Book picks similar to
Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship by John Chesterman


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Wild Lands


Nicole Alexander - 2015
    Literally cutting a swathe through the bush with their bare hands, they lay claim to territory beyond government jurisdiction - and the reach of the law. As she accepts a position on one such farm, seventeen-year-old Kate Carter is unaware she is entering a land of outlaws, adventurers and murderous natives.Because the first people of this new world will no longer accept the white man's advance, and retaliatory attacks on both sides have made it a frontier on the brink of war.Into Kate's path comes Bronzewing, a young white man schooled by a settler family yet raised within an Aboriginal tribe. Caught between two worlds, Bronzewing strives to protect his adopted people and their vanishing civilisation.But as he and Kate will discover, 'beyond the outer limits' is a beautiful yet terrifying place, where it's impossible to know who is friend and who is enemy . . .'Alexander writers [with] a deep love of the land' The Courier-Mail

The Fall of America


Elijah Muhammad - 1973
    It chronologically cites various aspects of American history, its actions pertaining to the establishment and treatment of its once slaves, which is shown to be a significant cause of America's fall.A stark prophetic insight is contained in this writing. It's like reading tomorrow's newspaper!

Corporal Hitler’s Pistol


Tom Keneally - 2021
    Rural communities have always been a melting pot and many are happy to accept a diverse bunch … as long as they don’t overstep. Set in a town he knows very well, in this novel Tom Keneally tells a compelling story of the interactions and relationships between black and white Australians in early twentieth-century Australia.

Survivor: From childhood abuse to a life of crime and prostitution


Tara O’Shaughnessey - 2019
    Prostitute. Gangster’s Wife. Survivor. Tara grew up in squalor on the island of Alderney. When she was only four, she was sexually abused by one of her mother’s many lovers, a horror that continued for five long years. As a teenager, desperate to escape the toxic environment at home, she fled to London – but was swiftly drawn into working as a prostitute. She became involved with some of London’s most notorious gangsters – even marrying one – but when she realised the danger she was inflicting on her children, she knew she had to find a way to get out. This is the inspiring story of one woman’s will to survive, and to fight for a better life.

The Chosen Seven


Gill D. Anderson - 2019
    His sociopathic tendencies coupled with his political views make him a very dangerous man indeed. Farzad wants the world to sit up and take notice of him and randomly selects six bystanders to hold hostage at a city restaurant.JACOB BROWN is a fitness fanatic who finds himself at the centre of a bizarre situation when he arrives at his favourite restaurant to pick up a takeaway for dinner.JAGRITI GOSHAL is a young unassuming Indian waitress working at Alessandro’s Cucina.REGINA TERRY is a fearless Afro-American woman in Australia on a business visa who unexpectedly finds herself embroiled in a crazy siege with a madman.LEVI HAINES and BILL WALKER are colleagues having a business dinner at the restaurant. Bill is Levi’s sleazy boss with unethical intentions and Levi is dining with him against her will.PAUL TOWNSEND is a local electrician who happens to drop off a quote at Alessandro’s Cucina at the same time Farzad descends on the restaurant to begin taking hostages.Follow the roller coaster ride of emotions as these strangers find themselves embroiled in a terrifying siege orchestrated by a madman. The authorities scramble to put together a definitive plan of action to contain the situation quickly. But not everyone will come out alive ...

The Otto Bin Empire: Clive's Story


Judy Nunn - 2015
    Also includes an extract from her new novel, Spirits of the Ghan.To the members of the Otto Bin Empire - the homeless men and women who gather around the plastic bins near the docks - Clive is an enigmatic addition to their ranks. Intelligent, healthy and always well presented, even Clive struggles to understand why he finds himself at the bottom of the barrel. How did it happen?'I'm just a bloke going through a period of adjustment,' he tells himself, 'I'll be back on my feet soon.'But as the weeks turn into months Clive slowly adjusts to his circumstances. He finds tolerance, acceptance and friendship and slowly begins to see humanity in its purest light. He finally realises that dignity, self-respect and honour are to be found in abundance in the Otto Bin Empire . and who knows? Perhaps even love.

Where the Fruit Falls


Karen Wyld - 2020
    Hush. Be still for just a moment. Hear its thundering waves crashing on unseen shores.Spanning four generations, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, an era of rapid social change and burgeoning Aboriginal rights, Where the Fruit Falls is a re-imagining of the epic Australian novel.Brigid Devlin, a young Aboriginal woman, and her twin daughters navigate a troubled nation of First Peoples, settlers and refugees – all determined to shape a future on stolen land. Leaving the sanctuary of her family’s apple orchard, Brigid sets off with no destination and a willy wagtail for company. As she moves through an ever changing landscape, Brigid unravels family secrets to recover what she’d lost – by facing the past, she finally accepts herself. Her twin daughters continue her journey with their own search for self-acceptance, truth and justice."This evocative family saga celebrates the strength and resilience of First Nations women, while touching on deeply traumatic aspects of Australian history. Threads of magic realism shimmer throughout the story, offering a deeper understanding of reality and challenging the reader to imagine a kinder, more just, more human world." Sally Morgan, Author of My Place."In poetic and evocative storytelling, this writing celebrates the agency of Indigenous women to traverse ever-present landscapes of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. Country has an omniscient presence in their story lines, guiding the women across vivid desert and coastal landscapes. Where the Fruit Falls recognises both the open wounds of living histories of colonisation and the healing power of belonging to Country." 2020 Dorothy Hewett Award judges.

Every Move You Make


David Malouf - 2006
    This collection is set in the vast Australian continent from the mysterious, glittering Valley of Lagoons to bohemian Balmain and the Centre at Uluru.

Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia


Diana Preston - 2017
    But few realize that Bligh's escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization. Indeed, 9 convicts from the Australian penal colony, led by Mary Bryant, also traveled 3,250 miles across the open ocean and some uncharted seas to land at the same port Bligh had reached only months before.In this meticulously researched dual narrative of survival, acclaimed historian Diana Preston provides the background and context to explain the thrilling open-boat voyages each party survived and the Pacific Island nations each encountered on their journey to safety. Through this deep-dive, readers come to understand the Pacific Islands as they were and as they were perceived, and how these seemingly utopian lands became a place where mutineers, convicts, and eventually the natives themselves, were chained.

Maybe Tomorrow


Boori Monty Pryor - 1998
    Boori Monty Pryor's career path has taken him from the Aboriginal fringe camps of his birth to the catwalk, the basketball court, the DJ console, and now to performance and story-telling around the country. With writer and photographer Meme McDonald, Boori leads you along the paths he has traveled, pausing to meet his family and friends, while sharing the story of his life, his pain, and his hopes, with humor and compassion.

The Songlines


Bruce Chatwin - 1987
    Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers—Christ or the Buddha—recommended the Road as the way. to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?We do not often ask these questions today for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin has mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case.Pre-colonial Australia was the last landmass on earth peopled not by herdsmen, farmers, or city dwellers, but by hunter-gatherers. Their labyrinths of invisible pathways across the continent are known to us as Songlines or Dreaming Tracks, but to the Aboriginals as the tracks of their ancestors—the Way of the Law. Along these "roads" they travel in order to perform all those activities that are distinctively human—song, dance, marriage, exchange of ideas, and arrangements of territorial boundaries by agreement rather than force.In Chatwin's search for the Songlines, Arkady is an ideal friend and guide: Australian by birth, the son of a Cossack exile, with all the strength and warmth of his inheritance. Whether hunting kangaroo from a Land Cruiser, talking to the diminutive Rolf in his book-crammed trailer, buying drinks for a bigoted policeman (and would-be writer), cheering as Arkady's true love declares herself (part of The Songlines is a romantic comedy), Chatwin turns this almost implausible picaresque adventure into something approaching the scale of a Greek tragedy.The life of the Aboriginals stands in vivid contrast, of course, to the prevailing cultures of our time. And The Songlines presents unforgettable details about the kinds of disputes we know all too well from less traumatic confrontations: over sacred lands invaded by railroads, mines, and construction sites, over the laws and rights of a poor people versus a wealthy invasive one. To Chatwin these are but recent, local examples of an eternal basic distinction between settlers and wanderers. His book, devoted to the latter, is a brilliant evocation of this profound optimism: that man is by nature not a bellicose aggressor but a pacific, song-creating, adaptive species whose destiny is to quest for the truth.

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia


Bill Gammage - 2011
    Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today.

Salt: Selected Essays and Stories


Bruce Pascoe - 2019
    This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career, and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history.Featuring new and previously unpublished fiction alongside his most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction – including extracts from his modern classic Dark Emu – this collection is perfect for Pascoe fans and new readers alike. It’s time all Australians saw the range and depth of this most marvellous of local writers.

That Deadman Dance


Kim Scott - 2010
    In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...

Behind Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma


Richard Dunlop - 1980
    Thus was born OSS Detachment 101, the first clandestine special force formed by Donovan and one that would play a highly dangerous but vital role in the reconquest of Burma by the Allies.Behind Japanese Lines, originally published in 1979, is the exciting story of the men of Detachment 101, who, with their loyal native allies--the Kachin headhunters--fought a guerilla war for almost three years. It was a war not only against a tough and unyielding enemy, but against the jungle itself, one of the most difficult and dangerous patches of terrain in the world. Exposed to blistering heat and threatened by loathsome tropical diseases, the Western-raised OSS men also found themselves beset by unfriendly tribesmen and surrounded by the jungle's unique perils--giant leeches, cobras, and rogue tigers.Not merely a war narrative, Behind Japanese Lines is an adventure story, the story of unconventional men with an almost impossible mission fighting an irregular war in supremely hostile territory. Drawing upon the author's own experiences as a member of Detachment 101, interviews with surviving 101 members, and classified documents, Dunlop's tale unfolds with cinematic intensity, detailing the danger, tension, and drama of secret warfare. Never before have the activities of the OSS been recorded in such authentic firsthand detail. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.