Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

$22.99 AUD

Category: Non-Fiction

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required. ...Show more

Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia's Newspaper Empires by Sally Young

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

'A tour de force.' -- Professor Rodney Tiffen Beforenewspapers were ravaged by the digital age, they were a powerful force,especially in Australia -- a country of newspaper giants and kingmakers. Thismagisterial book revealswho owned Australia's newspapers and how they used them to wield politicalpower. A corporateand political history of Australian newspapers spanning 140 years, it explainshow Australia's media system came to be dominated by a handful of empires andpowerful family dynasties. Many are household names, even now: Murdoch,Fairfax, Symes, Packer. Written with verve and insight and showing unparalleledcommand of a vast range of sources, Sally Young shows how newspaper ownersinfluenced policy-making, lobbied and bullied politicians, and shaped internalparty politics. Thebook begins in 1803 with Australia's first newspaper owner -- a convict whobecame a wealthy bank owner -- giving the industry a blend of notoriety, powerand wealth from the start.Throughout the twentieth century, Australians were unaware that they werereading newspapers owned by secret bankrupts and failed land boomers, powerfulmining magnates, Underbelly-style gangsters, bankers, and corporate titans. Itends with the downfall of Menzies in 1941 and his conviction that a handful ofpress barons brought him down. The intervening years are packed with politicaldrama, business machinations and a struggle for readers, all while the newspaper barons are peddling power and influence. ...Show more

Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia by Billy Griffiths

$34.99 AUD

Category: History

'People would have known about Australia before they saw it. Smoke billowing above the sea spoke of a land that lay beyond the horizon. A dense cloud of migrating birds may have pointed the way. But the first Australians were voyaging into the unknown.' Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archae ological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian's inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership ...Show more

The Rare Metals War by Guillaume Pitron

$35.00 AUD

Category: History

The resources race is on. Powering our digital lives and green technologies are some of the Earth's most precious metals - but they are running out. And what will happen when they do? The green-tech revolution has been lauded as the silver bullet to a new world. One that is at last free of oil, polluti on, shortages, and cross-border tensions. Drawing on six years of research across a dozen countries, this book cuts across conventional green thinking to probe the hidden, dark side of green technology. By breaking free of fossil fuels, we are in fact setting ourselves up for a new dependence - on rare metals such as cobalt, gold, and palladium. They are essential to electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other everyday connected objects. China has captured the lion's share of the rare metals industry, but consumers know very little about how they are mined and traded, or their environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs. The Rare Metals War is a vital expose of the ticking time-bomb that lies beneath our new technological order. It uncovers the reality of our lavish and ambitious environmental quest that involves risks as formidable as those it seeks to resolve. ' T he journalist and filmmaker warns against the optimistic belief that technology is the solution ... At a time when many claim to be "citizens of the world" or retreat into naive or hypocritical protectionism, Pitron's book is an attempt to open people's eyes to the consequences of their societal choices and lifestyles.' -Green European Journal 'French Writer and analyst Guillaume Pitron warns about growing reliance on rare-earth metal - which are necessary to build high-tech products ... He shines a light on "the untold story" of the energy and digital transitions.' -European Scientist ...Show more

Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon by Eric H. Cline

$34.99 AUD

Category: History | Series: Princeton ANZ Paperbacks Ser.

A vivid portrait of the early years of biblical archaeology from the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed In 1925, James Henry Breasted, famed Egyptologist and director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, sent a team of archaeologists to the Holy Land to exc avate the ancient site of Megiddo - Armageddon in the New Testament - which the Bible says was fortified by King Solomon. Their excavations made headlines around the world and shed light on one of the most legendary cities of biblical times, yet little has been written about what happened behind the scenes. Digging Up Armageddon brings to life one of the most important archaeological expeditions ever undertaken, describing the site and what was found there, including discoveries of gold and ivory, and providing an up-close look at the internal workings of a dig in the early years of biblical archaeology. The Chicago team left behind a trove of writings and correspondence going back more than three decades, from letters and cablegrams to cards, notes, and diaries. Eric Cline draws on these materials to paint a compelling portrait of a bygone age of archaeology. Cline masterfully sets the expedition against the backdrop of the Great Depression in America and the growing troubles and tensions in British Mandate Palestine. He gives readers an insider's perspective on the debates over what was uncovered at Megiddo, the infighting that roiled the expedition, and the stunning discoveries that transformed our understanding of the ancient world. Digging Up Armageddon is the enthralling story of an archaeological site in the interwar years and its remarkable place at the crossroads of history. ...Show more

First Australians by Rachel Perkins Marcia Langton

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

"First Australiansis the dramatic story of the collision of two worlds that created contemporary Australia. Told from the perspective of Australia's first people, it vividly brings to life the events that unfolded when the oldest living culture in the world was overrun by the world's greatest empire. Se ven of Australia's leading historians reveal the true stories of individuals both black and white caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia's most transformative period of history. Their story begins in 1788 in Warrane, now known as Sydney, with the friendship between an Englishman, Governor Phillip, and the kidnapped warrior Bennelong. It ends in 1992 with Koiki Mabo's legal challenge to the foundation of Australia. By illuminating a handful of extraordinary lives spanning two centuries, First Australiansreveals, through their eyes, the events that shaped a new nation." ...Show more

Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Neiman

$45.00 AUD

Category: History

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its histori cal wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans have faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. ...Show more

On a Barbarous Coast by Craig Cormick; Harold Ludwick

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

On a Barbarous Coast is an alternative retelling of Captain James Cook's story co-written by Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick in the tradition of imagined histories. We were becoming the wild things we most feared, but could not see it at the time.On a night of raging winds and rain, Captain Cook's End eavour lies splintered on a coral reef off the coast of far north Australia. A small disparate band of survivors, fracturing already, huddle on the shore of this strange land - their pitiful salvage scant protection from the dangers of the unknown creatures and natives that live here. Watching these mysterious white beings, the Guugu Yimidhirr people cannot decide if they are ancestor spirits to be welcomed - or hostile spirits to be speared. One headstrong young boy, Garrgiil, determines to do more than watch and to be the one to find out what exactly they are. Fierce, intriguing and thoughtful, On a Barbarous Coast is the story of a past and future that might have been.'Australia's "origin" story brilliantly re-imagined, in which Indigenous Australians rightfully assume their central place.' Susan Johnson, author of The Broken Book ...Show more

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind. ...Show more

The Lost Boys by Paul Byrnes

$35.00 AUD

Category: History

1989: the Great Grand Final by Tony Wilson

$32.99 AUD

Category: History

The 1989 Grand Final between Hawthorn and Geelong is considered one of the greatest of all. Hawthorn, seeking to go back-to-back for the first time was against a Geelong team that had not been in a Grand Final since 1967. The match had everything: unbridled violence, high scoring, Gary Ablett's nine goa ls, and a Geelong fightback that saw it claw back a six-goal deficit at the last change to lose by a goal. At the end of the match, had it been a draw, a dozen players could not have turned out for the rematch. Injuries included broken ribs, multiple concussions, ripped muscles, punctured lungs. In 1989: The Great Grand Final, Tony Wilson takes a look back on one of the most spectacular games in footy history.  ...Show more

Aboriginal Australians: A History Since 1788 by Richard Broome

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

In the creation of any new society, there are winners and losers. So it was with Australia as it grew from a colonial outpost to an affluent society. Richard Broome tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians: those who lost most in the early colonial struggle for powe r. Surveying over two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, he shows how white settlers steadily supplanted the original inhabitants, from the shining coasts to inland deserts, by sheer force of numbers, disease, technology, and violence. He also tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation, and traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of a settler society to a more central place in modern Australia. Broome's Aboriginal Australians has long been regarded as the most authoritative account of black-white relations in Australia. This fifth edition continues the story, covering the impact of the Northern Territory Intervention, the mining boom in remote Australia, the Uluru Statement, the resurgence of interest in traditional Aboriginal knowledge and culture, and the new generation of Aboriginal leaders. ...Show more