It needs flannel in lengthy widths, and it's here that Harry and Alan come through like a whole warehouse full of pyjamas) to the 1976 Olympics ('Jenkins has a lot to do' was a new way of saying that our man, of whom we had such high hopes, was not going to pull out the big one). In between we have 'War and Peace' (Tolstoy makes television history), the Royal Wedding (Dimbling suavely, Tom Fleming introduced the scene), the Winter Olympics (unintelligibuhl), the Eurovision Song Contest (The Hook of their song lasted a long time in the mind, like a kick in the knee. You could practically hear the Koreans singing it. 'Waterloo . . .' ), and much more.

    An unacceptable liaison, a secret birth, a mother's silence, and her black child's journey to discover the truth... It is 1948, Sydney, Australia. Pretty, blonde Grace discovers she is pregnant to a black merchant marine who has sailed back to America. The White Australia Policy is in place and society's judgment matters; so what will Grace do with this baby? This is the true story of the inconvenient child. Rescued from neglectful foster care by an American champion boxer, the baby is taken to live in a party house in Sydney's red light district of Kings Cross. Her absent, elegant mother then abandons Sharyn in a convent-orphanage, at age five. By fifteen, discrimination within her family, resentment and clashes over her father's undisclosed identity see the troubled teenager running away to the streets of Kings Cross where she's arrested and sentenced to notorious juvenile detention centers. Sharyn's solace is her love of music but can she realize her dream to become a singer if, by twenty-four, she is trapped in the Kings Cross lifestyle? Determined to find her father, Sharyn sets out in search of her roots, a quest taking her across the world and eventually to America's Deep South. But will she find the loving family and belonging she has yearned for all her life?

    This is economics writing at its best.From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now, inequality is returning to the heights of the 1920s. Leigh shows that while inequality can fuel growth, it also poses dangers to society. Too much inequality risks cleaving us into two Australias, occupying fundamentally separate worlds, with little contact between the haves and the have-nots. And the further apart the rungs on the ladder of opportunity, the harder it is for a kid born into poverty to enter the middle class.Battlers and Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes Australia distinctive, and what it means to have – and keep – a fair go.‘A thought-provoking book which emphasises how far we have strayed from confidently discussing public policies that seek to give meaning to our egalitarian spirit.’ – Laura Tingle‘Be warned: this book will open your eyes and prick your conscience.’ – Ross Gittins

    Why then do we have creeping inequality in the land of the fair go? The answer lies in stagnant wage rises, gender pay inequity, insecure work and the lack of real opportunities for all while corporations are still consuming large profits and executives claim record bonuses. Sally McManus confronts these truths every day. In On Fairness, she explores the true cost of social injustice and argues for advancing Australia fair.

    John was itching to get home to his family's cattle station in the Northern Territory. He promised Terry he'd write.After five long years of corresponding, John and Terry married and moved to their new home - a tent and a newly drilled bore in the middle of nowhere. Their love for each other was only matched by their love for this 'last frontier'in the heart of the Territory. Modern-day pioneers, they built their cattle station, Riveren, from scratch and raised and educated a new generation of Underwoods there, on the headwaters of the Victoria River, 600 kilometers south-west of Katherine. Times were tough and there was heartbreak, danger and struggle, but the power of love and the strength of family ties helped them overcome every obstacle.In the Middle of Nowhere is their story. It's a story of beating the odds, told with warmth and a genuine knowledge of the Outback. It's a real story of the Territory, and is as vast, dramatic and inspiring as the land that lies at the heart of this unforgettable book.

    No word could better capture the essence of Australia...In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia’s past, from megafauna to Macquarie – the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are.Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of “felony of sock”, and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia. It recounts the misfortunes of the escaped Irish convicts who set out to walk from Sydney to China, guided only by a hand-drawn paper compass, and explains the role of the coconut in Australia’s only military coup.Our nation’s beginnings are steeped in the strange, the ridiculous and the frankly bizarre. Girt proudly reclaims these stories for all of us.Not to read it would be un-Australian.

    Julia Gillard had plenty of warnings, but even she lasted longer than Abbott. Abbott ignored all the warnings, from beginning to end — the public ones, the private ones, from his friends, his colleagues, the media. His colleagues were not being disloyal. They did not feel they had betrayed him; they believed he had betrayed them. Their motives were honourable. They didn’t want him to fail; they wanted the government to succeed, and they wanted the Coalition re-elected. Abbott and Credlin had played it harder and rougher than anybody else to get where they wanted to be. But they proved incapable of managing their own office, much less the government. Then, when it was over, when it was crystal-clear to everyone that they had failed, when everyone else could see why they had failed, she played the gender card while he played the victim. In The Road to Ruin, prominent political commentator, author, and columnist for The Australian Niki Savva reveals the ruinous behaviour of former prime minister Tony Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Based on her unrivalled access to their colleagues, and devastating first-person accounts of what went on behind the scenes, Savva paints an unforgettable picture of a unique duo who wielded power ruthlessly but not well.

    In a society obsessed with natural history and the discovery of new species, the birdman’s wife was at its glittering epicentre. Her artistry breathed life into hundreds of exotic finds, from her husband’s celebrated collections to Charles Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches.Fired by Darwin’s discoveries, in 1838 Elizabeth defied convention by joining John on a trailblazing expedition to the untamed wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales to collect and illustrate Australia’s ‘curious’ birdlife.From a naïve and uncertain young girl to a bold adventurer determined to find her own voice and place in the world, The Birdman’s Wife paints an indelible portrait of an extraordinary woman overlooked by history, until now.

    Tattooed from shoulder to shoulder, his body bares letters like teeth: ‘My brothers keeper’. In this surprising and revelatory history of the Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake gets under the skin of a text that’s been read, wrestled with, preached and tattooed, and believed to be everything from a resented imposition to the very Word of God.The Bible in Australia explores how in the hands of Bible-bashers, immigrants, suffragists, evangelists, unionists, writers, artists and Indigenous Australians, the Bible has played a contested but defining role in this country. "Vivid story-telling and impossible to put down. Meredith Lake brings the Bible’s chameleon-like presence in Australia’s past alive. At last, this long-neglected yet profoundly important aspect of Australian history has found its true historian. A remarkable achievement." – Mark McKenna "From the opening words about Bra Boy tattoos, this book had me gripped. It breathes colour, poetry and life into our understanding of the Bible in Australia. A vital, much-needed addition to our understanding of faith in our country." – Julia Baird

    Many believed Hill was innocent, condemned for his association with the Industrial Workers of the World -- the radical Wobblies. Now, following four years of intensive investigation, William M. Adler gives us the first full-scale biography of Joe Hill, and presents never before published documentary evidence that comes as close as one can to definitively exonerating him.Joe Hill's gripping tale is set against a brief but electrifying moment in American history, between the century's turn and World War I, when the call for industrial unionism struck a deep chord among disenfranchised workers; when class warfare raged and capitalism was on the run. Hill was the union's preeminent songwriter, and in death, he became organized labor's most venerated martyr, celebrated by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and immortalized in the ballad "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night."The Man Who Never Died does justice to Joe Hill's extraordinary life and its controversial end. Drawing on extensive new evidence, Adler deconstructs the case against his subject and argues convincingly for the guilt of another man. Reading like a murder mystery, and set against the background of the raw, turn-of-the-century West, this essential American story will make news and expose the roots of critical contemporary issues.

    The result is a memoir that is at once intellectually provocative and deeply honest; the book that readers of Poppy, The Orchard and Stravinsky's Lunch have been waiting for.

     Beginning in what is now Kansas City he joined a caravan headed for Bent’s Fort in southeastern Colorado near the Spanish Peaks, which was known to the Native Americans as Wah-to-Yah. Just before Garrard had arrived in the southwest Charles Bent, who was the recently appointed Governor of the newly acquired New Mexico Territory, was scalped and killed by Pueblo warriors during the Taos Revolt. Garrard’s account is therefore a vivid first-hand account of the Taos Revolt and its aftermath. Through the course of Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail Garrard explains how he came into contact with some of the most famous figures of western history, including Kit Carson, Jim Beckwourth, Ceran St. Vrain, George F. Ruxton, William Bent, and others. Scholars like Robert Gale have highlighted how the book provides “anthropologically accurate” descriptions of the Cheyenne Indians and other Native American tribes in the southwest of America. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the old west, for as the Pulitzer Prize winning author A. B. Guthrie Jr. stated, it is “the genuine article” and brilliantly depicts “the Indian, the trader, the mountain man, their dress, and behavior and speech and the country and climate they lived in.” Lewis Hector Garrard was the son of a prominent family from Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1846 he set out for a ten-month trip to the southwestern United States. While in Taos, Garrard attended the trial of some of the Mexicans and Pueblos who had revolted against U.S. rule of New Mexico, newly captured in the Mexican-American War. Garrard wrote the only eye witness account of the trial and hanging of six convicted men. His book Wah-to-Yah was first published in 1850 and he passed away in 1887.

    Fiona has also had successful shows at the Edinburgh and Adelaide fringe festivals, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.This book contains her stories - funny and sometimes sad stories about her upbringing as part of a large Irish-Catholic family on a wheat farm in South Australia, her chaotic and disorganised family life ever since, living in Alice Springs and making it as a stand-up comedian. She also talks of a darker side of the life of many performers - alcohol.This book is for anyone who likes to laugh (and cry), who wants to read about a woman living her life on her terms.

    A book that offers highly actionable ideas on how every Indian - from a child to a senior citizen can participate in nation building. Gender, age, education, socio economic status does not matter. You don't even have to be within the geographic borders of India. You can be anywhere on the planet and contribute towards making a positive difference in India.From food to environment to water to Swachh Bharat and many more aspects where we can make a positive difference to the country as we go about our daily lives.Stories of unsung heroes from across India will leave you enormously inspired. Citizens have shared their action ideas. The youngest contributor is 7.5 years. The oldest is 104 years.The author invites you to read, reflect and write your ideas and bring them to life with your actions. Inspire India with your actions. Get inspired by the actions of fellow citizens. Join the journey to be an #IndiaPositiveCitizen

    . . An Unbelievable True StoryOnce upon a time in Melbourne there was a gigolo who thought he was a vampire. He bit the tongue off a prostitute and was then murdered in broad daylight on a suburban street. His execution, top brass believed, was organised by police. The aftershocks of this killing—and the murder of a state witness and his wife inside their fortresshome—rocked the police force and the Parliament, vanquished one government and brought the next to its knees.This is the story of police corruption for years swept under the carpet to avoid a Royal Commission. It is the story of a police force politicised to the point of paralysis and a witness protection program that buries its mistakes. It involves a policeman still free and living in a very big house, a drug baron who survived the gangland war only to be murdered in the state's most secure jail, and battles royale within a police force comprised of thousands of pistol-packing members.This is the story of Melbourne around the first decade of the new millennium: its lawmen, villains and politicians. It is a bizarre, tawdry, unbelievable tale. But every word of it happened.