See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence by Jess Hill

$31.50 AUD

Category: Social Issues

WINNER OF THE 2020 STELLA PRIZE At the office of Safe Steps, Victoria's dedicated 24/7 family violence response call centre, phone counsellors receive a call every three minutes. Many women are repeat callers- on average, they will go back to an abusive partner eight times before leaving for good. 'You must get so frustrated when you think a woman's ready to leave and then she decides to go back,? I say. 'No,' replies one phone counsellor, pointedly. 'I'm frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.' Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates- in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen - one in six - have been abused by an intimate partner. In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest - and most intimate - ways imaginable. She asks- What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like? What emerges is not only a searing investigation of the violence so many women experience, but a dissection of how that violence can be enabled and reinforced by the judicial system we trust to protect us. Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence. ...Show more

Humankind: A New Hopeful History of Human Nature by Rutger Bregman

$31.50 AUD

Category: Social Issues

A Guardian Book to Look Out For in 2020 'Humankind challenged me and made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari From 'the folk hero of Davos', Fox News antagonist and author of the international bestseller Utopia for Realists comes a radical history of our innate capacity for kin dness. It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. Providing a new historical perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history, Humankind makes a new argument- that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. When we think the worst of others, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics too. In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think o and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature. ...Show more

Braiding Sweetgrass - Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

$21.99 AUD

Category: History

An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing.   As a botanist and professor of plant ecol ogy, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return. ...Show more

Rebel Women by Rosalind Miles

$31.50 AUD

Category: History

More than twenty-five years ago The Women's History of the World, by the brilliant historian, journalist and academic, Rosalind Miles, burst upon the world. It was instantly lauded and applauded by everyone from A.S. Byatt ('Witty, balanced, inexorable . . . and splendid') to the Washington Post ('an in spiration'). The book went on to be a longstanding Sunday Times bestseller, was translated into almost 40 foreign languages and became a New York Times bestseller. Now it is time for Rebel Women: All you wanted to know about women's history from 1800 to the modern day. This is history as made by women: famous, infamous and little known, whose actions changed the course of the world. We begin with the French Revolution when one woman took on the Fraternite of man, then it's off to America to round up the other rebels who paved the way, fighting side by side for freedom with their men. In Australia we celebrate a mass mooning by female convicts of Queen Victoria's Vice-Regent and his lady wife, and the dogged, often desperate courage of all the women who dared to think that they could change the world. Along the way we highlight the age-old cruelties and injustices suffered by women worldwide which the modern age has done little to challenge or change like forced marriage and femicide, while recording every milestone in the long march of women towards equality and the full life. In a colourful pageant of astonishing women, we track through to the birth of modern womanhood with the one small question of the Swinging Sixties which changed everything: Betty Friedan's "Is This all?" Women in space, women in jail, women in-skirts, women in burkas, women in power - all female life is there. We end in the current day - breathless but thrilled with what women can and have and will do. Brave, brilliant, unrivalled in its wit and erudition, Rebel Women is a hugely readable book. ...Show more

Europe: The First 100 Million Years by Tim Flannery

$23.99 AUD

Category: History

It is hard to overstate just how unusual Europe was towards the end of the age of the dinosaurs. It was a dynamic island arc whose individual landmasses were made up of diverse geological types, including ancient continental fragments, raised segments of oceanic crust, and land newly minted by volcanic activity. Yet even at this early stage Europe was exerting a disproportionate influence on the world. About 100 million years ago, the interaction of three continents-Asia, North America and Africa-formed the tropical island archipelago that would become the Europe of today, a place of exceptional diversity, rapid change and high energy. Europe- The First 100 Million Yearsis full of surprises. Over the millennia Europe has received countless immigrant species and transformed them. It is where the first coral reefs formed. It was once home to some of the world's largest elephants. And it played a vital role in the evolution of our own species. When the first modern humans arrived in Europe 40,000 years ago, they began to exert an astonishing influence on the continent's flora and fauna, and now, Europeans lead the way in wildlife restoration-there are more wolves in Europe today than in the USA. This enthralling ecological history is more than the story of Europe and the Europeans, it will change our understanding of life itself. ...Show more

Red Sea Spies by Raffi BERG

$28.50 AUD

Category: History

THE TRUE STORY THAT INSPIRED THE NETFLIX FILM THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT.    In the early 1980s on a remote part of the Sudanese coast, a new luxury holiday resort opened for business. Catering for divers, it attracted guests from around the world. Little did the holidaymakers know that the sta ff were undercover spies, working for the Mossad - the Israeli secret service.    Providing a front for covert night-time activities, the holiday village allowed the agents to carry out an operation unlike any seen before. What began with one cryptic message pleading for help, turned into the secret evacuation of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who had been languishing in refugee camps, and the spiriting of them to Israel.     Written in collaboration with operatives involved in the mission, endorsed as the definitive account and including an afterword from the commander who went on to become the head of the Mossad, this is the complete, never-before-heard, gripping tale of a top-secret and often hazardous operation. ...Show more

The Address Book: What Our Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Power, Race and Wealth by Deirdre Mask

$32.99 AUD

Category: History

An exuberant work of popular history: why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or serve the powerful. Starting with a simple question, 'what do street addresses do?', Deirdre Mask travels the world and back in time to work out how we describe where we live and what that says abou t us. From the chronological numbers of Tokyo to the naming of Bobby Sands Street in Iran, she explores how our address - or lack of one - expresses our politics, culture and technology. It affects our health and wealth, and it can even affect the working of our brains.From Ancient Rome to Kolkata today, from cholera epidemics to tax hungry monarchs, Mask discovers the different ways street names are created, celebrated, and in some cases, banned. Filled with fascinating people and histories, this incisive, entertaining book shows how addresses are about identity, class and race. But most of all they are about power: the power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't, and why. ...Show more

Upheaval - How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond

$23.99 AUD

Category: History

In his landmark international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now in the third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis. Diamond’s analysis of the ways in which half a dozen modern countries that he knows well – Finland, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, Germany and Australia – have coped with crises, is shot through with reflections on the fragility of democracy. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Exhibiting the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics and anthropology that marks all Diamond's work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet. ...Show more

A History of Scotland by Neil Oliver

$23.99 AUD

Category: History

The dramatic story of Scotland - by charismatic television historian, Neil Oliver. Scotland is one of the oldest countries in the world with a vivid and diverse past. Yet the stories and figures that dominate Scottish history - tales of failure, submission, thwarted ambition and tragedy - often badly se rve this great nation, overshadowing the rich tapestry of her intricate past. Historian Neil Oliver presents a compelling new portrait of Scottish history, peppered with action, high drama and centuries of turbulence that have helped to shape modern Scotland. Along the way, he takes in iconic landmarks and historic architecture; debunks myths surrounding Scotland's famous sons; recalls forgotten battles; charts the growth of patriotism; and explores recent political developments, capturing Scotland's sense of identity and celebrating her place in the wider world. ...Show more

An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent by Owen Matthews

$21.99 AUD

Category: History

'The most formidable spy in history' IAN FLEMING 'His work was impeccable' KIM PHILBY 'The spy to end spies' JOHN LE CARR Born of a German father and a Russian mother, Richard Sorge moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. In the years leading up to and during the Second World Wa r, he became a fanatical communist o and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy. Combining charm with ruthless manipulation, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society. His intelligence proved pivotal to the Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war itself. Drawing on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives, this is a major biography of one of the greatest spies who ever lived. ...Show more

Beat Gender Bias by Karen Morley

$28.45 AUD

Category: Social Issues

Burn It Down! - Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution by Breanne Fahs

$37.99 AUD

Category: Social Issues

In this landmark collection spanning three centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto raging and wanting, quarreling and provocative has always been central to feminism, and it's the angry, brash feminism we need now. Collecting over 75 manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Among this quarrelsome sisterhood, you'll find- Breanne Fahs argues that we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness their insistence that we have to act now, that we must face this, that the bleeding edge of rage and defiance is where new ideas are born. ...Show more