Thucydides, as he himself anticipated, wrote not only the history of the Peloponnesian War. He wrote the history of the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.' Louis Halle
'International relations continue to be a recurring struggle for wealth and power among independent actors in a state of anarchy. The classic history of Thucydides is as meaningful a guide to the behaviour of states today as when it was written in the fifth century B.C.E.' Robert Gilpin
]]>Constantinos Koliopoulos is Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Piraeus, and a former Fulbright scholar. He has been a professor in Strategic Studies at the Hellenic National Defence College, and a master of the Greek Chess Federation.
]]>At age nine, Theodor Meron witnessed the unthinkable: ghettos, camps, and the murder of his family during the Holocaust. Decades later, he would shape international law at the highest level, presiding over UN war crimes tribunals and influencing decisions on genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
In this extraordinary memoir, Judge Meron recounts a life marked by survival, scholarship, and an unrelenting pursuit of justice. From his early legal opinions like his now-famous 1967 memo on Israeli settlements to his role in reviewing evidence for the International Criminal Court's 2024 arrest warrant applications in the Israel-Gaza conflict, Meron has been a consistent voice for accountability.
Spanning a career that took him from Israel's Foreign Ministry to courtrooms in The Hague and classrooms at Harvard, Oxford, and NYU, Meron's story is also the story of modern international justice. Aged 94, he remains one of its most authoritative and principled figures. At a time when the future of global justice hangs in the balance, A Thousand Miracles is both a compelling personal history and a timely reminder of the moral weight of law and the power of one life dedicated to its pursuit. interviews, parliamentary speeches, media reports and surveys it shows how unchecked autonomy can undermine military development, even in authoritarian contexts.
]]>He received his legal education at the Hebrew University(M.J.), Harvard Law School (LL.M., J.S.D.) and Cambridge University (Diploma in Public International Law).
]]>For the past three centuries, urban dwellers and planners have imagined future cities that would be radically different from those of the past. Planners pursued progress, whether focused on flying vehicles above, sewage systems below, or daily life in between. Yet, as Bruno Carvalho shows in this original and wide-ranging history, which features some sixty illustrations, modern cities continuously defied predictions. Visionary designs and technological innovations created dramatic, unforeseen outcomes, and the ongoing urban boom is a story of continuity as well as rupture. A compelling history of imagined futures and the transformation of urban life, The Invention of the Future also suggests what we might learn from the stories of our cities as we shape them for the twenty-first century.
Moving between large-scale changes and detailed examples, this captivating narrative tells the story of key moments and turning points: the rebuilding of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake; the 1811 Commissioners' Plan for Manhattan; Parisian reforms from 1853 to 1870; Le Corbusier's plans for South American cities in the 1920s and 1930s; the postwar victory of the car; the utopian capital of Braslia; and urban growth in Africa.
In recent decades, Carvalho argues, the capacity to invent urban futures has become increasingly constrained. Social and environmental challenges loom large. But the story is not over. While cities helped create current problems, compact and transit-rich urbanisation might be our best hope to combine high living standards with sustainability. Sometimes, moving forward can involve reaching back to the future.
]]>The memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient world, Olympia was renowned for far more than its athletic contests. In Olympia, Judith Barringer provides a comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important sites in the ancient Greek and Roman world, where athletic competitions took place alongside and were closely connected with crucial religious and political activities.
Barringer describes the development of the Altis, the most sacred area of Olympia, where monuments to athletes successful in the games joined those erected to the gods and battlefield victories. Rival city-states and rulers built monuments to establish eminence, tout alliances, and join this illustrious company in a rich intergenerational dialogue. The political importance of Olympia was matched by its place as the largest sanctuary dedicated to Zeus, king of the gods. Befitting Zeus's role as god of warfare, the Olympian oracle was consulted to ensure good omens for war, and the athletic games embodied the fierce competition of battle. Other gods and heroes were worshipped at Olympia too, Hera, Artemis, and Herakles among them.
Drawing on a comprehensive knowledge of the archaeological record, Barringer describes the full span of Olympia's history, from the first monumental building around 600 BC to the site's gradual eclipse in the late Christianised Roman empire. Extensively illustrated with maps and diagrams, Olympia brings the development of Olympia vividly to life for modern readers.
]]>Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in the 1960s to mark the displacement of working-class residents in London neighbourhoods by the professional classes. The Death and Life of Gentrification traces how the word has far outgrown Glass's meaning, becoming a socially charged metaphor for cultural appropriation, upscaling, and the loss of authenticity.
In this lively and insightful book, Japonica Brown-Saracino traces how a concept originally intended to describe the brick-and-mortar transformation of neighbourhoods has come to characterise transformations that have little to do with cities. She describes how journalists, artists, filmmakers, novelists, and academics use gentrification as a symbolic device to mourn how everyday pleasures and forms of self-expression from music to marijuana, kale, and tattoos entered the domain of the elite. She weighs the implications of turning to gentrification as a tool to tell stories, entertain audiences, and communicate political messages. Relying on vivid examples, the book reveals how the term today expresses widespread ambivalence about rising economic inequality and unease with a variety of forms of social change. This pathbreaking book forces us to think about whether the wide-ranging way we use gentrification dilutes its meaning and stymies efforts to identify and resist urban displacement.
Drawing on everything from film and television to novels and art, The Death and Life of Gentrification sheds critical light on the changing meaning of gentrification in contemporary life. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in gentrification and urban dynamics, as well as for readers curious about attitudes about growing income inequality and the evolution and circulation of ideas.
]]>A central paradox of democracies is that they are always ruled by elites. What can democracy mean in this context? Today, it is often said that a populist revolt against elites is driving democratic politics throughout the West. But in Elites and Democracy, Hugo Drochon argues that democracy is more accurately and usefully understood as a perpetual struggle among competing elites between rising elites and ruling elites. Real political change comes from the interaction between social movements and elite political institutions such as parties. But, although true democracy the rule of the people may never be achieved, striving towards it can bring about worthwhile democratic results.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels put forward 'elite' theories of democracy and gave us terms such as the 'ruling class' and 'elites' itself. Drawing on their work and tracing the history of democratic thought through figures such as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, C. Wright Mills, and Raymond Aron, Elites and Democracy reveals that this fundamentally elitist basis of democracy democracy understood as competition between elites was there all along. The challenge is to think it anew.
Moving away from procedural or principled conceptions of democracy, Elites and Democracy develops a dynamic theory of democracy, one grounded in movement. With current politics defined by a populist backlash against elites, dynamic democracy offers the tools we urgently need to understand our contemporary predicament and to act upon it.
]]>Landscapes influence our cultural practices as much as the people who create them, and magic is no stranger to this effect. Magic is omnipresent in our world, but many people who practice don't call it 'magic'. Thanks to stigmatisation, disavowal, and punishment for magical work, as well as christo-colonialism, many non-Wiccan or Pagan practices have gone unseen in the contemporary occult community. Crossed Crow Books' first-ever anthology, The Crow's Collection of World Magic, collects ten essays by writers and practitioners around the world about their magical practices, histories, and communities.
This anthology sheds light on lively, underrepresented traditions and embraces the diversity of the magical world. Explore Kenneth Johnson's initiation into Indigenous Mayan traditions, study Finnish runes with the tietj and Aili Marjatta Kerttula, and learn how cabildo communities in Afro-Diasporic Cuba drew Lukum from Yoruban practice with Oracle Hekataios. Enrich your understanding of the magical world around us through the land, history, and practitioners who have come from all walks of life before us.
Authors and topics include:
The Definitive Guide to Container and Jar Magic.
One of the oldest and most traditional forms of magic, container spells are used for all sorts of purposes, from love to protection to money, and are an increasingly popular style of spellcasting. Container magic is known for its simplicity, featuring ingredients and containers commonly found in the home. Containers range from the portable, such as charm bags and coffee containers, to larger containers, such as living plants and tire planters. Container Conjure teaches readers, armed with nothing more than a handful of simple ingredients and their discernment, the ins and outs of performing container magic for themselves.
Starr Casas is an acknowledged authority on and master of Conjure-style container magic. In Container Conjure, Mama Starr teaches you how to load your own containers and maintain control over your spellcasting. Starr's container magic method is not limited to jars; she also uses dolls, sachets, fruit, and other organic material as 'containers', making this form of magic accessible to practitioners at any level.
]]>Galdramal: A Practical Guide to Rune Magick and Spell Work is an in-depth exploration of the ancient runes and their magickal significance in Nordic tradition. Designed for both beginners and seasoned practitioners, this book delves into the rich history, symbolism, and spiritual applications of the runes, offering readers a comprehensive road map to harnessing their power. Whether the book is used as a reference or a ritual companion, Andre Jooste unlocks the hidden potential within each rune and guides practitioners on their path to magickal mastery.
Galdramal takes readers into the realm of practical magick. Through easy-to-follow rituals, meditations, and exercises, Jooste demonstrates how to use runes for divination, protection, healing, and manifestation. Written in clear, accessible language, Galdramal blends ancient wisdom with modern application, making it an essential resource for anyone interested in Nordic magick, runes, and spirituality.
]]>On the path of the Left Hand, Andre Jooste delves into the mystical, unconventional realms of magick. This unique approach challenges conventional norms and pushes the boundaries of the unknown. It's a path that calls upon the practitioner to embrace personal power, eschewing societal conventions and limitations. It is here that Andre finds the courage to explore and harness the hidden, transformative forces that dwell in the shadows.
]]>Hoodoo and conjure may be household words, but the popular magical craft practiced by tens of thousands of individuals has been grossly misrepresented in many modern practices. Traditional Hoodoo & Conjure seeks to reverse these misconceptions and provide practitioners with the history, mechanics, and tools to understand not only how but why each magical action serves a greater purpose.
Because Hoodoo derives its roots from African traditional religions that were initially brought toNorth America by enslaved people during the transatlantic era, many aspects of the craft parallel African-Caribbean practices, such as Santeria and Haitian Vodou. Miss Aida teaches readers how to honour their ancestors in a traditional manner and petition honored entities. By offering magical baths, 25 traditional rituals, 125 spells, 50 recipes, and 40 prayers, readers will develop a deeper understanding of Hoodoo while becoming knowledgeable and formidable spellcasters.
]]>Arthritisrefers to more than 100 different conditions that cause joint pain and may involve care fromorthopedics, rheumatology and other specialties. The good news is that there are better options than ever before for diagnosing, treating and managing joint pain. This book is designed to empower you with the latest knowledge so you canpartner with your healthcare team andtake an active role in your care.
Chapters break down the what, why and how of these complex diseases including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriatic arthritis, vasculitis, gout, forms of childhood arthritis and more. Learn about what to expect in an evaluation, the range of available medications, potential surgical procedures, injections, holistic and self-care options, and general pain management tips; as well as tips for staying active, nutrition, mental health, working, traveling, and keeping your immune system strong.
Find answers to common questions such as:
Reviewed and updated by Dr. Courtney Arment, along with more than 20 physicians and researchers at Mayo Clinic, this all-inclusive guide helps you minimise inflammation, relieve pain, and protect your joints for all your future adventures.
]]>In his latest book, award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organise to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters, Huneke reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity which transcended race, class, and gender offers a compelling alternative to today's fractured identity politics, I Will Not Abandon You is a vital, new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today.
]]>West Africa is at a crossroads. Boasting tremendous natural wealth, its inhabitants are among the world's poorest. Despite apparent multi-party democracy, there have been coups, conflict and corruption since independence. Where can it go from here?
Journeying along the coast and across the Sahel, from Ghana to Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone to
Senegal, British-Nigerian writer Adewle Mj-Pearce uncovers a restless region on the verge of great change. Visiting fourteen countries and seeking out the Nigerian diaspora communities in each he reflects on the dramatic transformations that have shaken these societies since the late 1980s, when he first travelled their roads. From refusing IMF loans to rejecting Western-imposed currencies, West Africa's diverse, expanding and overwhelmingly young population is conducting a quiet revolution, discarding its European-dominated past and seizing control of its own future. In Nigeria, anti-police brutality demonstrations have challenged an aging elite sustained by colonial enablers who never truly left. And in Cte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, popular resentment has forced the withdrawal of long-present French troops.
Speaking with local journalists and dissident academics, street hawkers and immigration officers, Mj-Pearce brings to life the compelling story of a region at breaking point as told by West Africans themselves.
]]>How did a Caribbean child, born into plantation slavery, come to defeat Napoleon's armies in battle and crown himself king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the story of Henry Christophe: one of the most remarkable, yet least known, figures from the Age of Revolution.
Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before rising to prominence during the Haitian Revolution as one of Toussaint Louverture's top generals, commanding troops against Bonaparte's invasion. Following Haitian independence, Christophe's ambition for rule helped plunge the country into civil war. He crowned himself King Henry I of Haiti, and his attempts to build a modern black state won the support of leading British abolitionists.
Christophe saw himself as an Enlightenment ruler, and his kingdom produced great literary works, epic fortresses and opulent palaces. But while he was a proud anti-imperialist and fought off French plots against him, the Haitian people chafed under his rule. After ten years on the throne, he committed suicide rather than face being overthrown. Christophe's mountaintop Citadelle still stands, as Haiti's sole World Heritage site-a monument to a revolutionary black monarchy, in a world of empire and slavery.
'Black Crown grasps the essential tragedy of history, in all its ambiguity and contingency.' The Telegraph
'With narrative verve and a deep understanding of the country's extraordinary past, Clammer opens a window on to the life and times of one of the most tragic figures of the francophone Antilles, le roi Christophe.' The Spectator
'Paul Clammer brings this extraordinary story to life in his deeply researched biography of Christophe, the first to appear in decades...a detailed and rewarding read.' History Today
'An excellent record of many different aspects of Haiti's little-known history.' Liberation
'An important contribution to Haiti's little-known history.' Morning Star
'A great historical narrative that introduces the reader to an array of fascinating characters in an age of revolution.' Counterfire
'A rich story...important and well-written.' The Zambia Daily Mail
'Impressive scope...Clammer's biography will become compulsory reading for all those interested in the transition from colonial Saint-Domingue to independent Haiti. Compellingly written and including a revealing choice of illustrations.' Revue d'Histoire Hatienne
'Meticulously researched and compellingly written, Black Crown is the biography of Henry Christophe we have been waiting for. Through Christophe's story, Clammer describes the country's transition from plantation colony to independent nation-state. Essential reading, not only for those interested in the history of Haiti but also for anyone seeking to understand the emergence of the modern Atlantic world.' Charles Forsdick, co-author of Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions
'The majesty of Haiti's foundations is reflected in the almost unreal story of King Henry Christophe. Bold, nationalistic, and unrelenting, Christophe long occupied outside imaginations that for a century subjected him to myth and ridicule. Black Crown is a major corrective to this: a carefully researched, beautifully written and deeply absorbing biography. It shines on every page with subtle insights on a story too little understood. Paul Clammer's triumph is to recover the man, his country, and his age, and present Haiti's proud black king in all his conflicting glory.' Matthew J. Smith, Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College of London
'This adds greatly to our growing understanding of the Haitian Revolution, its turbulent aftermath and the cutthroat politics of revolutionary Haiti. Clammer seems to have left no stone unturned in his research and brings a great deal to the table for both Haiti scholars and the general reader wishing to understand the reign of King Henry Christophe. Black Crown also represents another point of evidence for an interesting question do you have to be a professional academic to write a great history book? Clearly not.' Johnhenry Gonzalez, University of Cambridge, author of Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti
]]>In February 1942, on the remote island of Ambon in Indonesia, 1131 Australian soldiers were preparing for invasion by Japanese forces. Outnumbered and ill-equipped, theirs was an impossible mission. After their defeat, over 200 Australians were massacred. The survivors faced three-and-a-half years of harsh work, beatings, disease and starvation on Ambon and the Chinese island of Hainan. Along with the brutal conditions came a crisis of leadership, with Australian officers accused of devising their own systems of punishment and handing men over to the Japanese. The prisoners on Ambon were tormented by two catastrophic raids by 'friendly' Allied air forces. Over 800 survived to endure years of captivity; only 302 returned home.
Acclaimed historian Joan Beaumont tells the full story of this tragedy and its aftermath. A powerful account of suffering, death, endurance and memory, the story of Gull Force is one that must not be forgotten.
'A compelling account of the tragedy and complexity of captivity by Australia's pre-eminent historian of war.' Christina Twomey
'Revealing afresh an episode in Australia's POW history that deserves to be better known and understood.' Peter Stanley
]]>While Charles Bean is the subject of several major biographies, this is the first life story of his acolyte, war correspondent and editor and principal author of the official history of the Second World War, Gavin Long.
In Great at Heart, Garry Hills traces Long's career as a newspaper correspondent during the 1920s and as a defence correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald until the outbreak of war in 1939. The book covers Long's experiences as a war correspondent attached to the British Expeditionary Force in Europe until the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940 and then with the 2nd AIF in North Africa, the Middle East and Greece.
In 1941, when Charles Bean began advocating for an official history of the war then in progress, he was influential in having his protege Long appointed General Editor a role Long discharged with considerable dedication, courage and self-sacrifice between 1943 and 1963, overseeing the development of all 22 volumes and writing three of them himself.
'Gavin Long was one of Australia's most eminent historians, creating, with others, the 22-volume history of Australia in the Second World War. His extraordinary achievement was largely forgotten until Garry Hills rescued Long's reputation. In this highly readable, moving and generous account of Long's life, Hills has fashioned a tale that all those interested in the story of Australia will want to read.' Dr Michael McKernan, Historian
'Garry Hills has done the right thing by Gavin Long. He succeeds in getting inside Long's ways of thinking and working, showing that he was indeed "great at heart".' Professor Peter Stanley, author of Beyond The Broken Years
'It is a rare privilege to recommend a book that is both timely and important. Great at Heart is both. Gavin Long's legacy has waited too many years for a biography worthy of its significance, but the wait is over. I recommend this fine work to all readers from professional scholars to all who seek to understand Australia's past. And it's a ripping read to boot!' Professor Craig Stockings, Official Historian of Australian Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Australian Peacekeeping Operations in East Timor, UNSW Canberra
'This is an important landmark work on Gavin Merrick Long, a self-effacing national observer who Hills rightly calls "a national treasure".' Ken Haley, InReview Queensland
'[Hill's] elegant prose is neither stuffy nor pompous but delightfully refreshing to read, thoroughly befitting the study of a man of words whose reputation is ripe for revival.' Paul Skrebels, Sabretache Journal
]]>On 9 August 1918, at Chipilly Spur overlooking the Somme River, an entire British Army Corps is held up by German machine gunners.
The battle has raged for 30 hours and more than 2000 men have fallen. Then, two Australian sergeants, Jack Hayes and Harold Andrews, go absent without leave and cross the Somme ahead of British lines. Seeing that the British advance is stopped, they re-cross the river, gather four mates and return to drive the Germans off the spur.
The extraordinary feats of the Chipilly Six and the personal stories of these diggers have been overlooked. Historian Lucas Jordan weaves a compelling tale of the lives of the soldiers, chronicling their return home and years after service, through a pandemic, the Great Depression, another world war and the very first Anzac Day dawn service.
'The Chipilly Six were extraordinary men in extraordinary times. Lucas Jordan reveals a wider story of Australia's Great War veterans as they battled a nation forgetting, a bitter Depression, another World War and beyond. This is a remarkable insight into a vanishing world' - Bill Gammage, Emeritus Professor, Humanities Research Centre, ANU
'An absolute cracker of a story. No one - and I literally mean no one! - is more equipped to write a compelling book about the remarkable story of the Chipilly Six.' - Ross McMullin, author of Life So Full of Promise
'A superb piece of investigative historical storytelling. Lucas Jordan is part of a new generation of military historians. He is a bright star.' - Peter Stanley, author of Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force
'Throws new light on the impact of war on families and communities, wives and brothers-in-arms.' - Marilyn Lake, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne
'A remarkable piece of recovered history that offers great insight into the impact of war on Australian society. Highly recommended.' - Jeff Popple, Canberra Weekly
'It's impossible to read this ripping, vivid recreation of events without shaking your head in disbelief.' - Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
'Lucas Jordan is to be congratulated on producing a compelling book describing a pivotal era of Australian history, as well as making the exploits of the Chipilly Six better known.' - David Phillipson, Military History & Heritage Victoria
'With the current Royal Commission into Veteran suicide, this is a timely and important look at just what returning soldiers face when they are expected to slide back into normal society when the war is over. For many, the war continues long after the final shots are fired.' - Warwick O'Neill, Military History & Heritage Victoria
'A fantastic contribution to our understanding of the military in Australia.' - Geoff Keating, University of Southern Queensland
]]>On a moonless night in August 1943, a US torpedo boat commanded by Lt John F Kennedy, on patrol in Solomon Islands, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Left clinging to wreckage within sight of Japanese encampments, the eleven surviving members of Kennedy's crew eventually struggled ashore on a small uninhabited island. Missing, presumed dead, behind enemy lines, with no food or water, and with several injured, the future looked bleak for the shipwrecked Americans. Fortunately, Australian 'coast watcher' Lt Reg Evans witnessed the immediate aftermath of the collision from his nearby jungle hideaway. Working under the searching eye of the Japanese military, over the next five days Evans and two Solomon Islander scouts - Eroni Kumana and Biuku Gasa - located Kennedy and his crew and ensured their rescue.
This story of wartime bravery and survival helped create JFK's legend and paved his way to the White House. It also shone a spotlight on Australia and America's shared wartime experience. In Saving Lieutenant Kennedy, Brett Mason, author of Wizards of Oz, sets the heroic rescue and its colourful aftermath against the background of the Pacific war and the birth of the AustraliaUS alliance, which remains as vital today as when Kennedy and Evans first shook hands.
'A fascinating slice of military history.' - Jeff Popple, Canberra Weekly
'Saving Lieutenant Kennedy is a book that is equally interesting and entertaining. It can be highly recommended.' - Sabretache
]]>In Beyond The Broken Years fifty years after The Broken Years, Bill Gammage's classic on World War One soldiers, was published provocative military historian Peter Stanley argues why it's vital for Australians to understand how our military past has been created. By whom, how and with what consequences.
Stanley explores military history and the storytellers from historians Charles Bean, Henry Reynolds, Joan Beaumont and David Horner to ''storians' Peter FitzSimons and Les Carlyon. And grapples with what it means to write military history, its different approaches, the rise of popular writers and much more. He asks readers to consider a genre that plays a central role in the Australian identity, but many take for granted.
'An unflinching and insightful tour through the evolving landscape of Australian war history, led by one of the country's most trusted guides. This impressive blend of scholarship and reflection is crucial reading for anyone wanting to understand the place of war in Australian history.' Kate Ariotti, University of Queensland
'All historians of Australian military history will be indebted to Peter Stanley for this virtuoso commentary on the books of the field, written with his characteristic flair, insight and delight in controversy.' Emeritus Professor Joan Beaumont, Australian National University
'Peter Stanley's evocation of Australia's military history is not to be missed. Half a century after Bill Gammage's superb book The Broken Years was published, Stanley has cleverly drawn on the cream of Australian military historians to underline the key elements of Australia's military past. However, it is Stanley's own analysis of the importance of Australia's military past that has given new meaning to the importance of Australians at war. Remarkably, Stanley has researched 1300 books written by Australian authors since 1974. The result is a gripping overview of our military history that should not be missed.' The late Tim Bowden AM, author, radio and television broadcaster, producer and oral historian
'Peter Stanley is surely the military historian's historian. This book is an extraordinary achievement, both knowledgeable and eminently readable. It should take pride of place in any military history library.' Mike Carlton, author, broadcaster and journalist
'In engaging prose, and with a light touch, Stanley analyses the military history boom of the last fifty years, pondering the rise and rise of Anzac commemoration, and making a strong claim for better representation of frontier wars at the Australian War Memorial. Beyond The Broken Years will be devoured by those who enjoy military history and will endure as the authoritative account of how Australians have understood our experience of war.' Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University
'For more than a century Australia's military experience has been central to the nation's identity, and the bedrock of understanding that experience has been the published histories, academic studies and personal stories. Peter Stanley's book is a brilliant, erudite, and insightful examination of the books that have enlightened, strengthened and at times challenged our understanding of Australia's military history in the past fifty years. Beyond The Broken Years is a reminder that there are multiple strands to Australia's military history. This is not just because Australia continues to go to new wars, but also because our understanding of the impact of war continues to grow.' David Horner, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University
'As an exceptional historian and a generous patron and mentor, Peter Stanley is ideally placed to analyse the last 50 years of Australian military historiography. This brilliant and original book will entertain and inform readers at all levels of expertise. Beyond The Broken Years will inspire all readers to read (or write) more Australian military history.' Mark Johnston, Head of History and Classics, Scotch College Melbourne
'Aficionados of Australia's rich military history will enjoy reading this latest work by prolific military author and historian, Peter Stanley. Beyond The Broken Years will stimulate reading, and further analysis and research on Australia's military history, which is important, as Australia's military history reveals much about us. I commend this book to you.' Paul Irving, MAJGEN (Ret'd) AM PSM RFD, Manager, Royal United Services Institute NSW Ursula Davidson Library
'Another Stanley original. Inspiring, thoughtful, provocative and personal, this book will have you reaching for your pencil to jot down titles for your next library visit. Essential reading for all Australian military history enthusiasts.' Professor Emerita Melanie Oppenheimer, Australian National University and Flinders University
'A spirited romp through the annals of Australian military history. Searching, sceptical, self-reflexive and engaging, Peter Stanley vigorously ponders the past and future of the discipline.' Professor Bruce Scates, Australian National University
'You're in good hands...this is a wonderful contribution to military history, and national public life.' Caroline Overington, The Australian
'A highly readable personal and professional history, in which Stanley engages with the contexts, cross-currents, and controversies of Australian military history.' Australian Book Review
'If the Olympics had an event for reading and analysis, Peter Stanley would win gold.' The Canberra Times
'...to the legion of researchers interested in the discipline of Australian military history, this book will be indispensable. It is provocative, readable and erudite. And it's a reminder that in our understanding of war, we have come a long way in the 50 years since The Broken Years appeared, when the complexities of gender, race and frontier conflict were unrecognised or unacknowledged by Australian military historians.' Phillip Deery, Sydney Morning Herald / The Age
'Stanley's book shines a new light on Australian military history writing and its impact on our perceptions as a society. Structured along chronological and thematic lines, it is a fascinating overview written in a very engaging manner. Stanley does not steer away from controversy, and his views entertain, as well as inspiring readers to seek out exemplary examples of military history. Very impressive.' The Canberra Weekly
'[Beyond the Broken Years] is amazingly comprehensive...Think of a subject and Stanley has covered it. Ethnicity and Anzacs, the cost of war and its aftermaths, battlefields, memories and memorials, the European air war, New Guinea, official histories, Korea, peacekeeping, First Nations veterans, POWs, the Navy, and that all-important consideration of every serving soldier the state of your boots.' Noel Turnbull
'A monumental work...This is a must read for everyone interested in military history. It is an easy, at times humorous read that possesses the true stamp of authenticity.' Neville Taylor
'This extraordinary book demands intense focus, even though unsettled questions about accepted historical accounts of Australia's war involvement could well emerge.' PS News
]]>After parachuting out of his doomed aircraft, one reporter is taken prisoner. From there his captors take him on a remarkable tour of bombed-out German cities.
In Dispatch from Berlin, 1943, Anthony Cooper and Thorsten Perl uncover this incredible true story of life on both sides of the war.
'An extraordinary tale of five brave reporters and their eyewitness accounts of the horrors of aerial warfare during and after a raid on Berlin. A compelling tribute to the 57 205 young men killed while serving with bomber command during the Second World War.' - Ian McPhedran
'This book captures the life and death drama that saw five war correspondents, two of them Australian, assigned to RAF Bomber Command to report on the most dangerous campaign of the Second World War - bombing Berlin. Neither they nor the crew knew if they would survive the night. A compelling story of a single raid that has remained untold for too long.' - Peter Rees
'A deep, intimate and remarkable story - indeed, a rare personal window into the huge and devastating machinery of the air war over Europe during World War Two. The trials and tribulations of five intrepid journalists is an exciting tale in its own right, but it simultaneously gives a unique keyhole with which to view the tenure and drama of the era. Well-written and equally well-researched, this book is a gem for those with even a passing interest in military history of the Second World War, and scholars of the field alike.' - Craig Stockings
'Dispatch from Berlin, 1943 takes you on a heart-stopping bombing raid over enemy territory as brave allied air crew battle flak, fighters and fate. Told through the eyes of five brave journalists who went with them, this is a remarkable book about the horror and humanity of war.' - Mark Willacy
'An outstanding piece of military history.' - Jeff Popple, Canberra Weekly
'An exceptional story, a military history that opens a private window pane into the massive and distressing mechanism of aerial warfare over Europe during World War II.' - Rama Gaind, PS News
'With skilful writing and attention to detail (much of it the result of years of Thorsten Perl's research), Cooper integrates the vivid accounts left by these journalists with data about Bomber Command and the technicalities of air navigation. He provides an unforgettable account of the raid on Berlin on 2 December 1943.' - Australian Book Review
]]>Thorsten Perl is an investigator of historical and scientific topics. He has been involved with official agencies in the search for and clarification of missing crew members of the Second World War for twenty-seven years. Thorsten works in research and development of regenerative agriculture and lives with his family in Eberswalde near Berlin in Germany.
]]>During the summer and autumn of 1940, the Luftwaffe launched their campaign to gain superiority over the RAF, especially Fighter Command. The result was the first major battle of World War II (or any war) fought entirely in the air. The Luftwaffe's defeat by 'The Few' marked a turning point in the Allies' favour.
The Battle of Britain is one of the most significant battles of the war, and until now, the role of the Australian 'Few' has received little attention. Kristen Alexander gives a personal account of eight Australian participants, drawing heavily on primary source material and original research. She follows these young men from childhood, through their education, training, personal relationships and flying careers, to death in combat (in the case of seven of the eight men), and beyond that to commemoration.
'Kristen Alexander's respect and admiration for the eight Australian pilots is evident in every page of this excellent book. It is a testament to both her writing and research skills and their lives and devotion to duty.' Australian Defence Force Journal
]]>