Voices of History: Speeches That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore

$34.99 AUD

Category: General

VOICES OF HISTORY celebrates the great speeches of world history and cultural life. In this exuberant collection, acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore takes us on a journey from ancient times to the twenty-first century: some speeches are heroic and inspiring; some diabolical and atrocious; some a re exquisite and poignant; others cruel and chilling. The speakers themselves vary from empresses and conquerors to rock stars, novelists and sportsmen, dreamers and killers, from Churchill and Elizabeth I to Stalin and Genghis Khan, and from Michelle Obama and Cleopatra to Bob Dylan, Nehru and Muhammad Ali. All human drama is here: from the carnage of battlefields to the theatre of courtrooms, from table-talk to audiences of millions, from desperate last stands to orations of triumph, from noble calls for liberation to genocidal rants, from foolish delusions and strange confessions to defiant resistance and heartbreaking farewells, VOICES OF HISTORY spans centuries, continents and cultures. In the accessible and gripping style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these seventy speeches are essential reading, and how they enlighten our past, enrich our present and inspire - and hold warnings for - our future. ...Show more

Modern Love - True Stories of Love, Loss and Redemption by Headline

$32.99 AUD

Category: Essays

A joyful collection of the most popular, provocative, and unforgettable essays from the New York Times "Modern Love" column, featuring stories from the upcoming anthology series starring Tina Fey, Andy Garcia, Anne Hathaway, Catherine Keener, Dev Patel, and John Slattery. A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man's promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her seventies looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships. These are just a few of the people who tell their stories in Modern Love featuring dozens of the most memorable essays to run in The New York Times "Modern Love" column since its debut in 2004. Some of the stories are unconventional, while others hit close to home. Some reveal the way technology has changed dating forever; others explore the timeless struggles experienced by anyone who has ever searched for love. But all of the stories are, above everything else, honest. Together, they tell the larger story of how relationships begin, often fail, and-when we're lucky-endure. Edited by longtime "Modern Love" editor Daniel Jones and featuring a diverse selection of contributors-including Mindy Hung, Trey Ellis, Ann Hood, Deborah Copaken, Terri Cheney, and more-this is the perfect book for anyone who's loved, lost, stalked an ex on social media, or pined for true romance: in other words, anyone interested in the endlessly complicated workings of the human heart. ...Show more

Life: Selected Writings by Tim Flannery

$39.99 AUD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

Tim Flannery is one of the world's great thinkers, environmental scientists and writers. Sir David Attenborough once described him as being 'in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone.' This definitive collection of his work brings together thirty years of essays, speeches and occasional writing on palaeontology, mammology, environmental science and history, including the science of climate change and the challenges and opportunities we face in addressing this issue, so critical for all of us.   ...Show more

Incidental Inventions (HB) by Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator); Andrea Ucini (Illustrator)

$29.99 AUD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

"This is my last column, after a year that has scared and inspired me." With these words, Elena Ferrante, the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, bid farewell to her year-long collaboration with the Guardian. For a full year she penned short pieces, the subjects of which were suggested by editors at the Guardian, turning the writing process into a kind of prolonged interlocution; the subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the adaptation of her novels to film and TV. As she said in her final column: "I have written as an author of novels, taking on matters that are important to me and that--if I have the will and the time--I'd like to develop within real narrative mechanisms." Here, then, are the seeds of possible future novels, the ruminations of an internationally beloved author, and the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called "one of the great novelists of our time" (the New York Times). Gathered here in a beautiful gift edition and accompanied by a new, original introduction by the author and Andrea Ucini's intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans. ...Show more

Books That Saved My Life: Reading for Wisdom, Solace and Pleasure by Michael McGirr

$22.99 AUD

Category: Literature

Great literature is thrilling. It will feed your hungry mind and take your heart on a journey. It will help you on the wonderful path to one of life's most elusive and hard-won freedoms, freedom from the ego. Here is a book about the sheer joy of living, exploring forty texts that can enrich us in all manner of ways. Some are recent, such as Harry Potter; some ancient, such as Homer and Lao Tzu. There are memoirs (Nelson Mandela), poetry (Les Murray) and many of the world's great novels, from George Eliot'sMiddlemarchto Toni Morrison'sBeloved. This book uses them to muse upon life in all its glorious complexity. Our guide, in entertaining short accounts of personal encounters with these works, is Michael McGirr- schoolteacher and father, reviewer of hundreds of books and lifelong lover of literature. His humour and insight shine through in essays that connect the texts he has selected with each other, and connect us to them. This is the ideal companion for a keen reader-and it may just inspire someone you know to become one, too. Never prescriptive, and often very funny, Books that Saved My Lifeis an invitation to reflect on the extraordinary gift of reading. 'It is a gift that is taking me a lifetime to unwrap,' McGirr writes.'The excitement has never worn off.' ...Show more

Bowie's Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life by John O'Connell

$34.99 AUD

Category: Literature | Reading Level: 3 Biography

David Bowie once said that his idea of perfect happiness was reading. Three years before he died, he made a list of the one hundred books that had transformed his life - a list that formed something akin to an autobiography. From Lolita to Madame Bovary, the Beano to The Iliad, these were the books that had fuelled his creativity and shaped who he was. In Bowie's Books, John O'Connell explores this list in the form of one hundred short essays, each offering a perspective on the man, performer and creator that is Bowie, his work as an artist and the era that he lived in. Bowie's Books is much more than a list of books you should read in your lifetime: it is a unique insight into one of the greatest minds of our times, and an indispensable part of the legacy that Bowie left behind. ...Show more

The Saturday Portraits (The Saturday Paper) by Maxine Beneba Clarke

$34.99 AUD

Category: Essays

A collection of stunning biographical portraits from Maxine Beneba Clarke, bestselling and prize-winning author of THE HATE RACE and FOREIGN SOIL. The year is 2014, editor Erik Jensen contacts short fiction writer Maxine Beneba Clarke, and convinces her to write creative portraits for a n ew national newspaper, THE SATURDAY PAPER. The next four years will be a journalistic baptism of fire. She will come face to face with Prime Minister Tony Abbott; spend exactly nine minutes with Hollywood film star Hugh Jackman; write a love letter to Prince; be escorted out of David Jones for stalking Santa Claus; watch porn star Buck Angel striptease; eat slut cupcakes with feminist Karen Pickering; troll a local racist fried chicken eatery; hold audience with the Australian Ambassador to China; covertly profile One Plus One presenter Jane Hutcheon; share the stage with writer Roxane Gay; sip green tea with dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and exchange emails with President Obama. These are The Saturday Portraits. ...Show more

Le Globe - World Map (22cm diameter) by Papier Tiger

$29.95 AUD

Category: Encyclopaedia/Atlas

Hang or use these globes as a decorative piece, choose from three styles: the moon and the landing sites; the world and its time zones; or the world political map! No need for glue or scissors, the globes are easy to build and look fantastic when hung!

The Innocent Reader: Reflections on Reading and Writing by Debra Adelaide

$29.99 AUD

Category: Writing Books | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

In a book whose charm and erudition recalls 84 Charing Cross Road or Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead, one of our most prolific and respected authors, Debra Adelaide, shares a joyous and plaintive glimpse into a reading and writing life.This mercurial work is much more than memoir, much more than manual. It is an attempt to capture the spirit of a reader from someone who has dedicated their career to fostering that spirit, both in themselves and a generation of Australian writers.A marvellous book for any bibliophile or aspiring writer. ...Show more

Storytime Stars by Stephanie Owen Reeder

$24.99 AUD

Category: Literature

On Aunty by Jonathan Holmes

$14.99 AUD

Category: Essays

Australia?s public broadcaster, 'Aunty?, is about to turn 90, yet your ABC has seldom been in this much trouble- budget cuts, ferocious political pressure, sagging staff morale, leadership chaos and hostile commercial rivals. Meanwhile audiences are deserting broadcast TV and radio. What is the ABC?s pl ace in the era of media disruption? Can it reach a younger audience on new platforms while still satisfying its loyal fans? ...Show more

Serious Noticing - Selected Essays, 1999-2019 by James Wood

$24.99 AUD

Category: Essays

The definitive collection of literary essays byThe New Yorker's award-winning longtime book critic Ever since the publication of his first essay collection,The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive literary style all their own. Together, Wood's essays, and his bestsellingHow Fiction Works, share an abiding preoccupation with how fiction tells its own truths, and with the vocation of the writer in a world haunted by the absence of God. InSerious Noticing, Wood collects his best essays from two decades of his career, supplementing earlier work with autobiographical reflections from his bookThe Nearest Thing to Life and recent essays fromThe New Yorker on young writers of extraordinary promise. The result is an essential guide to literature in the new millennium. ...Show more