Presenting the one and only Mr Paul Keating – at his straight-shooting, scumbag-calling, merciless best.Paul lets rip – on John Howard: “The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on.”On Peter Costello: “The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg.”On John Hewson: “[His performance] is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.”On Andrew Peacock: “...what we have here is an intellectual rust bucket.”On Wilson Tuckey: “...you stupid foul-mouthed grub.”On Tony Abbott: “If Tony Abbott ends up the prime minister of Australia, you’ve got to say, God help us.”And that’s just a taste.

    Marking the pinnacle of his public life; it reflected his popularity among ordinary people who revered him as Anna; or elder brother. This rich biography illuminates his many lives—as a charismatic leader of modern India; as a stalwart of the Dravidian movement; as the founder of the DMK; as spokesman for the South—besides documenting his abilities as an acclaimed orator and littérateur in Tamil and English; and as a stage actor.Born into a weaving caste family in Kanchipuram; Anna was exposed to the non-Brahmin politics of the Justice Party during his college years and this interest led him to become a protégé of the radical thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in 1935. Anna promoted his mentor’s ideas of Self-Respect and Tamil identity but not his atheism. Like him; he attacked Brahminism and ‘Aryan’ values as the cause of Tamil political and cultural decadence and opposed the imposition of Hindi as the official language. In 1962 Anna took his independent Dravida Nadu demand to the Rajya Sabha; threatening the nation’s unity. Importantly; he used public speaking; journalism; theatre; cinema and agit-prop to broaden the base of the party; which drew renowned film actors into its fold; a bond that endures to this day.The book does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded the Dravidian movement and candidly examines Anna’s complex relationship with Periyar. It records Anna’s move to form the DMK in 1949; his split with Sampath in 1961 over the party’s strategy and course; and his disillusionment with the corruption and power politics he witnessed as chief minister.Kannan draws on Anna’s considerable body of writing; the memoirs of other leaders and authors in Tamil; including critics like the poet Kannadasan; Jayakanthan and P. Ramamurti; apart from secondary sources. Featuring luminaries like Rajagopalachari and Kamaraj; Kalaignar Karunanidhi and MGR; among many others; Anna offers a warm and rounded portrait of a man who showed the way for the democratic expression of regional aspirations within a united India.

    You see, survival of the colored race in America is at a difficult point where it has to be taught to our youth. The old practices of lynching and segregation which are thought to have been eradicated from our society lives on but in various other forms: police brutality, income inequality, unemployment and single motherhood… designs to keep our communities in perpetual turmoil and slavery.This book should be required reading for the youth and a lesson to any group that man’s inhumanity to man has not ended in America and is practiced around the world.

    Jad Adams offers a concise account of Gandhi's life: from his birth and upbringing in a small princely state in Gujarat during the high noon of the British Raj, to his assassination at the hands of a Hindu extremist in 1948 only months after the birth of the independent India which he himself had done so much to bring about.

    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.

    A political betrayal. A constitutional crisis. The Palace Letters is the groundbreaking result of one historian’s fight to expose secret letters between the Queen and the then Australian governor general, Sir John Kerr, during the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. Whitlam was a progressive prime minister whose reforms proved divisive after two decades of conservative leadership in Australia. When he could not get a budget approved, it sparked a political deadlock that culminated in his unexpected and deeply controversial dismissal by Kerr.More than 200 letters between Kerr and the Queen from the period exist in the archive, and historians have long believed that they could reveal the extent to which Buckingham Palace knew about or approved of the dismissal. But until now they have remained hidden in the National Archives of Australia, protected from public scrutiny through their designation as ‘personal’.In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a 10-year campaign and a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she secured a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. On 29 May 2020, the court ruled in her favour, requiring the correspondence to be released.Now, Professor Hocking is able to reveal the previously hidden trove of letters. And, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the role of High Court judges, the Queen’s private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr’s actions, and any prior involvement of the Queen and Prince Charles in Kerr’s planning.

    Kim Il Sung wasted little time before plunging the country into a futile war which cost more than two million people their lives. His son, Kim Jong Il, would wallow in obscene luxury as North Korea suffered one of the Twentieth Century’s most terrible famines. Kim Jong Un has only recently ascended to power. However, he has already ordered his own uncle’s execution by antiaircraft gun. The North Korean people are told that they are the most fortunate in the world. In reality they are the most oppressed. North Korea is a country where criticising the government, or even watching a foreign film, can lead to imprisonment and death.North Korea: A Bare Bones History tells the story of one of the world’s most enigmatic nations. It’s an extraordinary history of war, assassination, kidnapping, terrorism, and an attempt to decapitate a rival head of state.

    This 399-page put together by the late Edwin Sabin gives a thorough yet readable account of the awesome feats and bravery of the great warrior leaders of these ancient peoples that occupied and cultivated this continent thousands of years before the white man stumbled upon it by mistake.Chet DembeckPublisher of One

    Considered one of American’s most brilliant writers by the journalism community, this long-awaited book debut presents Labash at his very best. A latter day Leibling, Labash’s collection will take its place alongside books by writers such as Calvin Trillin and P.J. O’Rourke..• A unique voice that’s well-connected: Labash’s well-informed insights, self-deprecating wit, and provocative candor feature regularly in The Weekly Standard and have also appeared in Washingtonian Magazine , American Spectator , and on Slate.com. Extremely well-liked and respected, his media contacts are many and varied. He has declined invitations to appear on everything from HBO Sports to Meet the Press —but is finally willing to make the rounds. As LA Weekly wrote after his Detroit piece, “it’s not new to give props to Matt Labash.”.• Remarkable collection: Full of wit, insight, and a trenchant grasp of the American scoundrel, Labash’s masterful profiles of men on the nation’s fringe—Pirate Kingfish Gov. Edwin Johnson, The Right Reverend Dr. Al Sharpton, Dirty Trickster Roger Stone—are published alongside devastating pieces on such dead or dying cities as Detroit and New Orleans; work celebrating such joyous, but overlooked pockets of American culture as Revival music and Rebirth Brass Band; and scathing, hilarious briefs on the nation’s great phonies—Michael Moore, Louis Farrakhan, Donald Trump to name a few..

    What threw me, though, was the urgency of the diplomats in Beijing. They live it, they get it. And they wanted me out.'Bill Birtles was rushed out of China in September 2020, forced to seek refuge in the Australian Embassy in Beijing while diplomats delicately negotiated his departure in an unprecedented standoff with China's government. Five days later he was on a flight back to Sydney, leaving China without any Australian foreign correspondents on the ground for the first time in decades.A journalist's perspective on this rising global power has never been more important, as Australia's relationship with China undergoes an extraordinary change that's seen the detention of a journalist Cheng Lei, Canberra's criticism of Beijing's efforts to crush Hong Kong's freedoms, as well as China's military activity in the South China Sea and its human rights violations targeting the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. Chronicling his five-year stint in China as he criss-crossed the country, Birtles reveals why the historic unravelling of China's relations with the West is perceived very differently inside the country.The Truth About China is a compelling and candid examination of China, one that takes a magnifying glass to recent events, and looks through a telescope at what is yet to come.

    It was 5 o'clock on the morning of 4 June. Tanks, APCs and troop trucks were sweeping down the avenue. Citizens ran for cover. Helicopters hovered above. Foreign media claimed that Chinese troops had fired into the crowds with several hundred casualties.'More than three decades later, the Tiananmen Square incident refuses to be forgotten. The events that occurred in the summer of 1989 would not only set the course for China's politics but would also re-define its relationship with the world. China's message was clear: it remained committed to market-oriented reform, but it would not tolerate any challenge to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party. In return for economic prosperity, the Chinese have surrendered some rights to the state. A democratic future seems far away.Vijay Gokhale, then a young diplomat serving in Beijing, was a witness to the drama that unfolded in Tiananmen Square. This unique account brings an Indian perspective on an event in China's history that the Chinese government has been eager to have the world forget.

    In America men and women wept openly in the streets for their dead leader. But events soon began to unpick the original version of what happened. It turned out that theaofficial report was little more than a crude government whitewash designed to hide the real truth. Even American Presidents admitted as much. President Nixon memorably confessed in private that the Warren Report was the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public. It began to emerge that maybe Lee Harvey Oswald, the original one nut gunman, may not have acted on his own; others were involved, too. That meant no lone gunman, but a conspiracy. This book attempts to answer the big question: who really shot JFK? And, more important still, exactly why was he shot? John Hughes-Wilson argues that the murder of John Kennedy was, like the murder of Julius Caesar 2,000ayears before, nothing less than a bloody coup dOCO(r)tat by his political enemies, a conspiracy hell bent on removing a leader who was threatening the power and the money of the ruling establishment. Pointing the finger at Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the Mafia, John joins Jackie and Bobby Kennedy in their conclusion that the assassination of JFK was far more complex than a deranged attack by Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine."

    The move fulfilled a Tory campaign promise to deliver greater government transparency and accountability. He was later denounced by the same people who appointed him to scrutinize their spending. When he challenged the government on several issues--most notably about the true costs of the F-35 fighter planes--and publicly claimed the government was misleading Canadians, Page was vilified. He was called "unbelievable, unreliable and incredible" by then-Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Page's term was not extended and he retired from the civil service.     Page's assessment of the F-35 procurement was proven right, a major embarrassment to the Harper government. But Page's overriding concern is that Parliament does not get the information and analysis it needs to hold the executive (the prime minister and cabinet) to account. Parliament, he argues, is broken, with power centralized in the PMO. The civil service appears cowed, and members of parliament almost never see enough financial analysis to support the policy decisions they make. That was true at various times on the tough-on-crime legislation, new military procurement as well as changes to the Canada Health Transfer and Old Age Security.      In this shocking insider's account, Page argues that democracy is being undermined by an increasingly autocratic government that does not respect facts that run counter to its political agenda. Elected officials need accurate, independently verified data to support the implementation of policies and programs. In Unaccountable, Page tells all Canadians why we should be concerned.

    The study covers almost all the outstanding thinkers on politics in India and is perhaps the first book which provides an overview of the Indian political thought from Manu to the present day.

    Yet—startling as this is— the instrument as we know it is only a century old. T.M. Krishna investigates the history of the mrdangam and meets the invisible keepers of a tradition: the mrdangam makers.The making process is an intellectually, aesthetically and physically taxing one. From acquiring the skins for the circular membranes and straps to the wood for the drum, from curing the material to the final construction, and at the end of it all, making sure that it has the tone that the mrdangam player wants, mrdangam-making is also a highly nuanced operation at every stage.While several artists have been credited with the evolution of the instrument, including the stalwart Palghat Mani Iyer, none of them had knowledge of a fundamental aspect of the making: hide. The quality of the hide and how it is cured, cut, stretched, bound and braided impacts the tone, timbre and sound of the instrument. This requires a highly tuned ear and an ability to translate abstract ideas expressed by musicians into the corporeal reality of a mrdangam. Yet, their contribution to the art of the mrdangam is dismissed as labour and repair—when it is spoken of at all.There are legendary mrdangam players, yes; there are also distinguished mrdangam makers, many of them from Dalit Christian communities, who remain on the fringes of the Karnatik community. Sebastian and Sons explores the world of these artists, their history, lore and lived experience to arrive at a more organic and holistic understanding of the music that the mrdangam makes.