New premises for the Department
28 July 2017
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This second volume of Philip Dwyer's outstanding biography sheds further light on one of the great figures of history. After a meteoric rise, a coup in 1799 established Napoleon Bonaparte in government, aged just thirty. Dwyer examines the man in power, from his brooding obsessions and capacity for violence, to his ability to inspire others. One of the first modern politicians, Napoleon skilfully fashioned the image of himself that laid the foundation of the legend that endures to this day; Dwyer's ambitious work separates myth from history in its exploration of one of history's most charismatic and able leaders.
Philip Dwyer studied in Perth, Berlin and Paris, where he was a student of France's pre-eminent Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard. He has published widely on the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, and is the editor of Napoleon and Europe, the author of Talleyrand, and has co-edited Napoleon and His Empire: Europe, 1804-1814. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and is Director of the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Helen Trinca has captured the troubled life of Madeleine St John in this moving account of a remarkable writer. After the death of her mother when Madeleine was just twelve, she struggled to find her place in the world. Estranging herself from her family, and from Australia, she lived for a time in the US before moving to London where Robert Hughes, Germaine Greer, Bruce Beresford, Barry Humphries and Clive James were making their mark. In 1993, when The Women in Black was published, it became clear what a marvellous writer Madeleine St John was.
Helen Trinca has co-written two previous books: Waterfront: The Battle that Changed Australia and Better than Sex: How a Whole Generation Got Hooked on Work. She has held senior reporting and editing roles in Australian journalism, including a stint as the Australian’s London correspondent, and is currently Managing Editor of the Australian.
Helen Trinca's Madeleine: The Life of Madeleine St John is a finely written account of the deeply troubled and highly talented expatriate Australian novelist, Madeleine St John.
Trinca examines how she fled Sydney, in part to escape her father, Edward St John QC, the independently-minded Liberal MP for Warringah. Madeleine St John's crucial time in London is told with the detailed assistance of her avid supporters, Clive James, Germaine Greer, Peter Porter and Barry Humphries.
That St John is a worthy subject for Trinca's moving biography is exemplified by the fact that in 1997 her third novel, The Essence of the Thing, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In the dark days between Hitler's invasion of Poland and the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of highly unorthodox emissaries dispatched to Europe by President Franklin D. Roosevelt paved the way for America's entry into the war.
There was Sumner Welles, the buttoned-down diplomat; William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, war hero and future spymaster; Harry Hopkins, frail social worker and New Dealer; Averell Harriman, banker and railroad heir; and Wendell Willkie, the charismatic former Republican presidential candidate.
Together, they shaped the future of America, the Second World War, and the modern world.
Dr Michael Fullilove is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute in Sydney and one of Australia's leading thinkers on international affairs. A Rhodes Scholar and former prime ministerial adviser, he writes widely for publications such as the Sydney Morning Herald.
A provocative book about Australia's national identity and how it is threatened by the rise of a ruling class. Nick Cater tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since Donald Horne wrote The Lucky Country in 1964. The overriding principle of Australia’s pioneers was fairness: everybody had the right to a fair go. Today that spirit of egalitarianism is being eroded by a new breed of sophisticated Australians who claim to better understand the demands of the age. Cater takes stock of the rift dividing this presumptive ruling class from a people who refuse to be ruled.
Nick Cater is a senior editor at THE AUSTRALIAN. Born in Britain, he fell in love with the idea of Australia at an early age. He made the decision to migrate while on assignment for the BBC to covering the Australian bicentenary in 1988. Finding a job as a reporter at THE ADVERTISER, he has been a journalist at News Limited ever since. He was appointed to senior editorial positions at the DAILY TELEGRAPH and the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH before joining THE AUSTRALIAN in 2004.
Rules of Summer, is a deceptively simple story about two boys, one older and one younger, and the kind of 'rules' that might govern any relationship between close friends or siblings. Rules that are often so strange or arbitrary, they seem impossible to understand from the outside. Yet through each exquisite illustration of this nearly wordless narrative, we can enjoy wandering around an emotional landscape that is oddly familiar to us all.
Moments of humour, surreal fantasy, and the sometimes devastating ways we interact with the people we love the most, are presented in Shaun Tan's typical thought-provoking style.
Shaun Tan’s award-winning books include the highly acclaimed wordless novel The Arrival, The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, The Rabbits and Tales from Outer Suburbia.
In 2011, Shaun won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, shared an Academy Award for his work on the animated short film version of his book The Lost Thing, and was presented with the Dromkeen Medal for services to children’s literature in Australia.
Shaun has also worked as a theatre designer, as a concept artist for the films ‘Horton Hears a Who’ and Pixar’s ‘WALL-E’ and as an animator on the Academy Award-winning short film adapted from his book The Lost Thing. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have won many prizes both in Australia and internationally.
From the multiple award-winning author-illustrator of How to Heal a Broken Wing and A Bus Called Heaven, comes a powerful and poignant celebration of the small moments in life – moments in which we sense the greatest significance, moments when we can see the big picture. At 9.59 on Thursday morning, Jodie draws a duck. Just as she is about to add one final silver button to the duck's boots, her little brother takes his first step. At this exact same moment, a man buys bread, a soldier leaves home, a baby is being born... Here is a book, a story, a philosophy so simply told and yet – in true and inimitable Bob Graham style – so rich with emotion and meaning.
Bob Graham is a Kate Greenaway-winning author-illustrator who has written and illustrated many acclaimed children's picture books including How to Heal a Broken Wing and How the Sun Got to Coco's House. His 2011 title, A Bus Called Heaven, is endorsed by Amnesty International UK and was the winner of the 2012 Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award - a prize Bob has won an unprecedented six times. In 2014, Silver Buttons was awarded a prestigious Prime Minister's Literary Award in Australia. Bob lives in Melbourne.
Silver Buttons is a distillation of Graham's extraordinary sense for the things that matter in the child's world. One moment in a child's life opens onto a whole world in this stunning book.
The 'silver buttons' of the title are found in a child's drawing: a picture of a duck with a top hat, cane and 'boots of the softest leather'. And with that drawing begins a series of interconnected moments in a family's daily life.
Silver Buttons effortlessly connects the reader to a moment of life—from children playing in a room to a family, a neighbourhood, a city and beyond.
A lyrical celebration of the natural world and all that it has to offer a child.
May you, my baby, sleep softly at night, and when dawn lights the world, may you wake up to birdsong.
Part poem, part lullaby, this gentle story celebrates a baby's wonder at our beautiful world. From much-loved Australian Children's Laureate Alison Lester comes a timeless book to share and to treasure.
Alison Lester (Australian Children's Laureate, 2012-2013) is one of Australia's most popular and bestselling creators of children's books. She has won many awards, including the 2005 Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year Award, and the 2012 CBCA Eve Pownall Award. Her picture books include Running with the Horses, One Small Island, Kissed by the Moon and My Dog Bigsy – to name just a few.
Alison lives on a farm in the Victorian countryside. She spends part of each year travelling to schools around Australia, helping students and teachers develop their own stories.
28 July 2017
31 July 2017
HMAS Sydney's hunt for the German raider Emden.
When the ships of the new Royal Australian Navy made their grand entry into Sydney Harbour in October 1913, a young nation was at peace.
Under a year later Australia had gone to war in what was seen as a noble fight for king, country and Empire. Thousands of young men joined up for the adventure of having ‘a crack at the Kaiser’. And indeed the German threat to Australia was real, and very near – in the Pacific islands to our north, and in the Indian Ocean.
In the opening months of the war, a German raider, Emden, wreaked havoc on the maritime trade of the British Empire. Its battle against the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, when it finally came, was short and bloody – an emphatic first victory at sea for the fledgling Royal Australian Navy.
This is the stirring story of the perilous opening months of the Great War and the bloody sea battle that destroyed the Emden in a triumph for Australia that resounded around the world.
In the century since, many writers have been there before Mike Carlton. Most were German, some of them survivors of the battle, others later historians, and they have generally told the story well. British accounts vary in quality, from good to nonsense, and there have been some patchwork American attempts as well. Curiously, there has been very little written from an Australian point of view. This book is – in part – an attempt to remedy that, with new facts and perspectives brought into the light of day.
In a working life of more than 50 years, Mike Carlton became one of Australia's best-known media figures. He has been a radio and television news and current affairs reporter, foreign correspondent, radio host and newspaper columnist.
He was an ABC war correspondent in Vietnam in 1967 and 1970, and for three years was the ABC's Bureau Chief in Jakarta. He also reported for the ABC from London, New York and major Asian capitals. In television, he was one of the original reporters on the ABC's groundbreaking This Day Tonight in the 1970s. He also worked for Nine Network News, and A Current Affair.
In 1980 Mike turned to talk radio, first at Sydney's 2GB with a top-rating breakfast program, and then for four years in London at Newstalk 97.3FM, where he won a coveted Sony Radio Academy award in 1993 for Britain's best talk breakfast show. His radio satire on current affairs, Friday News Review, was ‘must listening’ in Australia and the UK.
In television, he reported and hosted Indonesia: A Reporter Returns, a three-part documentary for SBS; he worked on Radio 2UE as a broadcaster for many years and wrote a long-standing column for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Mike has had a life-long passion for naval history and is the author of Cruiser, First Victory and Flagship.
Peat is on the run - forced to flee for her life when she's blamed for bringing bad luck to her village. She heads for the endless marshes, where she's caught by an old healer-woman who makes Peat her apprentice and teaches her the skill of storytelling.
But a story can be a dangerous thing. It can take you out of one world and leave you stranded in another - and Peat finds herself trapped in an eerie place beyond the Silver River where time stands still. Her only friends are a 900-year-old boy and his ghost hound, plus a small and slippery sleek - a cunning creature that might sink his teeth into your leg one minute, and save your life the next.
Julie Hunt lives on a farm in southern Tasmania and is fascinated by landscapes and the stories they inspire. This interest has taken her from the rugged west coast of Ireland to the ice caves of Romania. She loves poetry, storytelling and traditional folktales, and her own stories combine other-worldly elements with down-to-earth humour. Her picture books include The Coat (illustrator Ron Brooks) and Precious Little (illustrator Gaye Chapman). She's written a three-book series called Little Else about a plucky young cowgirl (illustrator Beth Norling), and a graphic novel called KidGlovz (illustrator Dale Newman).
Introducing Candice Phee: twelve years old, hilariously honest and a little . odd. But she has a big heart, the very best of intentions and an unwavering determination to ensure everyone is happy. So she sets about trying to 'fix' all the problems of all the people [and pets] in her life.
Laugh-out-loud funny and wonderfully touching, My Life as an Alphabet is a delightful novel about an unusual girl who goes to great lengths to bring love and laughter into the lives of everyone she cares about.
Barry Jonsberg's young adult novels, The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull and It's Not All About YOU, Calma! were short-listed for the Children's Book Council Book of the Year, Older Readers, awards. It's Not All About YOU, Calma! also won the Adelaide Festival Award for Children's Literature, Dreamrider was short-listed in the NSW Premier's Awards for the Ethel Turner prize and Cassie (Girlfriend Fiction) was short-listed for the Children's Peace Literature Award. Being Here won the QLD Premier's Young Adult Book Award 2011 and was short-listed for the 2012 Prime Minister's award.
Barry lives in Darwin with his wife, children and two dogs. His books have been published in the US, the UK, France, Poland, Germany and China.
Gal and Deirdre have forgotten something. something really, really important.
When her grandmother dies, Deirdre is left alone in a crumbling block of flats. Looking out the window one misty night, she sees a boy who seems familiar. Together, he and Deirdre must discover the secret of the old building, before it collapses and the secret is lost forever . . .
A beguilingly beautiful book about what it means to love.
Cassandra Golds was born in Sydney and grew up reading Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis and Nicholas Stuart Gray over and over again. Her first book was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old. She also wrote a monthly cartoon serial, illustrated by Stephen Axelsen, for the NSW School Magazine. She sings for a hobby, has owned a map of Narnia since she was ten, and would like to be an actor if she wasn't a writer – but only if she could be in a production of Hair or Godspell.
Life is made up of three parts: in The First Third, you're embarrassed by your family; in the second, you make a family of your own; and in the end, you just embarrass the family you've made.
That's how Billy's grandmother explains it, anyway. She's given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it's his job to glue their family back together.
No pressure or anything.
Fixing his family's not going to be easy and Billy's not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what?
It's a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.
Will Kostakis was only 19 when his first novel for young adults, Loathing Lola, was released. It went on to be shortlisted for the Sakura Medal in Japan and made the official selection for the Australian Government's 2010 Get Reading! programme.
In 2005, Will won the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year for a collection of short stories.
Will spends his time working as a freelance journalist, writing and touring Australian secondary schools.
His second Young Adult novel, The First Third, was released in August 2013, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Children's Book Council of Australia Awards in the Older Readers category.
Michael’s older brother dies at the beginning of the summer he turns 15, but as its title suggests The Incredible Here and Now is a tale of wonder, not of tragedy. Presented as a series of vignettes, in the tradition of Sandra Cisneros’ Young Adult classic The House on Mango Street, it tells of Michael’s coming of age in a year which brings him grief and romance; and of the place he lives in Western Sydney where ‘those who don’t know any better drive through the neighbourhood and lock their car doors’, and those who do, flourish in its mix of cultures.
Through his perceptions, the reader becomes familiar with Michael’s community and its surroundings, the unsettled life of his family, the girl he meets at the local pool, the friends that gather in the McDonalds parking lot at night, the white Pontiac Trans Am that lights up his life like a magical talisman. Suitable for young readers from 14 years of age.
Felicity Castagna spent her youth living and travelling around Asia and North America before moving to Parramatta, where she has worked as a teacher, arts worker and editor for the past ten years. Her collection of short stories Small Indiscretions (Transit Lounge, 2011) was highly praised. She has won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Award and the Qantas Spirit of Youth Award.
When Michael's beloved older brother Dom dies in a car crash, Michael and his family are left with aching grief.
What an aptly titled novel this is: a vivid portrait of a teenage boy, his family and community in Sydney's western suburbs learning about life, death and love.
Writer Felicity Castagna exploits a series of vignettes to create a wholly satisfying, moving story: its short, sculpted chapters capture Michael's thoughts, moods and insights in quickening moments. Michael has the outward reticence of a teenage boy, but so much happening beneath the surface.
This is a splendid portrayal of a boy on the cusp.
Sam Kinnison is a geek, and he’s totally fine with that. He has his horror movies, his nerdy friends, World of Warcraft – and until Princess Leia turns up in his bedroom, worry about girls he won't. Then Sam meets Camilla. She’s beautiful, friendly and completely irrelevant to his life. Sam is determined to ignore her, except that Camilla has a plan of her own – and he seems to be a part of it! Sam believes that everything he needs to know he can learn from the movies. But perhaps he’s been watching the wrong ones.
Melissa Keil is a writer, children’s editor and compulsive book-buyer. She has lived in Minnesota, London and the Middle East, and currently resides in her hometown of Melbourne. Her debut young adult novel, Life in Outer Space, was published in 2013 – the inaugural winner of the Ampersand Prize, Hardie Grant Egmont’s initiative for debut authors. The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl was published in 2014 and was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year (Older Readers) and the Gold Inky.
It's summer in St Kilda. Fifteen-year-old Sky is looking forward to great records and nefarious activities with Nancy, her older, wilder friend. Her brother - Super Agent Gully - is on a mission to unmask the degenerate who bricked the shop window. Bill the Patriarch seems content to drink while the shop slides into bankruptcy. A poster of a mysterious girl and her connection to Luke, the tragi-hot new employee sends Sky on an exploration into the dark heart of the suburb. What begins as a toe-dip into wilder waters will end up changing the frames of Sky's existence. Love is strange. Family Rules. In between there are teenage messes, rock star spawn, violent fangirls, creepy old guys and accidents waiting to happen. If the world truly is going to hell in a hand-basket then at least the soundtrack is kicking.
Sky Martin is Girl Defective: funny, real and dark at the edges.
Simmone Howell is an award-winning short story-writer, and screenwriter. Her short film Pity24 won an AWGIE award and has screened at film festivals such as the London Australian Film Festival and Los Angeles Shorts Fest. She is published around the world and has a dedicated following of readers.
1 August 2017
Published
Published