Book picks similar to
Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism by John Maynard
history
non-fiction
politics
australian
Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont
Joseph Boyden - 2010
The Métis leader who fought for the rights of his people against an encroaching tide of white settlers helped establish the province of Manitoba before escaping to the United States. Gabriel Dumont was a successful hunter and Métis chief, a man tested by warfare, a pragmatist who differed from the devout Riel. Giller Prize—winning novelist Joseph Boyden argues that Dumont, part of a delegation that had sought out Riel in exile, may not have foreseen the impact on the Métis cause of bringing Riel home. While making rational demands of Sir John A. Macdonald's government, Riel seemed increasingly overtaken by a messianic mission. His execution in 1885 by the Canadian government still reverberates today. Boyden provides fresh, controversial insight into these two seminal Canadian figures and how they shaped the country.
The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
Clea Koff - 2001
Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. The Bone Woman is Koff’s unflinching, riveting account of her seven UN missions to Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, as she shares what she saw, how it affected her, who was prosecuted based on evidence she found, and what she learned about the world. Yet even as she recounts the hellish nature of her work and the heartbreak of the survivors, she imbues her story with purpose, humanity, and a sense of justice. A tale of science in service of human rights, The Bone Woman is, even more profoundly, a story of hope and enduring moral principles.
The Mueller Report Illustrated: The Obstruction Investigation
The Washington Post - 2019
Mueller III in an engaging and illuminating presentation.When it was released on April 18, 2019, Mueller’s report laid out two major conclusions: that Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election had been “sweeping and systematic” and that the evidence did not establish that Trump or his campaign had conspired with the Kremlin. The special counsel left one significant question unanswered: whether the president broke the law by trying to block the probe. However, Mueller unspooled a dramatic narrative of an angry and anxious president trying to control the criminal investigation, even after he knew he was under scrutiny. Deep inside the 448-page report is a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of the White House, remarkable in detail and drama. With dialogue taken directly from the report, The Mueller Report Illustrated is a vivid, factually rigorous narrative of a crucial period in Trump’s presidency that remains relevant to the turbulent events of today.
Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote
Doris Stevens - 1920
The suffragists endured hunger strikes, forced feedings, and jail terms. First written in 1920 by Doris Stevens, this version was edited by Carol O’Hare. Includes an introduction by Smithsonian curator Edith Mayo, along with appendices, an index, historic photos, and illustrations.
Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe
Juan J. Linz - 1996
Linz and Alfred Stepan have increasingly focused on the questions of how, in the modern world, nondemocratic regimes can be eroded and democratic regimes crafted. In Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, they break new ground in numerous areas. They reconceptualize the major types of modern nondemocratic regimes and point out for each type the available paths to democratic transition and the tasks of democratic consolidation. They argue that, although "nation-state" and "democracy" often have conflicting logics, multiple and complementary political identities are feasible under a common roof of state-guaranteed rights. They also illustrate how, without an effective state, there can be neither effective citizenship nor successful privatization. Further, they provide criteria and evidence for politicians and scholars alike to distinguish between democratic consolidation and pseudo-democratization, and they present conceptually driven survey data for the fourteen countries studied.Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation contains the first systematic comparative analysis of the process of democratic consolidation in southern Europe and the southern cone of South America, and it is the first book to ground post-Communist Europe within the literature of comparative politics and democratic theory.
An Undisturbed Peace
Mary Glickman - 2016
But Abe’s visions of a privileged apprenticeship in the Sassaporta Brothers’ empire based in Savannah, Georgia, are soon replaced with the grim reality of indentured servitude in his uncle Isadore’s camp town near Greensborough, North Carolina. Some 50 miles west, a woman named Dark Water of the Mountains leads a life of irreverent solitude. The daughter of a powerful Cherokee chief, it has been nearly 20 years since she renounced her family’s plans for her to marry a wealthy white man. Far away in Georgia, a black slave named Jacob has resigned himself to a life of loss and injustice in a city of refuge for criminals. A trio of outsiders linked by unrequited and rekindled love, Abe, Dark Water, and Jacob find themselves surrounded by the escalating horrors of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. As the US government implements the appalling logistics of transporting the Native American tribes of the South to the western side of the Mississippi River, Abe tries desperately to intervene—and Jacob and Dark Water fight for their lives.
Stolen
Jane Harrison - 2000
It is based upon the lives of five indigenous people who dealt with the issues for forceful removal by the Australian government.Stolen tells the story of five Aboriginal children, who go by the names of Sandy, Ruby, Jimmy, Anne, and Shirley.Sandy has spent his entire life on the run, never having a set home to live in. Stolen tracks his quest for a place to be, a place where he doesn’t have keep hiding from the government (even though they are no longer after him), and a place he can call home.Ruby was forced to work as a domestic from a young age, and was driven insane by the abuse of her white masters. In the latter part of the play, she spends a lot of her time mumbling to herself, whilst her family desperately try to help her.Jimmy was separated from his mother at a very young age, and she spent her entire life looking for him. He spent a lot of time in prison, and on the day he finally got out, he was told about his mother’s search. As he went to meet her, she died, and he committed suicide in anger. Jimmy thought his mother was dead because everytime she writes him a letter the nuns take it and put it in the cabinet.Anne was removed from her family and placed in a Caucasian family’s home. She was materially happy in this home, a lot happier than many of the other characters, but when her indigenous family tried to meet her, she was caught in crossfire between her two “families”.Shirley was removed from her parents, and had her children removed from her. She only felt relief, safety, and comfort when her granddaughter was born, and not removed.Stolen toured extensively throughout Australia. On top of its seven years in Melbourne (starting in 1998), it was also performed in Sydney, Adelaide, regional Victoria, Tasmania, the UK, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Furthermore, readings were performed in Canada and New York.Stolen won (along with Aliwa! by Dallas Wimmar) the Kate Challis RAKA award in 1998, on the back of largely successful first season[2][3]Stolen was studied on the Victorian Certificate of Education English syllabus, and the New South Wales Higher School Certificate syllabus. Many other schools throughout Australia have also placed Stolen on their English curriculum
Australian History in Seven Questions
John Hirst - 2014
The history ceases to be predictable-and dull." From the author of "The Shortest History of Europe," acclaimed historian John Hirst, comes this fresh and stimulating approach to understanding Australia's past and present. Hirst asks and answers questions that get to the heart of Australia's history: Why did Aborigines not become farmers? How did a penal colony change peacefully to a democracy? Why was Australia so prosperous so early? Why did the Australian colonies federate? What effect did convict origins have on national character? Why was the postwar migration programme a success? Why is Australia not a republic?
Girt
David Hunt - 2013
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.
Almost Sincerely
Zoe Norton Lodge - 2015
God’s country. Heartland of the Inner West. Because of its location an always fertile mix of working-class, migrant, genteel, intellectual and eccentric residents. As she got older she noticed Annandale was changing, and she started hearing new words like ‘architect’ and ‘labradoodle’, and eventually entire weeks would go by with no backyard bomb explosions.These stories about neighbourhood warfare, wacky relatives, quashed dreams and facial disfigurement are told with Norton Lodge’s characteristic comic verve and eye for absurdity and menace, inspired by her family, friends, acquaintances and nemeses. Their highlights include Greek grandparents who have lived in mutual resentment for decades and beat each other up with colanders, children who dabble in amateur porn and are sent to school with cat-food sandwiches, ‘distressed’ furniture, rampaging eczema, flying babies and other suburban wonders.
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
Sandy Tolan - 2006
To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.
Born Into This
Adam Thompson - 2021
To this mix Adam Thompson manages to bring humour, pathos and occasionally a sly twist as his characters confront racism, untimely funerals, classroom politics and, overhanging all like a discomforting, burgeoning awareness for both white and black Australia, the inexorable damage and disappearance of the remnant natural world.
The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller
Carol Baxter - 2017
Jail attendants said they understood she was held in connection with the shooting of an airline pilot.'Petite, glamorous and beguiling, Jessie 'Chubbie' Miller was one remarkable woman ... flyer, thrill seeker, heartbreaker. No adventure was too wild for her, no danger too extreme. And all over the world men adored her.When the young Jessie left suburban Melbourne and her newspaperman husband in 1927, little did she know that she'd become the first woman to complete an England to Australia flight (with a black silk gown thrown into her small flight bag, just in case), or fly the first air race for women with Amelia Earhart, or that she would disappear over the Florida Straits feared lost forever only to charm her way to a rescue. Nor could she have predicted that five years later she'd find herself at the centre of one of the most notorious and controversial murder trials in United States history. And this all began with something as ridiculously mundane as a pat of butter.The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller is a spellbinding story of an extraordinary woman - an international celebrity during the golden age of aviation - and her passionate and spirited life.
A Sunburnt Childhood
Toni Tapp Coutts - 2016
But there was no 'big house' here - Toni did not grow up in a large homestead. She lived in a shack that had no electricity and no running water. The oppressive climate of the Territory - either wet or dry - tested everyone. Fish were known to rain from the sky and sometimes good men drank too much and drowned trying to cross swollen rivers.Toni grew up with the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station, and got into scrapes with her ever-increasing number of siblings. She loved where she grew up - she was happy on the land with her friends and family, observing the many characters who made up the community on Killarney. When she was sent to boarding school all she wanted to do was go back to the land she loved, despite the fact that her parents' marriage was struggling as Bill Tapp succumbed to drink and June Tapp refused to go under with him.Toni's love of the natural world and of people alike has resulted in a tender portrait of a life that many people would consider tough. She brings vividly to the page a story seldom seen: a Territory childhood, with all its colour, characters and contradictions.
The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government
Niki Savva - 2016
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.