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Non-fiction

enemy of all mankind

Enemy of All Mankind

$32.99
By

“Most confrontations, viewed from the wide angle of history, are minor disputes, sparks that quickly die out. But every now and then, someone strikes a match that lights up the whole planet.”

Henry Every was the seventeenth century’s most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular—and wildly inaccurate—reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Every’s most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a major shift in the global economy. Enemy of All Mankind focuses on one key event—the attack on an Indian treasure ship by Every and his crew—and its surprising repercussions across time and space. It’s the gripping tale one of the most lucrative crimes in history, the first international manhunt, and the trial of the seventeenth century.

Johnson uses the extraordinary story of Henry Every and his crimes to explore the emergence of the East India Company, the British Empire, and the modern global marketplace: a densely interconnected planet ruled by nations and corporations. How did this unlikely pirate and his notorious crime end up playing a key role in the birth of multinational capitalism? In the same mode as Johnson’s classic historical thriller The Ghost Map, Enemy of All Mankind deftly traces the path from a single struck match to a global conflagration.

massacre

How to Sell a Massacre

$27.99
By

One Nation, the NRA and $20 million – inside journalism’s most audacious sting. By the mastermind who infiltrated the NRA and One Nation and based on the award-winning documentary seen on ABC TV.

In 2019, the ABC aired an explosive investigative documentary entitled How to Sell a Massacre. The result of an audacious three-year infiltration of the US National Rifle Association, the documentary revealed how One Nation solicited donations of up to $20 million from the NRA, promising in return to use the balance of power to soften gun laws in Australia. Masterminded by veteran Australian journalist Peter Charley, the elaborate sting saw Australian businessman Rodger Muller go undercover as the head of a fake Australian pro-gun advocacy group. But the tactics used by Charley to expose both One Nation and the NRA drew criticism from some.

Now in his book How to Sell a Massacre, Peter Charley gives an inside account of the sting, drawing on more than 40 years’ reporting to explore how journalism has changed and to make sense of why – in a post-truth environment – he felt it necessary to set a trap to catch the truth. Charley draws on previously unreleased transcripts of covertly recorded meetings between the NRA and One Nation to give graphic details of the undercover operation. At the same time, he reflects on a long and distinguished career and how the role and methods of journalism have had to change and adapt in a post-truth world.

Set during the period of Donald Trump’s rise to power and the US’s worst mass shootings, including Las Vegas and Orlando, How to Sell a Massacre reads like a pacey spy thriller with a deadly truth at its heart: that an Australian political party would seek foreign money in a bid to seize power and destroy the gun laws that keep Australians safe.

LIving with copy

Living with the Anthropocene

$34.99
By

Australia — and the world — is changing. On the Great Barrier Reef corals bleach white, across the inland farmers struggle with declining rainfall, birds and insects disappear from our gardens and plastic waste chokes our shores. The 2019–20 summer saw bushfires ravage the country like never before and young and old alike are rightly anxious. Human activity is transforming the places we live in and love.

In this extraordinarily powerful and moving book, some of Australia’s best-known writers and thinkers — as well as ecologists, walkers, farmers, historians, ornithologists, artists and community activists — come together to reflect on what it is like to be alive during an ecological crisis. They build a picture of a collective endeavour towards a culture of care, respect, and attention as the physical world changes around us. How do we hold onto hope.

Personal and urgent, this is a literary anthology for our age, the age of humans.

Lofted2

Lofted

$45.00
By

A visual adventure for the modern golfer, Lofted will transport you far and wide through the world of golf.

Lofted takes you on a journey of discovery with stunning photography and words featuring golf experiences across the globe, including classic courses in Wisconsin, USA, the remote islands of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, a magical Malaysian course in a tropical paradise, the foothills of the Himalayas and the windswept King Island in the Bass Strait off the coast of Australia.

From the design of the bunkers and doglegged tees to the art of mindfulness in the great outdoors – the unexpected stories and images in Lofted will challenge your perceptions of golf.

Book cover_moonlite LR

Moonlite

$34.99
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A gay bushranger with a love of poetry and guns. A grotesque hangman with a passion for flowers and gardening. A broken young man desperate for love and respect. These men – two of them lovers – are about to bring the era ofAustralia’s outlaws to a torrid and bloody climax. Moonlite is the true and epic story of George Scott, an Irish-born preacher who becomes, along with Ned Kelly, one of the nation’s most notorious and celebrated criminals.

Charismatic, intelligent and handsome, George Scott is unlike any other bushranger. Born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland, Scott’s family loses its fortune and is forced to flee to New Zealand. There, Scott joins the local militia and fights as a soldier against the Maori in the brutal New Zealand wars.

After recovering from a series of serious gunshot wounds, he sails to Australia and becomes a Lay Preacher, captivating churchgoers with his fiery and inspiring sermons.

But Scott is also prone to bursts of madness. The local villagers back in Ireland often whispered that a ‘wild drop’ ran in the blood of the Scott family. One night he dons a mask in a small country town, arms himself with a gun and, dubbing himself Captain Moonlite, brazenly robs a bank before staging one of the country’s most audacious jailbreaks.

After falling in love with fellow prisoner James Nesbitt, a boyish petty criminal desperately searching for a father figure, Scott finds himself unable to shrug off his criminal past.

Pursued and harassed by the police, he stages a dramatic siege and prepares for a final showdown with the law – and a macabre executioner without a nose.

Meticulously researched and drawing on previously unpublished material, Moonlite is a brilliant work of non-fiction that reads like a novel.

Told at a cracking pace, and based on many of the extensive letters Scott wrote from his death cell, Moonlite is set amid the violent and sexually-repressed era of Australia in the second half of the 19th century.

With a cast of remarkable characters, it weaves together the extraordinary lives of our bushrangers and the desperation of a young nation eager to remove the stains of its convict past.

But most of all, Moonlite is a tragic love story.

places we swim

Places We Swim Sydney

$39.99
By,

From lap pools to ocean pools, harbour pools to waterfalls, Sydney is arguably the best major city in Australia for swimming, if not the world! And Places We Swim Sydney covers the very best of the city’s famous and hidden swimming spots.

After the success of their first book, Places We Swim, authors Caroline Clements and Dillon Seitchik-Reardon have followed up with a deep dive into Sydney in this ultimate city guide to the aqueous outdoors. Places We Swim Sydney is divided into six city regions, encompassing walks and swims within two hours of the CBD – from Manly in the north, to Maroubra in the east, Royal National Park in the south, and out to the Blue Mountains in the west. You’ll discover just what makes each swimming spot unique, learn the best time to go, gain some useful local knowledge and find out the most delicious things to eat nearby.

With destinations ranging from neighbourhood city pools to gorges that feel like the outback, Places We Swim Sydney is a celebration of not just these magnificent swimming locations, but of the diverse landscapes and water-loving communities that make up Sydney.

resident

Resident Dog

$39.99
By

Just as every home is different, so is every dog.

In this stunningly photographed book of architecturally superb houses – many of them architects’ own homes – we see how the presence of a dog brings warmth and life to the most dramatic spaces. From mid-century brick to a penthouse apartment, gracious Edwardian to Scandinavian modern, from beach house to country retreat, there is always room for a dog or two.

Seemingly oblivious to designer furniture, heritage considerations or serious design aesthetics, dogs can make themselves at home anywhere. In fact, the rooms in this book are all the more appealing because of their resident dog.

In 25 inspirational homes, the resident dog moves through the spaces, pokes out from behind doorways, lounges in the sun, runs up and down stairs and shows you around their incredible home.

Resident Dog captures magnificent architecture and divine interiors, but within every frame, the dog’s idiosyncratic personalities can’t help but shine through.

Rivers

Rivers: The Lifeblood of Australia

$49.99
By

Givers of life and subjects of anguish, Australian rivers have shaped the nation from the moment the first Australians arrived tens of thousands of years ago. Offering the vital ingredient for life, they are also guardians of culture, a means of transportation, sites for play and leisure, and sources of power—deeply entrenched in almost every aspect of human life and an irreplaceable part of the global ecosystem.

Australia’s vast inland seas of some 50 million years ago have disappeared, leaving a continent that is mostly desert. Of the waters and wetlands that remain, most of which are connected to rivers, 65 are listed as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance. They are also of incredible — sometimes painful — local importance, as reminders of the dispossession suffered by those first peoples and their descendants and evidence of the devastation wrought by drought and dying waterways.

The damming of Western Australia’s Ord River during the 1960s and 1970s captured monsoonal rains within a catchment of over 55,000 square kilometres, creating the largest artificial lake on mainland Australia while destroying sites of cultural significance to the Miriwoong people and changing the ecosystem irrevocably. Barely ten years after the completion of the Ord project, the success of the Save the Franklin campaign in Tasmania is a testament to evolving understanding of the precious nature of waterways. Yet even this triumph was fraught: environmentalists’ argument for preservation of Tasmania’s ‘wilderness’ contained the implication that the land was without people, despite Indigenous habitation for at least 30,000 years.

In this broad-ranging survey of some of Australia’s most well-known, loved, engineered and fought over rivers, from Melbourne’s Yarra to the Alligator rivers of Kakadu, award-winning author Ian Hoskins presents a history of our complex connections to water.

A thoughtful foreword by former prime-ministerial speechwriter Don Watson laments the price rivers have paid for human industry and calls for greater connection with the waterways we rely on for our existence. In 2015, Watson’s The Bush — part memoir, part travelogue, part history — was named the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards book of the year and the Australian Independent Booksellers indie book of the year.

Cover_carbon club LR

The Carbon Club

$32.99
By

View Roaring Stories event with Marian Wilkinson

As the climate crisis threatens more extreme bushfire seasons, droughts and floods, many Australians are demanding their leaders answer the question: ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ The Carbon Club reveals the truth behind Australia’s two decades of climate inaction. It’s the story of how a loose confederation of influential climate-science sceptics, politicians and business leaders sought to control Australia’s response to the climate crisis. They shared a fear that dealing with climate change would undermine the nation’s wealth, jobs and competitive advantage – and the power of the carbon club. Central to their strategy was an international campaign to undermine climate science and the urgency of the climate crisis. The more the climate science was questioned, the more politicians lost the imperative to act.
The sustained success of the carbon club over two decades explains why Australian governments failed to deal with the challenge of climate change. But at what cost to us and the next generation? One of Australia’s most respected investigative journalists, Marian Wilkinson has tracked the rise and rise of Australia’s carbon club in brilliant detail, with extraordinary access to key players on all sides. The result is a book that is both essential and disturbing reading.

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