We all know what a .300 hitter looks like. The same with a 20-game winner. Those numbers are ingrained in our brains. But do they mean as much as we think? Do we feel the same way when we hear a batter has a .390 wOBA? How about a pitcher with a 1.2 WHIP? These statistics are the future of modern baseball, and no fan should be in the dark about how these metrics apply to the game.In the last twenty years, an avalanche of analytics has taken over the way the game is played, managed, and assessed, but the statistics that drive the sport (metrics like wRC+, FIP, and WAR, just to name a few) read like alphabet soup to a large number of fans who still think batting average, RBIs, and wins are the best barometers for baseball players.In A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics, MLB.com reporter and columnist Anthony Castrovince has taken on the role as explainer to help such fans understand why the old stats don’t always add up. Readers will also learn where these modern stats came from, what they convey, and how to use them to evaluate players of the present, past, and future. For instance, what if we told you that when Joe DiMaggio had his famous 56-game hitting streak in 1941, helping him win the AL MVP, that there was, perhaps, someone more deserving? In fact, the great Ted Williams actually had a higher fWAR, bWAR, wRC+, OPS, OPS+, ISO, RC . . . well, you get the picture. So, streak or no streak, Williams should have been league MVP.An introductory course on sabermetrics, A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics is an easily digestible resource that readers can keep turning back to when they see a modern metric referenced in today’s baseball coverage.

    He watched in bewilderment as a small pro-Tibet protest was overrun by thousands of angry Chinese students. Where did they come from? Why were they so aggressive? And what gave them the right to shut down others exercising their democratic right to protest? The authorities did nothing about it, and what he saw stayed with him.In 2016 it was revealed that wealthy Chinese businessmen linked to the Chinese Communist Party had become the largest donors to both major political parties. Hamilton realised something big was happening, and decided to investigate the Chinese government’s influence in Australia. What he found shocked him. From politics to culture, real estate to agriculture, universities to unions, and even in our primary schools, he uncovered compelling evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of Australia. Sophisticated influence operations target Australia’s elites, and parts of the large Chinese-Australian diaspora have been mobilised to buy access to politicians, limit academic freedom, intimidate critics, collect information for Chinese intelligence agencies, and protest in the streets against Australian government policy. It’s no exaggeration to say the Chinese Communist Party and Australian democracy are on a collision course. The CCP is determined to win, while Australia looks the other way.Thoroughly researched and powerfully argued, Silent Invasion is a sobering examination of the mounting threats to democratic freedoms Australians have for too long taken for granted. Yes, China is important to our economic prosperity; but, Hamilton asks, how much is our sovereignty as a nation worth?‘Anyone keen to understand how China draws other countries into its sphere of influence should start with Silent Invasion. This is an important book for the future of Australia. But tug on the threads of China’s influence networks in Australia and its global network of influence operations starts to unravel.’ –Professor John Fitzgerald, author of Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia

    In his first book of essays since his 1997 bestseller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Tackling subjects ranging from "How to Teach Your Four-Year-Old to Ski" to "A Short History of the Bug Zapper," and "The Art of Sacking" to literary friendships with Joseph Heller and Christopher Hitchens, he is at once a humorous storyteller, astute cultural critic, adventurous traveler, and irreverent historian.

    In The House on the Hill, Susan Duncan reaches an age where there's no point in sweating long-term ramifications. There aren't any. This new understanding delivers an unexpected bonus - the emotional freedom and moral clarity to admit to hidden and often fiendish facts of ageing and, ultimately, the find ways to embrace them. This, in turn, unleashes an overwhelming desire to confront her intractable 95-year-old mother with the dreadful secrets of the past before it is too late, no matter the consequences. It is the not-knowing, she says, that does untold damage. Interwoven with stories from the land - building a sustainable eco-house on the mid-coast of New South Wales with her engineer husband, Bob, and grappling with white-eyed roans, dogs, bawling cattle markets, droughts and flooding rains, not to mention blunt-speaking locals - this is a book about a mother and daughter coming to terms, however uneasy, with the awful forces that shaped their relationship.As the inconstancies of age slow her down, Susan Duncan writes with honesty about discovery and forgiveness, and what it takes to rework shrinking boundaries into a new and rich life.

    Inspirational and poetic, this book will not only spark readers’ creative energies, but also reawaken your passion for life.In 2005, as a husband, father, and corporate employee — Lorenzo's life revolved around home, work, and his daily commute from the suburbs to the city.Then, one day, he found himself staying at the Little Church in midtown Manhattan in the wake of a marital separation. Living in virtual isolation for three months, he had a rare chance to re-examine his life.Quite unexpectedly, he found himself wandering around the city to take photographs, a passion he had let slide in the years of pursuing a career and starting a family. During his nightly sojourns through the streets of New York City, he was reminded of some important life lessons—lessons too easily forgotten in the blur of everyday existence. 25 Lessons has been the #1 best selling photo essay on amazon.com for 2010 and 2011. Printed paperback and hard cover versions with photos are also available here on amazon.PRAISE FOR LORENZO AND 25 LESSONS“In many of my conversations on great photographers, I frequently mention Lorenzo’s work. His sequential photographs…are nothing less that a visual urban poem. It has been my pleasure to watch Lorenzo’s rapid growth as a leading photographer of our time.”Jim Van Meter, Rochester, NY, USA“Lorenzo is a master. His body of work is some of the very best online and may very well be some of the best being done in the medium today. His street work follows in the tradition of Paul Strand, Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand and Larry Friedlander. Lorenzo’s 25 Lessons are…as seminal as Ansel’s dissertation on the zone system. I found them to be reenergizing, perceptive and extremely useful. I have been touched by his story, his writings and by his work. I can’t imagine anyone not being so.”Barry Shapiro, Los Angeles, CA, USA“Lorenzo…has a passion for life, photography and writing. He is a linguistic genius, a storyteller through words and pictures. He captures with his camera the world as he sees it, its feelings, love, beauty and all it has to offer...” Brenda George, Adelaide, AustraliaABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, AUTHOR & JOURNALISTLorenzo is a best-selling author, a writer and an award-winning street photographer.He has written numerous books, interviews and articles about fine art and photography for En Foco, Nueva Luz, Rain Tiger and the Examiner. Throughout most of 2010, his book, 25 Lessons I’ve Learned about photography Life! has been the #1 Best Selling Photo Essay and Artist & Photography Biography on Amazon.com. Paul Giguere, guru for the popular podcast thoughts on photography, considers 25 Lessons one of the "classic" essays on photography. In October of 2010, he served as the NYC photography adviser for the recently launched Microsoft foursquare photography app. In 2008, he was chosen to be the HP Be Brilliant Featured Artist.Since taking up digital photography in 2005, his photography has been featured in fotoMAGAZIN, Germany's premier photo magazine, and his photos have been cited, posted and published by over 350 other blogs, websites, and print publications. He has been called an "Internet photography sensation" by Time Out New York and is considered a "Flickr star" by Rob Walker, Consumed columnist, for New York Times Magazine.His work is represented worldwide by Getty Images.

    The book starts with Adam living openly with his voluptuous half-caste lover on his desert station in the outback, and gradually the fates of succeeding generations intertwine in this Australian family saga.

    and we will find them less confusing, and love them more deeply...Mothers of sons are worried about raising their boys in a world where negative images of masculinity are front and centre of our media, almost every day. Not only that, but statistically our boys are still struggling in many ways.Even though we live in a time where we recognise that nothing in gender is fixed, it remains a fact that the influence of a mother on her son is massive.A mother of four sons herself, Maggie Dent draws on her personal experience - and over four decades work as a teacher, counsellor and now author and speaker - to help build understanding, empathy and compassion for our boys. Maggie shares her five key secrets that every mum needs to know, and uses the voices of men she has worked with and surveyed to reveal what really matters in a boy's relationship with his mother and other mother figures.Maggie is one of Australia's most popular parenting educators and her seminars about boys have sold out all across Australia and in the UK. She is finally sharing her insights, her reflections, and (as always) her humour around mothering boys in this book that will help you be the mum your son needs you to be.

    A woman, on the eve of her sixtieth birthday, looks back on her story of sensual bodily experiences, with one hundred vignettes from a life adding up to one simple human truth.

    Now Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, resurrects these women, lets them live in the reader's imagination, so we can explore their difficult choices. Nearly every story in this dazzling collection is based on a woman who attained some celebrity—she raced speed boats or was a conjoined twin in show business; a reclusive painter of renown; a member of the first all-female, integrated swing band. We see Lord Byron's illegitimate daughter, Allegra; Oscar Wilde's troubled niece, Dolly; West With the Night author Beryl Markham; Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister, Norma. These extraordinary stories travel the world, explore the past (and delve into the future), and portray fiercely independent women defined by their acts of bravery, creative impulses, and sometimes reckless decisions.The world hasn't always been kind to unusual women, but through Megan Mayhew Bergman's alluring depictions they finally receive the attention they deserve. Almost Famous Women is a gorgeous collection from an "accomplished writer of short fiction" (Booklist).

    I bump along, in fits and starts, on a perpetual path to finding better ways for me and my mate, Anxiety, to get around. It's everything I do.Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.

    In a time of uncertainty, the country chose in 2019 to turn to a man with no obvious beliefs, no clear purpose and no famous talents. That we wanted Scott Morrison was the secret we did not know about ourselves. What precisely that secret is forms the subject of this book.In The Game, Sean Kelly gives us a portrait of a man, the shallow political culture that allowed him to succeed and the country that crowned him.Morrison understands – in a way that no other recent politician has – how politics has become a game. He also understands something essential about Australia – something many of us are unwilling to admit, even to ourselves.But there are things Scott Morrison does not understand. This is the story of those failures, too – and the way that, as his prime ministership continues, Morrison’s failure to think about politics as anything other than a game has become a dangerous liability, both to him and to us. ‘An engrossing, illuminating and often disquieting study of Scott Morrison. Sean Kelly’s forensic analysis of the man he describes as the “symbolic perfection of a certain version of Australia ” compels us all to consider our complicity in his creation.’—Niki Savva‘It’s been almost impossible to get a handle on Scott Morrison. Until now. Sean Kelly has done it, comprehensively.’ —Barrie Cassidy‘Sean Kelly exposes Morrison with wit and righteous precision. After reading this insightful, funny and absolutely maddening dissection of the man, I can now clearly see him for what he is.’ —Tom Ballard

    One by the smallest bruise. The other by a devastating bushfire. And both by a shocking secret . . .Miami art curator Courtney Hamilton and her husband David live the perfect life until their ten-year-old son Matthew is diagnosed with leukaemia. He needs a bone-marrow transplant but, with Courtney being adopted, the chances of finding a match within his family are slim. Desperate to find a donor, Courtney tracks the scattered details of her birth 15,000 kilometres away, to the remote town of Somerset in the Victorian bush. Meanwhile Jade Taylor wakes up in hospital in Somerset having survived the deadly bushfire that destroyed the family home and their beloved olive groves. Gone too are the landmarks that remind her of her mother, Asha, a woman whose repeated absences scarred her childhood.As Jade rallies her fractured family to rebuild their lives, Courtney arrives in the burnt countryside to search for her lost parents - but discovers far more . . .

    

    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

    He's still alienated from his closest friend, Karrin Murphy, and on exceedingly poor terms with Chicago's number one gangster, John Marcone. And that's just the small stuff — the creatures of the Nevernever don't take vacations and aren't particularly worried about Harry's friendships or love life