Taken by Collingwood at pick 58 in the 2001 ‘super draft’, no one saw a future Brownlow medallist but the scruffy kid knew how to get the ball. Right from the start he made two things clear: he didn’t like training and his mates and social life came first. Swan made front page news in 2003, and faced the sack after playing only three senior games. The infamous Collingwood Rat Pack took him under their wing, he thrived under Mick Malthouse’s coaching, and grew into a talented and nerveless big-occasion player with an incredible mix of power and speed. Off the field, his tattoos, deadpan delivery, transgressions and blunt refusal to become an AFL robot meant he was often used as clickbait.Despite mastering the art of appearing not to care about anything, in Dane Swan: My Story, Swan – for the first time – reveals the pride that drove him to succeed, his loyalty to family, mates and the club that gave him many last chances, and how he worked hard, his way. He takes us inside the highs of the premiership, and through the tumultuous years of the transition from Malthouse to Nathan Buckley. Footy might be only a game, but it’s one hell of a ride with Dane Swan.There’s no one like him at all in this day and age.Nick MaxwellOne of the greatest players in the history of this club. He marched to the beat of his own drum, always, off the ground more so than on it, but I always liked the fact that he was an individual. And whatever he was doing, it worked.Eddie McGuireThe bigger the game, the more turned on he was, and that became evident at the peak of his career because he played his best footy on the biggest stages.Nathan BuckleyWhat made Swanny so good? It was talent, hard work and mental toughness to be that consistent.Ben JohnsonIt was quite extraordinary the way that he just got on with it. He loved winning, he loved the challenge and underneath it, he is a very proud person.Mick MalthouseAbout the author: Dane Swan played 258 games for Collingwood Football Club. He achieved the ultimate team success as a premiership player, and his haul of individual awards is impressive: a Brownlow Medal, three Copeland Trophies, five All Australians, an AFLCA Most Valuable Player award, a Jim Stynes Medal, a couple of Anzac Medals, as well as a swag of top-three finishes in many awards. His unbelievably consistent output meant he averaged 26.85 disposals across 15 seasons, second only to Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams. Swan’s career came to an untimely end in round 1 of 2016. He is acknowledged as one of the best modern midfielders and a one-of-a-kind champion of the competition.

    When it did, the lives of everyone involved in its construction were utterly changed: some for the better, many for the worse.Helen Pitt tells the stories of the people behind the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. From the famous conductor and state premier who conceived the project; to the two architects whose lives were so tragically intertwined; to the workers and engineers; to the people of Sydney, who were alternately beguiled and horrified as the drama unfolded over two decades.With access to diaries, letters, and classified records, as well as her own interviews with people involved in the project, Helen Pitt reveals the intimate back story of the building that turned Sydney into an international city. It is a tale worthy of Shakespeare himself.'A drama-filled page turner' - Ita Buttrose AO OBE'Helen Pitt tells us so much about the building of the Sydney Opera House we've never heard before' - Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW'Australia in the seventies: mullets, platform shoes and, miraculously, the Opera House. At least we got one of them right. A great read.' - Amanda Keller, WSFM breakfast presenter

    He worked for the Australian Financial Review in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth before being posted as a correspondent to Jakarta and Shanghai. Andrew is currently a senior business journalist for the Australian in Perth, where he has covered the WA mining boom since 2006. He won the business prize at the West Australian media awards in 2006 and 2009.

    Filled with relentlessly driven diary entries, vivid details of life at the fringe, and memories of binge-drinking into oblivion as an escapeduring his playing days at the Sydney Swans, 28 is a portrayal of the sporting psyche in a way that has never been done before.But the true beauty of this book lies in the space outside football. Laid bare on these pages is a searingly honest deep dive into sport, addiction, art, sexuality, masculinity, love, family and identity.'Searingly honest, unflinching' Peter FitzSimons'Brandon Jack has talent and daring in abundance' Christos Tsiolkas

    

    One of them, Ayik, was once a ten-year-old boy soldier training in the junior forces of the SPLA and like many of the young boys hating it. He regularly ran away, sometimes to refugee camps, but was found, dragged back and brutally punished by then fourteen-year-old Anyang, the man now sitting opposite him.After a tumultuous life in Africa, Ayik brings that trauma with him to Australia and at various times gets in trouble with the law over violence, alcohol and drugs. He is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and is wrongly medicated for years. One day at a Brisbane church he looks across and sees his childhood torturer and is filled with hate. They do not interact then, but on their next encounter, a few years later, Ayik speaks with Anyang and says if they were still in Africa he would kill him.Thankfully a number of forces (including the law and parenthood and a better psychiatrist) eventually set Ayik on the straight and narrow. He is studying, working as an actor and volunteering at his local PCYC.An incredibly honest book showing that recovering from torture and war is a process of lifelong learning, choices and challenges.

    Australia is on its second. For the best part of the nineteenth century, Australia was the world's richest country, a pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants. Yet our last big boom was followed by a fifty-year bust as we lost our luck, our riches and our nerve, and shut our doors on the world. Now we're back on top, in the position where history tells us we made our biggest mistakes. Can we learn from our past and cement our place as one of the world's great nations? Showing that our future is in our foundation, Australia's Second Chance goes back to 1788, the first contact between locals and migrants, to bring us a unique and fascinating view of the key events of our past right through to the present day. With newly available economic data and fresh interviews with former leaders (including the last major interview with Malcolm Fraser), George Megalogenis crunches the numbers and weaves our history into a compelling thesis, brilliantly chronicling our dialogue with the world and bringing fresh insight into the urgent question of who we are, and what we can become. 'Megalogenis has emerged as something of a polymath. He slaps history and politics and culture like mortar in and around his knowledge of economics and numbers to build compelling, even thrilling, theses about the country of his birth and where it stands in the world.' Tony Wright, Saturday Age

    And they all unfold against the gripping, uncertain domestic backdrop of Labor Party infighting, plummeting polls and a leadership change from Gillard back to Rudd.

    Neale McShane The Birdsville police posting is one of the most remote in Australia. It can be extremely lonely and incredibly busy at the same time. Nothing might happen for weeks or months, then problems come crawling out of the woodwork.There aren't many who can handle the job for long - unless you're Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of this beat the size of the UK for the past ten years. Recently retired from this 'hardship posting', Neale now has a stock of stories and adventures from his life and colourful times living with his family in Birdsville.In recounting these tales to his good friend and bestselling author Evan McHugh, Neale delights us with yarns that could only come from the furthest corner of our country. Here are stories of desert dangers, dead bodies, droughts and floods, drinkers and dreamers - and, of course the infamous Birdsville Races, when the town's population swells from 50 to 500.So if Birdsville has remained just a little too far off the beaten track for you, sit back and let Birdsville come to you.

    It wasn’t even the long list of scandals exposed to a horrified nation — charging fees to dead people, blatant conflicts of interest, and taking $1 billion from customers in fees that banks were never entitled to.What made it so fascinating, so heart-breaking, and so enraging was the procession of faces through the witness box, and the team of counsel gazing into the dark heart of banking.Tearful victims, blank-faced executives, hapless regulators, and a couple of utter charlatans all had their day in court, watched by an audience of millions, and revealing — in their stories — the material to justify re-shaping the multi-trillion dollar financial services industry that forms a pillar of Australian life.A Wunch of Bankers covers not just the big shocks, but the small moments — lost in the flurry of daily reporting — that reveal how companies have used the law, limp enforcement, and basic human behaviour to take advantage of customers.Is there a phrase that judges how much life-insurance spruikers in call centres can terrify you about your impending death — and the grief-stricken ruins of an estate you’ll leave for your bereaved family — while still being legal?Yes, there is.Was there a meeting in which a bank’s executives ignored a warning of “Extreme” from its chief risk officer, to embark on an illegal scheme that accrued $3.6 billion in funds?There was.Mixed among the testimony are snippets from life on the road as the World’s Oldest Debuting TV Reporter — not just driving five hours one-way to talk to a man who almost blew his brains out over a bank nabbing his $22 million estate, but explaining how journalism can only ever give you a glimpse inside complex issues.In A Wunch of Bankers, Danel Ziffer bring out the colour and grit of the royal commission’s proceedings, and explores broader issues raised by the testimony. A mixture of analysis, reportage, and observations, it is densely researched and compellingly written.

    Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to “Free Mumia;” Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jesse Jackson rallied on his behalf, and led the charge.  For his part, while on death row, Abu-Jamal published several books, delivered radio commentaries, was a college commencement speaker, found himself named an Honorary Citizen of France, and had his defense coffers enhanced by ticket sales from a sold out (16,000-person) concert featuring Rage Against the Machine.Here, from Maureen Faulkner and acclaimed talk show host / journalist Michael Smerconish, is the first book to carefully and definitively lay out the case against Abu-Jamal, and those who’ve elevated him to the status of political prisoner. Smerconish, a lawyer, has provided pro bono legal counsel to Faulkner for over a decade and knows both the legal intricacies and personal subtleties of the case like no other person.  He’s personally acquainted himself with the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript.  “My reading starkly revealed that Abu-Jamal murdered Danny Faulkner in cold blood and that the case tried in Philadelphia in 1982 bore no resemblance to the one being home-cooked by the Abu-Jamal defense team.”As Abu-Jamal’s lawyers contemplate their final appeal, Faulkner and Smerconish weave a compelling, never-before-told account of one fateful night and the 25-year-long rewriting of history.

    It is a tale of ambition, of wealthy widows and marriage mistakes; of money and trade, espionage and mercenaries, hardship and illness. Beyond the facts of discovery and exploration, this book reveals the extraordinary idealism and the influence of the Enlightenment on the founding of Australia.Michael Pembroke provides a compelling portrait of Arthur Phillip. He carefully weaves together the little-known facts and projects us into life in Georgian England – a time when newly discovered territories were the road to untold wealth.‘At long last, a finely written biography of the astonishing egalitarian who became Australia’s founding father. There are gripping descriptions of his amazing sea voyages and moving accounts of the humanity he brought to the government of a penal colony that only he thought would ever become a nation. The book shows the moral vision of a man who gave history its best example of the possibility of the Reformation of the human spirit.’-Geoffrey Robertson QC‘A gripping life of a quite extraordinary man: the most important enlightenment life story that we’ve never had properly told before.’-Andrew Marr, BBC broadcaster and television host‘The colour and dash of Arthur Phillip’s extraordinary life, lived in amazing times in every corner of the world, is told just brilliantly in Michael Pembroke’s utterly absorbing book, destined to become a classic of Imperial literature.’-Simon Winchester, bestselling author and journalistMichael Pembroke is a writer, judge and naturalist. He spent much of his childhood travelling to many of the maritime ports of the colonial era. His first school was at Sandhurst in England in the grounds of a military academy and his last on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He completed his education at Cambridge and now lives and writes in Sydney and at the hamlet of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains. In 2009 he wrote Trees of History & Romance, a paean to nature and poetry. He is a direct descendant of Nathanial Lucas and Olivia Gascoigne, who arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788.

    Award-winning author Simon Hughes brings to life the history of the Ashes through 10 of the most iconic matches in the fixture's 135-year history. With an innovative and distinctive approach Hughes selects each match as a narrative spine packed with thrillingly evocative detail, alongside the issues, controversies, heroes and villains of each match. With both fascinating analysis of ten unforgettable Test matches and fast-paced history of cricket's fiercest rivalry, this is the perfect way for cricket lovers, both English and Australian, to prepare for the ten-match feast of Ashes cricket that begins in Nottingham in July 2013 and ends in Sydney in January 2014. It includes complete statistics and records of all the Ashes fixtures and results. The Tatser The free chapter tells the story of the Third Test in Adelaide in 1933, which was part of the infamous ‘bodyline series’. It gives you the build up from 1928 and carries right through to the aftermath of Jardine’s controversial tactics.

    This biography traces his life from a classic Australian childhood in the suburbs of Brisbane to the glory of captaining the World Cup winning Wallabies.

    They wanted to know why McCain appealed so much to so many Americans, and particularly why he appealed to the "Young Voters" of America who generally show nothing but apathy. The "Director's Cut" (three times longer than the RS article) is an incisive, funny, thoughtful piece about life on "Bullshit One" -- the nickname for the press bus that followed McCain's Straight Talk Express. This piece becomes ever more relevant, as we discuss what we know, don't know, and don't want to know about the way our political campaigns work.