AustLit

'A rich biography of artist-turned-environmental- campaigner John Büsst.

'Award-winning historian Iain McCalman reveals the little-known story of influential Australian conservationist, John Büsst. Known to his enemies as ‘The Bingal Bay Bastard’, Büsst, a Bendigo-born Melbourne bohemian artist, transformed into a brilliant conservationist who, in the 1960s and early 70s, led campaigns to protect two of Australia’s most important and endangered environments. The first saved Australia’s endangered lowland rainforests and led to the subsequent UNESCO World Heritage Listing of our Wet Tropics Rainforest Area. The second stopped Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s attempt to mine 80 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef for oil, gas and limestone fertiliser. A plan Büsst likened to ‘bulldozing the Taj Mahal to make road gravel’. Instead, the victory led to the UNESCO World Heritage Listing of the Great Barrier Reef as ‘the most important marine system in the world’. Sadly, both face renewed threat today.'  (Publication summary)

'I want to know what it was like to have crossed into the realm of madness. After all, I did it. I went mad. Why can’t I have the secret knowledge that comes with it?

'How do you write a memoir when you have lost your memories? Anna Jacobson awakens in hospital, greeted by nurses and patients she doesn’t recognise, but who address her with familiarity. She decides to untangle the clues.

How to Knit a Human is about the splintering of memory from psychosis and Electroconvulsive therapy that Anna experienced as an involuntary patient in 2011. Through knitting and assemblage, weaving experiences around the gaps of memories that are not accessible, the memory barriers begin to crumble. This book is a reclamation of memory and self.'  (Publication summary)

'In those days the end of the morning was always marked by the quarry whistle blowing the noon knock-off ...

'During the years of the Great Depression, Cressida Morley and her eccentric family live in a weatherboard cottage on the edge of a wild beach. Outsiders in their small working-class community, they rant and argue and read books and play music and never feel themselves to be poor. Yet as Cressida moves beyond childhood, she starts to outgrow the place that once seemed the centre of the world. As she plans her escape, the only question is: who will she become?

'The End of the Morning is the final and unfinished autobiographical novel by Charmian Clift. Published here for the first time, it is the book that Clift herself regarded as her most significant work. Although the author did not live to complete it, the typescript left among her papers was fully revised and stands alone as a novella. It is published here alongside a new selection of Clift’s essays and an afterword from her biographer Nadia Wheatley.'  (Publication summary)

'Two extraordinary writers, one difficult mother and a vanished literary world.

'Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower met in person for the first time in London in 1972, six years after they began a correspondence that would span four decades. They exchanged letters, cards and telegrams and made occasional phone calls between Harrower’s home in Sydney and Hazzard’s apartments in New York, Naples and Capri. The two women wrote to each other of their daily lives, of impediments to writing, their reading, politics, and in Hazzard’s case, her travels. And they wrote about Hazzard’s mother, for whose care Harrower took increasing – and increasingly reluctant – responsibility from the early 1970s (precisely the period when she herself virtually stopped writing).

'Edited by Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard’s official biographer, and Susan Wyndham, who interviewed both Hazzard and Harrower, this is an extraordinary account of two literary luminaries, their complex relationship, and their times.'  (Publication summary)

‘If something is repeated often enough, then it crystallises itself as truth in the cultural consciousness. It took me a long time to unlearn and discard the mythic images that the old country was trying to sell to me. I’m sure there are still residual traces. See how I dare not invoke its name.’

'An exploration of identity across global and digital territories, Cher Tan’s essays of bend and break boundaries to resist easy categorisation.

'Peripathetic contains work that is self-reflexive, wry, intelligent and restless. It includes a lyric essay on the tropes surrounding the cultural signifiers of ‘normal’ vs ‘weird’; an extended critique on the tensions the term ‘authenticity’ presents; a meditation on the artist as influencer; the existential tensions that are connected to ‘performance’ in everyday life; and an autofictive essay on Tan’s 20-year history of ‘unskilled’ labour that prises apart contemporary ideas of class and capital.

'The collection is as non-linear as Tan’s work and life: traversing subjects from technology to late capitalism, interrogating power, borders and capital while considering the ever-evolving facets of identity, self, and culture in a hyper-real world. In Peripathetic, Tan has created a collection of essays that blends cultural criticism, experimental writing, autotheory, (inter)net writing and literary memoir, bringing us new ways of viewing familiar artistic territory.' (Publication summary)

'Tiwi people have plenty to be proud of. This little tropical island community has more than its fair share of surprising stories that turn ideas of Australian history upside down.

'The Tiwi claim the honour of having defeated a global superpower. When the world's most powerful navy attempted to settle and invade the Tiwi Islands in 1824, Tiwi guerrilla warriors fought the British and won. The Tiwi remember the fight and oral histories reveal their tactical brilliance.

'Later, in 1911, Catholic priest Francis Xavier Gsell styled himself as the 'Bishop with 150 wives'. Gsell said he 'purchased' Tiwi women and 'freed' them from traditional Tiwi marriage, and Tiwi girls grew up into devoted Catholics. But Tiwi women had more power in their marriage negotiations than the missionaries realised. They worked out how to be both Tiwi and Catholic. And it was the missionaries who came around to Tiwi thinking, not the other way around.

'Then there are stories of the Tiwi people's 'number one religion': Aussie Rules Football; the eldest living Tiwi woman, Calista Kantilla, remembers her time growing up in the mission dormitory; and Tiwi Traditional Owner Teddy Portaminni explains the importance of Tiwi history and culture, as something precious, owned by Tiwi and the source of Tiwi strength.

'Tiwi Story showcases stories of resilience, creativity and survival, as told by the Tiwi people.' (Publication summary)

'In 1941, the paper emperors of the Australian newspaper industry helped bring down Robert Menzies. Over the next 30 years, they grew into media monsters.

'This book reveals the transformation from the golden age of newspapers during World War II, through Menzies' return and the rise of television, to Gough Whitlam's 'It's Time' victory in 1972.

'During this crucial period, twelve independent newspaper companies turned into a handful of multimedia giants. They controlled newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations. Their size and reach was unique in the western world.

'Playing politics was vital to this transformation. The newspaper industry was animated by friendships and rivalries, favours and deals, and backed by money and influence, including from mining companies, banks and the Catholic Church.

'Even internationally, Australia's newspaper owners and executives were considered a shrewd and ruthless bunch. The hard men of the industry included Rupert Murdoch, Frank Packer, Warwick Fairfax's top executive Rupert Henderson, and Jack Williams, the unsung empire builder of the Herald and Weekly Times.

'In Media Monsters, Sally Young, the award-winning author of Paper Emperors, uncovers the key players, their political connections and campaigns, and their corporate failures and triumphs. She explores how the companies they ran still influence Australia today.'(Publication summary)

'Whether negotiating the mind-games of the Israeli intelligence services or performing ablutions in a London bathroom, Mohammad Chowdhury’s life as a British Muslim travelling the world brings daily challenges. Border Crossings is the story of Chowdhury’s journey, gripping in some parts and shame-inducing in others, as he describes a lifelong struggle to reconcile the British, Asian and Muslim sides of his identity, constantly dealing with the mistrust of Westerners alongside the hypocrisies of his own community and their misunderstanding of Islam.

'Chowdhury's story echoes the experience of thousands of Western Muslims who since 9/11 have been subjected to a constant barrage of questions that cast doubt over the very goodness of their faith. It is the story of a man who cries when England win the Ashes, yet still finds himself screaming in the face of racism and religious bigotry. This timely book powerfully rejects the poisonous narrative that Muslims can no longer be trusted as honest citizens of the West.' (Publication summary)

'Cast Mates is a group biography of Australian acting giants across the ages.

'Australia has a long cinema history - starting with the world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in Melbourne and released in 1906. Today, much of Australia's film talent goes to the United States, looking for bigger and more lucrative opportunities overseas. But what does this mean for both the history and future of Australian cinema?

'The larger-than-life personalities that form the heart of this book - Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil AM and Nicole Kidman - have dominated cinema screens both locally and internationally and starred in some of the biggest films of their eras - including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Network, Crocodile Dundee and Eyes Wide Shut among others.

'From the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s to the streaming wars of today, the lives of these four actors, and their many cast mates, tell a story of how a nation's cinema was founded, then faltered, before finding itself again.' (Publication summary)

'I lost my possessions, my salary, my status, my career, my country. And in that fall, I gained everything.

'Bhutan is known as the land of Gross National Happiness, a Buddhist Shangri-La hidden in the Himalayas. But in the late 1980s, Bhutan waged a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against its citizens of Nepali ancestry. Forced to flee Bhutan, Om Dhungel spent six years as a refugee in Nepal before he arrived in Australia. Today Om is a respected community leader in western Sydney, consulted frequently by government and settlement organisations on refugee policy.

'Written with Walkley Award–winning journalist James Button, Bhutan to Blacktown tells of Om Dhungel’s remarkable journey from a village on the Himalayan ridges and life as a refugee in Kathmandu, to, eventually, Blacktown, Australia. It is a story of grit and determination, humour and irrepressible optimism.' (Publication summary)

''This is a helluva way to get a story.'

'In December 1943, five brave correspondents join a British bombers air raid on Berlin. They are Australians, Alf King from the Sydney Morning Herald and Norm Stockton from the Sydney Sun; Americans, Ed Murrow from CBS and Lowell Bennett from the International News Service; and Norwegian journalist and activist, Nordahl Grieg. Each is assigned to one of the 400 Lancaster bombers that fly into the hazardous skies over Germany over a single night. Of the five, only two land back at base to file their stories.

'In Germany, after parachuting out of his doomed aircraft, reporter Lowell Bennett is taken prisoner alongside other surviving airmen. From there he is taken on a remarkable tour of bombed-out German cities, with his captors hoping for a journalist to see first-hand the devastation of war for everyday Germans.

'In Dispatch from Berlin, 1943, Australian historian Anthony Cooper and German researcher Thorsten Perl uncover a remarkable true story of life on both sides of the war.' (Publication summary)

'The Whitlam government transformed Australia. And yet the scope and scale of the reforms for Australian women are often overlooked.

'The Whitlam government of 1972- 75 appointed a women's advisor to national government - a world first - and reopened the equal pay case. It extended the minimum wage for women, introduced the single mother's benefit and paid maternity leave in the public service, ensured cheap and accessible contraception, funded women's refuges and women's health centres, introduced accessible, no-fault divorce and the Family Court, and much more.

'Women and Whitlam brings together three generations - including Elizabeth Evatt, Eva Cox, Patricia Amphlett, Elizabeth Reid, Tanya Plibersek, Heidi Norman, Blair Williams and Ranuka Tandan - to revisit the Whitlam revolution and to build on it for the future.' (Publication summary) 

'‘I came to Sydney from Melbourne in 1978 and immediately fell in love with its history, the sandstone buildings, the gorgeous harbour, the bridge, the Opera House, its ad hoc streets and its denizens.’

'In Sydney, acclaimed playwright and author Louis Nowra – author of Kings Cross and Woolloomooloo – expands his gaze to explore the energy, beauty, vulgarity, dynamism and pulsating sense of self-importance of his adopted city. This big, bustling portrait of Sydney is told through profiles of people, high and low, with a cast of criminals and premiers, ordinary folk, entertainers, artists, thieves and visionaries.

'Along with its people, Nowra surveys the city’s architecture and its global identity. And as Sydney’s history unfolds throughout the twentieth century and beyond, Nowra revels in its neon lighting, music, skyscrapers and sense of optimism.' (Publication summary)

'Two Australian scientists played a vital yet largely unknown role in the Allied victory in the Second World War. Almost eight decades later, Wizards of Oz finally tells their story.

'In this fast-paced and compelling book, Brett Mason reveals how two childhood friends from Adelaide - physicist Mark Oliphant and medical researcher Howard Florey - initiated the three most significant scientific and industrial projects of the Second World War. Manufacturing penicillin, developing microwave radar and building the atomic bomb gave the Allies the edge and ultimate victory over Germany and Japan.

'More than just a story of scientific discovery, Wizards of Oz tells a remarkable tale of secret missions, international intrigue and triumph against all odds. Mason tells how Oliphant and Florey were also instrumental in convincing a reluctant United States to develop and deploy these three breakthrough inventions in time to change the course of the war. The two Australians not only helped win the war but shaped the peace, with their war-time contributions continuing to influence international politics and the health and wealth of nations.

'Oliphant and Florey emerge in Wizards of Oz as the two most consequential Australians of the Second World War - perhaps of all time.'(Publication summary)

'Scientific genius, star curator, tortured soul. The remarkable life of Allan Riverstone McCulloch.

'Allan Riverstone McCulloch (1885–1925) was a leading scientist and illustrator, and the Australian Museum’s most senior curator and its star exhibition designer, yet history has ignored his many contributions. Was it due to politics at the Australian Museum? McCulloch’s mental health problems? Or because he stole sacred objects from villages when he travelled to Papua New Guinea with acclaimed photographer and cinematographer Frank Hurley?

'This book, by long-time museum employee Brendan Atkins, reveals McCulloch’s scientific genius, artistic talents and his crucial role in the development of the Australian Museum. It also explores his life outside the museum and his demons.'  (Publication summary)

'Political Lives is an intimate history of imagemaking and image-breaking in national politics. In 2011, Chris Wallace was writing a biography of Julia Gillard. After seeing the unparalleled onslaught from the Abbott opposition, she cancelled her contract and repaid her advance with the awareness of how hard the biography could hit. Political Lives is a result of that fraught experience. In it Wallace reflects on the roles and motives of biographers and their biographies in the 20th century.

'To discover who wrote biographies, and why, Wallace interviewed every living 20th century prime minister and their biographer, from Menzies to Hawke, Whitlam to Keating. The result is an intimate history of Australian national politics.'  (Publication summary)

'A landmark and revealing joint biography of Elizabeth and John Macarthur, from one of Australia’s most respected historians.

'Arriving in 1790, Elizabeth and John Macarthur, both aged 23, were the first married couple to travel voluntarily from Europe to Australia, within three years of the initial invasion. John Macarthur soon became famous in New South Wales and beyond as a wool pioneer, a politician, and a builder of farms at Parramatta and Camden. For a long time, Elizabeth’s life was regarded as contingent on John’s and, more recently, John’s on Elizabeth’s.

'In Elizabeth and John, Alan Atkinson, prizewinning author of Europeans in Australia, draws on his work on the Macarthur family over 50 years to explore the dynamics of a strong and sinewy marriage, and family life over two generations. With the truth of John and Elizabeth Macarthur’s relationship much more complicated and more deeply human than other writers have suggested, Atkinson provides a finely drawn portrait of a powerful partnership.'  (Publication summary)

'Introducing the McDonagh sisters … a trio of extraordinary and ground-breaking filmmakers. Between 1926 and 1933, the mostly self-taught McDonagh sisters made four trail-blazing independent feature films in Sydney and Melbourne. Paulette, one of only five women film directors in the world, was behind the lens, writing and directing. Phyllis produced, art directed and conducted publicity. And Isabel, under her stage name Marie Lorraine, was in front of the camera, acting in main roles. Together, they transformed Australian cinema’s preoccupations with the outback and the bush – and what the sisters mocked as ‘haystack movies’ – into a thrilling, urban modernity.

'In Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters, Mandy Sayer tracks the sisters’ remarkable story, from their childhood as daughters of a respected Sydney surgeon, learning the art of filmmaking and their first feature film, Those Who Love (1926), an instant hit, to their controversial final film, Two Minutes Silence (1933).

'Although the trio didn’t set out deliberately to blaze a trail of feminism, their collective confidence and independence was striking at a time when there were few career options available to women.' (Publication summary)