Non-fiction

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Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future

by Professor George Williams

Decades of policy decisions have made access to higher education harder for those who need it most.

Public trust and community confidence in universities in Australia and overseas are at all-time lows.

Political sentiment has shifted. Our centres of higher learning have leapfrogged big business to become easy political targets. And it’s no surprise; the sector has scored its fair share of own goals over the handling of staff underpayment, Vice-Chancellor salaries, antisemitism, free speech and safety on campus.

Ad hoc and insufficient government funding has forced universities down the path of corporatisation, drifting away from their role as public institutions with the mission to serve the public good.

Professor George Williams, drawing on his expertise in Australian constitutional law and democracy, outlines necessary changes to Australian higher education. Universities need to claim agency, tackle the issues within their control, and replace self-interest with a genuine commitment to putting their students and communities first. Without a reset the future looks grim. Our universities need to guard against misinformation and foster the next generation; the nation requires critical thinkers, researchers and innovators more than ever.

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Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us

by Dr Richard Denniss

The sensible centre. Evidence-based policy. These are not the same. In fact, they are at odds with each other.

The scientific evidence tells us that building new gas, oil and coal mines will cause catastrophic climate damage this century. Yet politicians describe a call for the end of new mines as extreme. Likewise with online gambling, junk food advertising or incarcerating children: the evidence of harm is clear, but the sensible centre is defined not by evidence but by politics. Media reports on such issues presuppose that there are two sides and a centre to every debate, but evidence shows there is not. The political right thrives in such fear-fuelled, fact-free arenas, where traditional media and subject matter experts struggle to fight fear with facts.

In this essay, economist and Executive Director of The Australia Institute Richard Denniss, explores the contradiction between centrism and evidence that sits at the heart of democratic debate in Australia. He shows that when both major parties oppose reform then the position of the sensible centre becomes indistinguishable from blind support for keeping things as they are.

Dr Richard Denniss is a prominent Australian economist, Executive Director of The Australia Institute, author and public policy commentator, and has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think-tanks. He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the university of Newcastle and former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is a regular contributor to The Monthly and the author of several books including: Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next?

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After America: Australia and the new world order

by Dr Emma Shortis

Australian political leaders have bent the knee at the altar of American global leadership for decades, placing the ANZUS treaty at the centre of the nation’s security. AUKUS has become the latest symbol of strategic solidarity. For Australia’s governments, of whatever political persuasion, America continues to define the global rules-based order. Now that the American people have elected Donald Trump as the forty-seventh president, how will his presidency affect Australia’s foreign policy, trade, climate action and approach to human rights? More importantly, will Australia be able to act in its own interests, or will it simply defer to Trump’s idea of America?

Dr Emma Shortis draws on her long-standing research on America’s place in the world, her discussions with some of Australia’s most prominent policy-makers and commentators and her experience in America in the final days of the election campaign, to develop a picture of how the world is changing with a second Trump presidency and what choices Australia has in determining its own future.

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A Time for Bravery: What happens when Australians choose courage?

edited by Anna Chang and Alice Grundy

We are living at a critical point in history with the stubborn problems of rising inequality, rising fossil fuel production, and declining faith in democracy. This is a time for individuals, organisations, communities and our elected representatives to find the bravery we need to not just acknowledge, but address, the challenges we face.

There is bravery out there right now, in Australia and around the world. And Australian history is full of acts of individual and collective bravery ranging from the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa to the campaign for equal rights for same sex couples: from the green bans in Sydney’s Rocks to South Australia’s commitment to 100 per cent renewable energy. We have changed ourselves and the world before; if we are brave, we can do so again.

This book brings together advocates, politicians, campaigners, medical doctors, academics and a firefighter each with their answer to the question: what does bravery look like in Australia and how might it reshape our future for the better.

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Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers

by Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli

A fresh, revealing, and myth-busting guide to the ins and outs of inflation from two leading political economists.

Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. What’s more, tariffs and trade wars threaten to accelerate inflation again. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook for fighting inflation: raise interest rates, thereby creating unemployment and a recession, which will lower prices. But this simple story hides a multitude of beliefs about why prices go up and how policymakers can wrestle them back down, beliefs that are often wrong, damaging, and have little empirical basis.

Leading political economists Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli reveal why inflation really happens, challenge how we think about it, and argue for fresh approaches to combat it. With accessible and engaging commentary, and a good dose of humor, Blyth and Fraccaroli bring the complexities of economic policy and inflation indices down to earth.

Policymakers around the world may have pulled off a so-called “soft landing,” but Inflation warns they must update their thinking. Now tariffs, climate shocks, demographic change, geopolitical tensions, and politicians promising to upend the global order are all combining to create a more inflationary future, making a new paradigm for understanding inflation urgently necessary. Astute, timely, and engaging, Inflation is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the forces shaping our economy and politics.

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Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy

by Professor Laleh Khalili

An eye-opening survey of how extractive industries power globalisation – and how to fight back

A Financial Times ‘What to read in 2025’ Book

‘Essential reading’ Françoise Vergès, author of A Decolonial Feminism

‘Profound and compelling … A book that I couldn’t put down’ Adam Hanieh, author of Crude Capitalism

Whether it’s pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and lucrative speculation are the hallmarks of our era, but the backbone of globalisation is still low-cost labour and rapacious corporate control. Extractive capitalism is what made – and is still making – our unequal world.

Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world’s most voracious industries.

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The World Under Capitalism: Observations on Economics, Politics, History, and Culture

by Branko Milanovic

Branko Milanovic is best known as one of the world’s leading experts on global inequality. But he is also an unusually wide-ranging and penetrating commentator on subjects across economics and beyond, in politics, history, and culture. This book brings together his most searching, provocative, and entertaining articles of recent years, providing an abundance of vital insights into the evolution and dynamics of the world under capitalism.

The volume features important ideas about the struggle to achieve a more equal and prosperous world against not only the predictable forces of deregulation and distraction but new ideas about shrinking the economy to protect the environment. Further from Milanovic’s speciality, readers will find an extraordinary array of reflections on subjects including migration, globalization, the politics and economics of Russia and China, the crisis of liberal democracy, economic and literary history, and the intellectual giants of economics. The pieces are united by Milanovic’s distinctive voice – humane, wry, and realistic – and by remarkable erudition worn lightly whether the topic is the fall of Constantinople, Jane Austen, or the mores of contemporary soccer.

No one can fail to learn from the book, while the sparkling prose, unexpected observations, and sheer importance of the subjects at hand make it a compelling read from start to finish.

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Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World

by John Cassidy

A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics

At a time when we are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological crisis and artificial intelligence.

John Cassidy adopts a bold new approach: he tells the story through the eyes of the system’s critics. From eighteenth-century weavers who rebelled against early factory automation to Eric Williams’s paradigm-changing work on slavery and capitalism, to the Latin American dependistas, the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, this absorbing narrative traverses the globe. It looks at familiar figures – Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polanyi – from a fresh perspective, but also focuses on many less familiar, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist whose work influenced Marx; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labour union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism; and J. C. Kumarappa, the Indian exponent of Gandhian economics.

Blending biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.

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The Right Hand: Conversations with the chiefs of staff to the world’s most powerful people

by Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks

We all know the names: Jacinda Ardern, Kamala Harris, Tony Blair, Justin Trudeau, John Howard, Sanna Marin, Nelson Mandela and Julia Gillard. But what about the people standing just behind them?

In The Right Hand, Missing Perspectives founder Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks sits down with the chiefs of staff to some of the most defining presidents and prime ministers of our time.

The stories they share are nothing short of extraordinary:
– Supporting Nelson Mandela as he emerged from prison and stepped into power.
– Being sent home from Balmoral by the Queen.
– Fielding offers of help from Vladimir Putin on the day of the September 11 attacks.
– Being shown projected death tolls in the Covid briefing room.
– Boarding a blacked-out train into Kyiv under the cover of night at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
– Aiding Kamala Harris during one of the most anticipated elections in history – and then navigating a devastating loss.

Also, Justin Trudeau doesn’t drink coffee.

In this book, some of the world’s most powerful chiefs of staff open up about leadership, loyalty, power and pressure.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be in the highest corridors of power, this is your all-access pass.

Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders

by Bob Brown

Stories of courage and conviction from the environmental frontline

‘This book is a powerful reminder that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice only if brave people make the effort to bend it.’ —Geraldine Brooks

For half a century, Bob Brown has been standing up to the powerful interests who would put profit before planet.

In Defiance, he draws on this experience to inspire a new generation of individual and collective action. He reflects on the people and places that have shaped him, celebrates the irreplaceable beauty and value of nature and shares what motivates him to keep fighting. He considers the challenges facing nature’s defenders – hostile corporate lobbyists, vilification in the press, the powerful pull of consumerism – and shows how courage, persistence and community can defeat them all.

Told with Brown’s trademark warmth and humour, these stories will galvanise, uplift and inspire.

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Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty

by Andrew Fowler

The spectacular fallout from Australia’s duplicitous AUKUS deal

Like all military acquisition programs worth billions of dollars, Australia’s decision to buy a new submarine fleet was expected to be a torturous process. But no one could have predicted the trail of wreckage it left behind, from the boulevards of Paris to the dockyards of Adelaide, as deep inside the Australian Government a secret group conspired to overthrow the winning French bid. In this tale of treachery and intrigue, Andrew Fowler exposes the lies and deception that so outraged the President of France. Interviewing many of the main people involved and talking to sources in Paris, London, Washington and Canberra, Fowler pieces together the plot to sink the French and switch to a nuclear-powered US submarine – a botched operation that severely compromised Australia’s ability to defend itself.

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Woodside vs The Planet: How a Company Captured a Country

by Marian Wilkinson

Why is Australia doubling down on fossil fuels?

The world may have committed at Paris to hold back dangerous climate change, but Australia’s fossil-fuel giant Woodside is doubling down: it has bold new plans to keep producing gas out to 2070. Support from the major parties is locked in, so something has to give.

This is a story of power and influence, pollution and protest. How does one company capture a country? How convincing is Woodside’s argument that gas is a necessary transition fuel, as the world decarbonises? And what is the new “energy realism” narrative being pushed by Trump’s White House?

In this engrossing essay, Marian Wilkinson reveals the ways of corporate power and investigates the new face of resistance and disruption. The stakes could not be higher.

“The gas companies and the Labor governments in WA and Canberra had refined their defence: the gas industry was helping the world decarbonise, curbing its emissions and providing energy security. It sounded like the planet could hardly have a better friend than Australia’s LNG industry and companies like Woodside.” —Marian Wilkinson, Woodside vs the Planet

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Losing It: Can We Stop Violence Against Women and Children?

by Jess Hill

What will it take to stop gendered violence?

What went wrong? Australian governments promised to end violence against women and children in a single generation. Instead, it is escalating: men have been murdering women at an increased rate, coercive control and sexual violence are becoming more complex and severe, and we see a marked rise in youth-on-youth sexual assault. Why?

In Losing It, Jess Hill investigates Australia’s National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children to find out what’s working and what’s not – and what we can do to turn things around. This compassionate, groundbreaking essay lifts the lid on a national crisis.

“Each time a woman or child was murdered, I felt a gnawing sense of urgency. If it’s everybody’s responsibility to prevent violence, where does the buck stop?” – Jess Hill, Losing It

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Human/Nature: On life in a wild world

by Jane Rawson

Several years ago, Jane Rawson packed up her beloved inner-city home and moved to the bush. Scared about what climate change would do to the big city, and keen to meet more animals, she found a new home in a cottage in the Huon Valley. But in a place where nature never really leaves you alone, she had to confront her uncomfortable relationship with the outdoors.

A lyrical work of creative nonfiction, Human/Nature is an exploration of how and why we think about the natural world the way we do. If you’ve ever asked yourself whether humans are ruining nature, whether there’s a better way for us to belong, or whether it’s possible to love both the environment and your cat, you’re not alone. This exquisite, contemplative book is for anyone who has ever wondered where they fit in the natural world.

‘In this funny, provocative and profoundly moving book, Jane Rawson brilliantly unravels the myths about the boundaries of the human and the non-human, the natural and the unnatural, and love and death that shape our thinking about not just the environment, but our history and the future that is already overtaking us. Read it: it’s utterly marvellous.’ – James Bradley, author of Deep Water

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Nature’s Last Dance: Tales of wonder in an age of extinction

by Natalie Kyriacou

Amidst the tragedy of wild species extinction lies a hidden world of survival and wonder. Conservationists are locked in a high-stakes battle with the ghost of a drug lord and his herd of hippos. Scientists are fighting to save a flightless bird that romances rocks. Unconventional animals are upending 21st century beauty standards, and financiers are betting on whale poo to make its debut on Wall Street.

This is a story of survival and extinction, of life and death, of curiosity and perversion, of unimaginable joy and harrowing sorrow.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly unfolding mass extinction event, Nature’s Last Dance takes readers across hunting grounds, through jungles and oceans, inside communities, through courtrooms, and into the heart of battles to survive against all odds.

Award-winning environmentalist Natalie Kyriacou confronts the extinction crisis with courage and curiosity, charting a new course for nature and showing us why it is so worth fighting for.

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Dingo: The true story of Australia’s most maligned native animal

by Roland Breckwoldt

Australia’s dingoes are increasingly under threat of extinction after two centuries of mythmaking, bounties and poisoning. This is the real story of the dingo.

Dingoes have been the scapegoat for sheep farmers’ financial struggles since the early colonial years. Governments have responded with bounties for killing dingoes, baiting programs, and thousands of kilometres of fences. The livestock industry claims dingoes are not genuine native animals, just feral domestic dogs. Dangerous interactions with tourists at campsites keep negative stories about dingoes in the news.

But the tide is turning. Science shows there’s little interbreeding with domestic dogs, and that dingoes play an integral role in maintaining ecological balance, including by keeping kangaroos and wild pigs and goats in check. Now dingo numbers are perilously low in many areas. Will Australia be willing to protect the dingo before it’s too late?

Roland Breckwoldt unravels the myths and prejudices to tell the true story of an Australian icon.

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Conspiracy Nation: Exposing the dangerous world of Australian conspiracy theories

by Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson

Through new investigations and first-hand accounts, Conspiracy Nation takes readers to the rallies, homes, courtrooms, secret chat rooms and $2000 Byron Bay luxury retreats where Australia’s conspiracy theories spread.

‘There are microchips in vaccines’; ‘5G spreads COVID-19’; ‘the Australian government is hiding a list of powerful predators’ – Conspiracy Nation exposes the world of Australian conspiracy theories, their history, appeal and political influence. It’s easy to dismiss these as fringe concerns or imported concepts, but conspiratorial ideas are gaining traction with everyday Australians, and being wielded by those in power.

In this boots-on-the-ground report, journalists Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson meet the people dedicated to living and spreading these ideas, those who have been left reeling by their impact, and the ones who are fighting back.

From Port Arthur and QAnon, to the rise of ‘wellness’ influencers and ‘sovereign citizen’ gurus, to the delusions that inspired the Wieambilla murders, Bogle and Wilson show the devastating consequences of unchecked lies and radicalisation, and make a compelling case that by ignoring the looming threat of conspiratorial thinking, we put our community at risk.

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We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite

by Musa al-Gharbi

Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is “wokeness” and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.

We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi’s point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.

A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite’s self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.

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Equality: What It Means and Why It Matters

by Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel

Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian democracy

by Clare Wright

Winner, The Australian Political Book of the Year, 2025

In this engaging narrative, Wright follows the story of petitions on bark created by the Yirrkala community in Arnhem Land in 1963, protesting bauxite mining on traditional lands.

In 1963-a year of race riots in the United States and explosive agitation for civil rights worldwide-the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory were yet to be recognised as full adults. Almost to a person, they were classed as wards of the state, unacknowledged as having any ownership over the land on which they had lived for tens of thousands of years.

In 1975 Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand into the palm of Gurindji Elder Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the granting of deeds to his ancestral country-and the land rights movement was unstoppable. That journey towards legal recognition of native title started in 1963 with the Yirrkala Bark Petitions- Naku Dharuk.

The background was a four-cornered contest for mastery of the land and its resources between the Menzies government, the mining industry, the Methodist Church and the Yolngu peopleof northeast Arnhem Land, under whose country was discovered a blanket of bauxite.

Throughout the tumultuous year of 1963, leaders of the Yolngu clans worked with white allies on the unprecedented political strategy that culminated in the presentation of four Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. It was a key moment in the formation of a uniquely Indigenous engagement with Australian politics.

This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia’s first peoples, in all its continuing vigour.

Clare Wright’s groundbreaking Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (workers’ rights) and continued with You Daughters of Freedom (women’s rights). After a decade of research and community consultation, it concludes, fittingly, with a fascinating and compulsively readable account of a momentous but little-known episode in our shared political history.

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The Australian Wars: The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation

edited by Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds

For the first time, The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into connection with its reverberations in the present.
It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars.

The Australian Wars was conceived by Rachel Perkins following her award-winning documentary series produced by Blackfella Films for SBS and edited along with Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds. This is the first book to tell the story of the continental sweep of massacres, guerilla warfare, resistance and the contests of firearms and traditional Aboriginal weaponry as Indigenous nations resisted colonial occupation of their lands, territory by territory. At stake was the sovereignty of an entire country.

Black and white writers tell the stories of these battles across three crucial time periods, and all the states and territories. It notes the lands that were unconquered, as well as the role of disease, weapons and tactics, and the story of women on the frontier.

This history is still alive in those descendants who carry the stories of their ancestors. The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into the present so that we might know the truth of the origins of this nation.

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Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia

by Santilla Chingaipe

The story of Australia’s Black convicts has been all but erased from our history. In recovering their lives, Santilla Chingaipe offers a fresh understanding of this fatal shore, showing how empire, slavery, race and memory have shaped our nation.

‘The defining read of the decade. This is a work of global significance.’ Meanjin

On the First Fleet of 1788, at least 15 convicts were of African descent. By 1840 the number had risen to almost 500. Among them were David Stuurman, a revered South African chief transported for anti-colonial insurrection; John Caesar, who became Australia’s first bushranger; Billy Blue, the stylishly dressed ferryman who gave his name to Sydney’s Blues Point; and William Cuffay, a prominent London Chartist who led the development of Australia’s labour movement. Two of the youngest were cousins from Mauritius—girls aged just 9 and 12—sentenced over a failed attempt to poison their mistress.

But although some of these lives were documented and their likenesses hang in places like the National Portrait Gallery, even their descendants are often unaware of their existence.

By uncovering lives whitewashed out of our history, in stories spanning Africa, the Americas and Europe, Black Convicts also traces Australia’s hidden links to slavery, which both powered the British Empire and inspired the convict system itself. Situating European settlement in its global context, Chingaipe shows that the injustice of dispossession was driven by the engine of labour exploitation. Black Convicts will change the way we think about who we are.

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No Power Greater: A History of Union Action in Australia

by Liam Byrne

How Australian unions shaped modern Australian society

Unions are making a comeback. Labour disputes around the world have hit the headlines as unions take action to challenge inequality. But while media coverage has increased, understanding of unions has not.

In this lively history of Australian unionism Liam Byrne seeks to illuminate what unionism means, exploring why successive generations of working people organised unions and nurtured them for future generations. Foregrounding the pioneering efforts of women workers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, culturally and linguistically diverse workers, and LGBTIQA+ workers as central to the union story today, Byrne uses case studies of worker action and struggle to better understand the lived reality of unionism, its challenges, and its contribution to Australian life.

No Power Greater is the compelling story of the acts of rebellion and solidarity that have shaped Australia’s past and shows that unions are far from history.

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Melanesia: Travels in Black Oceania

by Hamish McDonald

An immersive journey through the tumultuous past and fascinating present of Australia’s nearest neighbours

“We are the original people of the region … This is a black region, it’s not a white region.”—Ralph Regenvanu, Ni-Vanuatu anthropologist and politician

Stretching from Fiji in the east to New Guinea in the west, Melanesia is astonishingly diverse. Its islands are home to some 1200 language groups, many of them still isolated from the outside world. In Australia, this complex region tends to make the news only in times of crisis: military coups in Fiji, Kanak unrest in New Caledonia, rioting in Solomon Islands. Melanesia offers readers a deeper insight into the people and places behind these headlines, combining travelogue, history and astute political analysis.

By land and sea, Hamish McDonald travels from one end of Melanesia to the other. Speaking with locals from all walks of life, he uncovers the histories, values, aspirations and tensions that have shaped their communities. He examines the impact of outsiders: the Indians recruited to work in Fiji; the white “blackbirders” who kidnapped Islanders for the Australian cane fields; the Americans during World War II; the Indonesians in New Guinea. And he considers the big changes unfolding today, as shifting demographics and the growing influence of China produce a new balance of power across the region.

Vividly written, Melanesia is essential reading for anyone looking to understand this fascinating part of the world and its growing international significance.

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The Shortest History of the United States of America

by Don Watson

From revolution to civil rights, Hollywood and the Gilded Age.

The extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes.

When Britain’s thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united.

In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out throughits history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

This is a story full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.

‘These were indeed strange times. Yet the forces at work in them were not new. Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.’—Don Watson, The Shortest History of the United States of America

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The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding

by Osita Nwanevu

Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic attitudes across the political spectrum, journalist Osita Nwanevu has spent the Trump era examining the very meaning of democracy in search of answers to questions many have asked in the wake of the 2024 election: Are our institutions fundamentally broken? How can a country so divided govern itself? Does democracy even work as well as we believe?

The Right of the People offers us challenging answers: while democracy remains vital, American democracy is an illusion we must make real by transforming not only our political institutions but the American economy. In a text that spans democratic theory, the American Founding, our aging political system, and the dizzying inequalities of our new Gilded Age, Nwanevu makes a visionary case for a political and economic agenda to fulfill the promise of American democracy and revive faith in the American project.

“Nearly two hundred fifty years ago, the men who founded America made a fundamental break not just from their old country but from the past—casting off an order that had subjugated them with worn and weak ideas for the promise of true self-governance and greater prosperity in a new republic,” Nwanevu writes. “With exactly their sense of purpose and even higher, more righteous ambitions for America than they themselves had, we should do the same now⁠—work as hard as we can in the decades ahead to ‘institute new Government’ for the benefit of all and not just the few.”

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Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle For Global Justice

by Geoffrey Robertson KC

A freshly updated version of the definitive book on human rights law, now with a new chapter on war crimes in Ukraine and the continuing war in Gaza.

In a newly updated edition of Crimes Against Humanity, Geoffrey Robertson QC explains why we must hold political and military leaders accountable for genocide, torture and mass murder. He shows how human rights standards can be enforced against cruel governments, armies and multi-national corporations. This seminal work contains a critical perspective on events such as the invasion of Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the killings in Darfur, the death of Milosevic and the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Cautiously optimistic about ending impunity, but unsparingly critical of diplomats, politicians, Bush lawyers and others who evade international rules, this book will provide further guidance to a movement which aims to make justice predominant in world affairs.

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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, an urgent and necessary reckoning with what it means to live in the West today.

As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West would be a place of freedom and justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the various Wars on Terror, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means – as a citizen of the US, as a father – to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date. It’s a heartfelt breakup letter with the West, a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the world, in family rooms, on university campuses, on city streets. This book is for everyone who wants something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

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Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes from the genocide in Gaza

by Dr Ezzideen Shehab

A powerful eyewitness account of the genocide in Gaza by an extraordinary young writer and general physician.

Five days before 7 October 2023 a young Palestinian doctor returns to Gaza, having completed his medical studies abroad. His family gathers to celebrate his achievements and welcome him home. On 11 October forty-two members of his extended family are killed in an airstrike, and thus begins his incredible story of survival and service to his people.

Throughout it all, Dr Shehab posts regular updates on the situation for his patients and for his people. His clarity and humanity shine bright as he describes those he treats, and his incomprehension at the unfolding genocide and the silence of the world in the face of the ongoing atrocities.

‘Diary of a Young Doctor’ is an unforgettable testimony of one of the most shameful periods in recent history.

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Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

by Peter Beinart

A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time

In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?

Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future.

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She Shapes History: Guided Walks and Stories About Great Australian Women

by Sita Sargeant

She Shapes History is a series of walking tours and vignettes that celebrate the accomplishments of women who made an impact on the small towns and big cities of Australia. Author Sita Sargeant has travelled the country to uncover tales of women who have so often been left out of the history books, to reframe well-known stories and let readers see the amazing histories around every corner of their own hometown or city.

The book features 30 cities and towns from across the country; from Coober Pedy to Hobart, Hahndorf to Rockhampton, and all of the major cities in between, each place has its own indelible identity, and a myriad women who left their mark there. Whether it’s the underworld queens who ran Kings Cross, the businesswoman of African heritage and single mother of four who became the first recorded woman to vote in an Australian election, or the pioneering activist who founded Meals on Wheels (and just happened to be in a wheelchair), there are countless funny, heartbreaking, inspiring, and eye-opening stories of women who lived and thrived in these disparate and often challenging landscapes. There are 18 city walks included, one for each of the major cities, with easy-to-follow maps with stops that relay stories of women who affected change there. The book will have a fun and engaging scrapbook feel, with breakouts and vignettes that highlight amazing women that have helped to shape history.

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Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940

edited by Elle Freak, Tracey Lock and Wayne Tunnicliffe 

This book charts the vital role of Australian women artists in the development of international modernism. Belonging to an unprecedented wave of women who travelled to Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, they prevailed against centuries of social constraints – often making great sacrifices and experiencing prejudice – to pursue professional careers on an international stage.

Lavish colour illustrations enrich a collection of long and short-form essays that offer detailed insights into the works of art. Also discussed are the many obstacles these women overcame, including their exclusion from key exhibiting and training opportunities, while highlighting the extensive women’s networks they built and their connections to the women’s suffrage movement. New and expanded understandings of modern art movements are revealed and encompass the role of long overlooked themes such as faith, feeling and emotion.

Featuring both celebrated and recently rediscovered paintings, sculpture, prints and ceramics, this is the first book to comprehensively reclaim the international contributions of Australian women. No longer regarded as mere ‘messenger girls,’ these travelling artists are recognised as pivotal figures in the transmission of new ideas back to Australia and beyond during a time of rapid social and cultural change.

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Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam and the Painting That Changed a Nation

by Tom McIlroy

An iconic American painting. An Australian controversy. Where art and politics, myth-making and modernism intersect, there is Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock. Now in the eye-opening Blue Poles book, journalist Tom McIlroy uncovers the fascinating story of the painter, the politics, and the national scandal that followed.

The captivating story behind the iconic Blue Poles – the painter, the process, the patronage, the politics and the national scandal.

In 1973, Blue Poles, the iconic painting by America’s great abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, was acquired by the Australian government for A$1.4 million. This record-setting price for an artwork sparked a media sensation and controversy both in Australia and the United States.

Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam and the painting that changed a nation details how Jackson Pollock rose to fame, the negotiations that led to the artwork’s move to the National Gallery of Australia, and the many successes and turbulent turns in between.

This story covers Pollock’s entree into an art circle which included renowned patron Peggy Guggenheim, as well as his relationship with artist Lee Krasner, and the larger-than-life accounts that surrounded his artistic practice – including questions around the creation of Blue Poles.

It was Gough Whitlam’s commitment to the arts and cultural capital that would see the painting move to another continent, where the media feasted on stories of its cost and brows were raised over its merit. The value of Blue Poles to the Australian art and museum landscape was yet to be foreseen.

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