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Biography

Large 9781760291143

Walking Free: The Extraordinary True Story by Munjed Al Muderis; Patrick Weaver (As told to)

$23.00 AUD

Available Stock:
0

Category: Biography

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a young surgical resident working in Baghdad when a squad of Military Police marched into the operating theater and ordered the surgical team to mutilate the ears of three busloads of army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed in front of his staff. Munjed's choices were stark--comply and breach the medical oath "do no harm," refuse and face certain death, or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia, where he boarded a filthy, overcrowded refugee boat, bound for Australia. Like his fellow passengers, he hoped for a new life, free from fear and oppression, but for 10 months he was incarcerated in what became known as the worst of the refugee camps, Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia. There he was known only by a number, locked in solitary confinement and repeatedly told to go back to Iraq. On August 26, 2000, Munjed was finally freed. Now, 14 years later, he is one of the world's leading osseointegration surgeons, transforming the lives of amputees with a pioneering technique that allows them to walk again. Walking Free is Munjed's extraordinary account of his journey from the brutality of Saddam Hussein's Iraq to a new life in Australia and a remarkable career at the forefront of medicine. ...Show more

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Large 9780241491515

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

$65.00 AUD

Available Stock:
72

Category: Political

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of th e first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorises Operation Neptune Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective — the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organiser tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of hope and change and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.       ...Show more

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Large 9781408705124

To The End Of The World - Travels with Oscar Wilde by Rupert Everett

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
39

Category: General

The extraordinary and outrageous memoir from award-winning writer and actor Rupert Everett. They say that sometimes ghosts don't realise they're dead and wander around screaming because no one is paying them any attention. Well, in show business you may have been dead five years before you finally twig . You howl around the corridors of power while the elect march straight through. Then one day you catch yourself in a mirror and there is nothing looking back. In his highly anticipated third memoir, Rupert Everett tells the story of how he set out to make a film of Oscar Wilde's last days, and how that ten-year quest almost destroyed him. (And everyone else.) Travelling across Europe for the film, he weaves in extraordinary tales from his past, remembering wild times, freak encounters and lost friends. There are celebrities, of course. But we also meet glamorous but doomed Aunt Peta, who introduces Rupert (aged three) to the joys of make-up. In '90s Paris, his great friend Lychee burns bright, and is gone. While in '70s London, a 'weirdly tall, beyond size zero' teenage Rupert is expelled from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Unflinchingly honest and hugely entertaining, To the End of the World offers a unique insight into the 'snakes and ladders' of filmmaking. It is also a soulful and thought-provoking autobiography from one of our best-loved and most talented actors and writers. ...Show more

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Large 9781529328097

The Windsor Diaries: 1940-45 by Alathea Fitzalan Howard

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
33

Category: Historical

The Windsor Diaries are the never-before-seen diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard, who lived alongside the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret at Windsor Castle during the Second World War. Alathea's home life was an unhappy one. Her parents had separated and so during the war she was sent to live wi th her grandfather, Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent, at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park. There Alathea found the affection and harmony she craved as she became a close friend of the two princesses, visiting them often at Windsor Castle, enjoying parties, balls, cinema evenings, picnics and celebrations with the Royal Family and other members of the Court. Alathea's diary became her constant companion during these years as day by day she recorded every intimate detail of life with the young Princesses, often with their governess Crawfie, or with the King and Queen. Written from the ages of sixteen to twenty-two, she captures the tight-knit, happy bonds between the Royal Family, as well as the aspirations and anxieties, sometimes extreme, of her own teenage mind. These unique diaries give us a bird's eye view of Royal wartime life with all of Alathea's honest, yet affectionate judgments and observations - as well as a candid and vivid portrait of the young Princess Elizabeth, known to Alathea as 'Lilibet', a warm, self-contained girl, already falling for her handsome prince Philip, and facing her ultimate destiny: the Crown. ...Show more

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Large temp img

English Pastoral: An Inheritance - The Sunday Times bestseller from the author of The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
29

Category: General

The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm 'A beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape.' - Nigel Slater 'Just about perfect.' - Wendell Berry James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. But this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.   ...Show more

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Large 9781922330277

One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995 by Helen Garner

$30.00 AUD

Available Stock:
25

Category: Literary

Helen Garner's second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the bombshell that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in l ove and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another--how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both thrilling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work.   ...Show more

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Large 9781473699038

Maiden Voyages - Women and the Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel by Siân Evans

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
25

Category: Historical

A VIVID PORTRAIT OF WOMEN'S LIVES DURING THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRANSATLANTIC TRAVEL Before convenient air travel, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners and never more so than in the glory days of the interwar years. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women. Some trav elled for leisure, some for work; others to find a new life, marriage, to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. Their stories have remained largely untold - until now. Maiden Voyages is a fascinating portrait of these women, and their lives on board magnificent ocean liners as they sailed between the old and the new worlds. The ocean liner was a microcosm of contemporary society, divided by class: from the luxury of the upper deck, playground for the rich and famous, to the cramped conditions of steerage or third class travel. These iconic liners were filled with women of all ages, classes and backgrounds: celebrities and refugees, migrants and millionairesses, aristocrats and crew members. Full of incredible gossip, stories and intrigue, Maiden Voyages has a diverse cast of inspiring women - from A-listers like Josephine Baker, a dancer from St Louis who found fame in Paris, Marlene Dietrich and Wallis Simpson, Violet 'the unsinkable' Jessop, a crew member who survived the sinking of the Titanic, and entrepreneur Sibyl Colefax, a pioneering interior designer. Whichever direction they were travelling, whatever hopes they entertained, they were all under the spell of life at sea, a spell which would only break when they went ashore. Maiden Voyages is a compelling and highly entertaining account of life on board: part dream factory, part place of work, independence and escape - always moving. ...Show more

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Large 9781409189114

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
19

Category: General

'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant ride, it's in those wildflowers dancing on their way to the shared grave of two men in love, and it's in caring for that young man who just needed information without judgement.' In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Corker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. And in doing so, Ruth's own life changes forever. As word spreads in the community that she is the only person willing to help the young men afflicted by the growing AIDS crisis, Ruth goes from being an ordinary young mother to an accidental activist. Forging deep friendships with the men she helps, Ruth works to find them housing and jobs, and then funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She prepares and delivers meals to 'her guys,' supplementing her own income with discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets. She defies local pastors and the medical community to store rare medications for her most urgent patients, and teaches sex education to drag queens after hours at secret bars. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis, and in doing so becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of society. Ruth kept her story a secret for years, fearful of repercussions within her deeply conservative community. But at a time when it's more important than ever to stand up for those who can't, Ruth has found the courage to have her voice - and the voices of those who were stigmatised, rejected and abandoned - heard. ...Show more

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Large 9781526635167

Joe Biden American Dreamer by Evan Osnos

$30.00 AUD

Available Stock:
15

Category: Political

A concise, brilliant and incisive examination of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his lifelong quest for the presidency This definitive history of Joe Biden tells the poignant story of the man – both his life in politics and the series of personal tragedies that have marked him – drawing on extensive co nversations with Biden himself from his time at the Whitehouse to his home during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as interviews with President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and some of the biggest names in American politics. Blending up-close journalism with broader context, award-winning New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos illuminates the life of Joe Biden and captures the characters and meaning of an extraordinary presidential election. In his nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy – a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history… ...Show more

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Large phosphorescence

Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
14

Category: General

A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' that Julia Baird calls 'phosphorescence' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times. Over the last decade, we have become bet ter at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them? And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we're overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril - how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light - a light to ward off the darkness? Absorbing, achingly beautiful, inspiring and deeply moving, Julia Baird has written exactly the book we need for these times. ...Show more

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Large 9781922267276

The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well by Robert Dessaix

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
13

Category: Australian

At the height of his powers in this remarkable (and often witty) book, Robert Dessaix addresses these increasingly urgent questions in inimitable prose and comes up with some surprising answers. From Java to Hobart via Berlin, Dessaix invites us to eavesdrop on his intimate, no-nonsense conversations ab out ageing with friends and chance acquaintances. Reflecting on time, religion, painting, dancing and even grandchildren, Dessaix takes us on an enlivening journey across the landscape of growing older. Riffing on writers and thinkers from Plato to Eva Hoffman, he homes in on the crucial importance of a rich inner life. The Time of Our Lives is a wise and timely exploration of not just the challenges but also the many possibilities of old age.   ...Show more

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Large 9781760875602

Lowitja: The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue by Stuart Rintoul; Lowitja O'Donoghue

$45.00 AUD

Available Stock:
13

Category: Australian

The profoundly moving biography of a truly great Australian who, against the greatest of odds, became one of Australia's most respected and recognisable Indigenous leaders. 'I am sometimes identified as one of the "success stories" of the policies of removal of Aboriginal children. But for much of my ch ildhood I was deeply unhappy. I feel I had been deprived of love and the ability to love in return. Like Lily, my mother, I felt totally powerless. And I think this is where the seeds of my commitment to human rights and social justice were sown.' - Lowitja O'Donoghue Lowitja O'Donoghue is a truly great Australian. She is arguably our nation's most recognised Indigenous woman. A powerful and unrelenting advocate for her people, an inspiration for many, a former Australian of the Year, she sat opposite Prime Minister Paul Keating in the first negotiations between an Australian government and Aboriginal people and changed the course of the nation. But when Lowitja was born in 1932 to an Aboriginal mother and a white father in the harsh and uncompromising landscape of Central Australia the expectations for her life could not have been more different. At the age of two, she was handed over to the missionaries of the Colebrook Home for Half-Caste Children and cut off completely from her people and her culture. She would not see her mother again for another thirty years and would have no memory of her father. In 2001 a bitter controversy arose over whether Lowitja was 'stolen' as a child. In search of a past she did not remember, Lowitja went back to Central Australia accompanied by journalist Stuart Rintoul. This ground-breaking and long-awaited biography completes that journey into Lowitja's life and the challenging history of her times. It is a remarkable work about an extraordinary woman. 'A remarkable Australian leader. A leader whose unfailing instinct for enlargement marks her out as unique.' - Paul Keating 'If there is one woman that you would identify as being someone that inspires you, that terrifies you, that is a symbol of possibility, it would be Lowitja. The dignity, I think, is the thing that you remember the most.' - Linda Burney, first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives 'The greatest Aboriginal leader of the modern era . . . the rock who steadied us in the storm. Resolute, scolding, warm and generous, courageous, steely, gracious and fair. She held the hardest leadership brief in the nation and performed it bravely and with distinction.' - Noel Pearson 'She changed the course of Australian history. She literally seized the day.' - Robert Tickner, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs 1990-96 ...Show more

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