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Redefining the Bonds of Commonwealth, 1939-1948: The Politics of Preference (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies)
by F. McKenzieThis work is a path-breaking study of the changing attitudes of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to Britain and the Commonwealth in the 1940s and the effect of those changes on their individual and collective standing in international affairs. The focus is imperial preference, the largest discriminatory tariff system in the world and a potent symbol of Commonwealth unity. It is based on archival research in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain
by L. YoungDrawing on expressive and material culture, Young shows that money was not enough to make the genteel middle class. It required exquisite self-control and the right cultural capital to perform ritual etiquette and present oneself confidently, yet modestly. She argues that genteel culture was not merely derivative, but a re-working of aristocratic standards in the context of the middle class necessity to work. Visible throughout the English-speaking world in the 1780s -1830s and onward, genteel culture reveals continuities often obscured by studies based entirely on national frameworks.
Warriors in Scarlet: The Life and Times of the Last Redcoats
by Ian KnightIan Knight's Warriors in Scarlet is a comprehensive and stirring history of the Victorian army between 1837 to 1860, from the Battle of Bossendon Wood to the Crimean War, a period of seismic change.An acclaimed military historian, Knight draws on first-hand accounts to show us the reality of life for the British soldier in this era – the drudgery of peace-time service, the excitement and privations of posting overseas, the floggings and desertions, the regimental pride and comradeship. The rapid expansion of the empire saw the army fighting in small wars across the world and Knight reveals the brutal reality of this colonial conflict from both sides. British soldiers trained in tactics that had beaten Napoleon were forced to adapt when faced with warriors with very different skills fighting on their home ground. Knight vividly recreates the action, from bloody skirmishes in Southern Africa and siege warfare in New Zealand to disasters like the 1842 retreat from Kabul and Chillianwalla in the Punjab – but shows that in reality the army won more than four-fifths of the battles they fought in this era. He describes how, by 1860 with their redcoats increasingly replaced by khaki, the British army was a more professional, efficient and increasingly ruthless fighting force.
Train Lord: The Astonishing True Story of One Man's Journey to Getting His Life Back On Track
by Oliver MolThe astonishing true story of trust, pain, becoming lost, and finding a way back to yourself despite it allWhat happens when a writer can no longer write? What happens when pain is so intense that you question who you are and whether you can bear it any longer?Oliver Mol was a successful, clever, healthy twenty-five-year old. Then one day the migraine started.For ten months, the pain was constant, exacerbated by writing, reading, using computers, looking at phones or anything with a screen. Slowly he became a writer who could no longer write, and a person who could no longer communicate with the modern world. In literature, and life, Oliver began to disappear.His doctors couldn't figure out how to fix him. He suffered a breakdown. And one evening, high on painkillers, Oliver Googled the only thing he could think of: 'full-time job, no experience, Sydney'. An ad for a train guard appeared and, desperate, Oliver took it.For two years Oliver watched others live their lives, observing the minutia and intimacy of strangers brought together briefly and connected by the steady march of time. Exquisitely written and bravely told, Train Lord is a searingly personal yet universal book, which asks what happens when your sense of self is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back.
Beautiful Chaos: On Motherhood, Finding Yourself and Overwhelming Love
by Jessica UrlichsThe perfect gift for mums and mums-to-be this Mother’s Day'The words awaken the magic of life by celebrating the ordinary' - Giovanna Fletcher'Beautifully heartfelt, inspiringly poignant and therapeutically validating' - Anna Mathur Motherhood is messy and beautiful, and hard and humbling. We adore our children, and sometimes we miss ourselves. Beautiful Chaos is a collection of raw, honest poems about motherhood - capturing everything from pregnancy to school age. Upon becoming a mother, poet Jessica Urlichs was reminded that the everyday ordinary is extraordinary. Beautiful Chaos is a collection that chronicles it all - the highs, the lows, the confusion, the loss of identity, the becoming, and the brutal but beautiful ways our children hold up a mirrors to ourselves. This collection inspires vulnerability and will be a cathartic, healing read for anyone who needs it. These poems will remind you of a time gone by or ground you in the current moment. Either way, they will make you feel seen and comforted amid the beautiful chaos that is motherhood.
The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
by Paul TherouxPaul Theroux invites us to join him on one of his most exotic and tantalizing adventures exploring the coasts and blue lagoons of the Pacific Islands, and taking up residence to discover the secrets of these isles.Theroux is a mesmerizing narrator – brilliant, witty, keenly perceptive as he floats through Gauguin landscapes, sails in the wake of Captain Cook and recalls the bewitching tales of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson. Alone in his kayak, paddling to seldom visited shores, he glides through time and space, discovering a world of islands, their remarkable people, and in turn, happiness.‘A sharp, fascinating and highly entertaining book … Theroux at his best’ Daily Telegraph.
Wanted: The Outlaw Lives of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly (The Lamar Series in Western History)
by Robert M. UtleyThe oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws’ reputations are so weighted with legend and myth, the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun, were executed while still in their twenties, and remain compelling figures in the folklore of their homelands. Robert M. Utley draws sharp, insightful portraits of first Billy, then Ned, and compares their lives and legacies. He recounts the adventurous exploits of Billy, a fun-loving, expert sharpshooter who excelled at escape and lived on the run after indictment for his role in the Lincoln Country War. Bush-raised Ned, the son of an Irish convict father and Irish mother, was a man whose outrage against British colonial authority inspired him to steal cattle and sheep, kill three policemen, and rob banks for the benefit of impoverished Irish sympathizers. Utley recounts the exploits of the notorious young men with accuracy and appeal. He discovers their profound differences, despite their shared fates, and illuminates the worlds in which they lived on opposite sides of the globe.
The Savage Shore: Extraordinary Stories of Survival and Tragedy from the Early Voyages of Discovery
by Graham SealFor centuries before the arrival in Australia of Captain Cook and the so-called First Fleet in 1788, intrepid seafaring explorers had been searching, with varied results, for the fabled “Great Southland.” In this enthralling history of early discovery, Graham Seal offers breathtaking tales of shipwrecks, perilous landings, and Aboriginal encounters with the more than three hundred Europeans who washed up on these distant shores long before the land was claimed by Cook for England. The author relates dramatic, previously untold legends of survival gleaned from the centuries of Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Indonesian voyages to Australia, and debunks commonly held misconceptions about the earliest European settlements: ships of the Dutch East Indies Company were already active in the region by the early seventeenth century, and the Dutch, rather than the English, were probably the first European settlers on the continent.
Where Song Began: Australia's Birds and How They Changed the World
by Tim LowAn authoritative and entertaining exploration of Australia’s distinctive birds and their unheralded role in global evolution Renowned for its gallery of unusual mammals, Australia is also a land of extraordinary birds. But unlike the mammals, the birds of Australia flew beyond the continent’s boundaries and around the globe many millions of years ago. This eye-opening book tells the dynamic but little-known story of how Australia provided the world with songbirds and parrots, among other bird groups, why Australian birds wield surprising ecological power, how Australia became a major evolutionary center, and why scientific biases have hindered recognition of these discoveries. From violent, swooping magpies to tool-making cockatoos, Australia’s birds are strikingly different from birds of other lands—often more intelligent and aggressive, often larger and longer-lived. Tim Low, a renowned biologist with a rare storytelling gift, here presents the amazing evolutionary history of Australia’s birds. The story of the birds, it turns out, is inseparable from the story of the continent itself and also the people who inhabit it.
While We Run
by Karen HealeyIt's 2127, and the future is at stake . . . Abdi Taalib thought he was moving to Australia for a music scholarship. But after meeting the beautiful and brazen Tegan Oglietti, his world was turned upside down. Tegan's no ordinary girl - she died in 2027, only to be frozen and brought back to life in Abdi's time, 100 years later. Now, all they want is for things to return to normal (or as normal as they can be), but the government has other ideas. Especially since the two just spilled the secrets behind Australia's cryonics project to the world. On the run, Abdi and Tegan have no idea who they can trust - and, when they uncover startling new details about the program, they realize that thousands of lives may be in their hands. Karen Healey offers a suspenseful, page-turning companion to When We Wake that will keep readers on the edge of their seats and make them call into question their own ideas about morality -- and mortality, too.
Better Than God
by Peter PorterBetter Than God sees Porter working with a lyric engine tuned to perfection, and a mind that shows every sign of speeding up: Porter can make a song of what another writer might take an essay to cover. Whether working in the forms of epigram or narrative, or writing of memory, mortality, Renaissance intrigue or the surreal distortions of old age – Porter’s faith in poetry as a road to the truth shines through. There are few other writers for whom contemporary events throw such long shadows or for whom the past is so present, and in Better Than God one has the sense of the poet attaining an increasingly commanding height. Porter remains one of the few poets we can open anywhere, and know that we will always be both enlightened and entertained.
Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003-2008
by Clive JamesClive James, our most brilliant prose stylist, is also a naturally gifted poet, and Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003-2008 is his most accomplished collection of poetry to date. From reminiscences of his Australian childhood and elegies for friends and family to hilarious observations on the state of the language in the twenty-first century and reflections on art, metaphysics, science and faith, Angels Over Elsinore is simultaneousIy witty, passionate and provocative. Fired by the same energy and rigorous intelligence as his prose, his verse displays a breathtaking range – but for all its dazzling variety, one theme sings through James’s inexhaustible fascination with his fellow humans.
Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008
by Clive JamesOpal Sunset gathers together fifty years of Clive James’s poetry, and will undoubtedly enhance his reputation as one of the most versatile and accomplished of contemporary writers. Indeed – as with Other Passports, The Book of My Enemy and Angels Over Elsinore before it – Opal Sunset proves Clive James to be as well suited to the intense demands of the poetic form as he is to prose. Readers new to his verse will not be surprised to find him a master of the comic set-piece and surreal excursion, while those who are familiar with his previous collections will already be aware of his fluency and apparently effortless style, his technical skill and thematic scope. Ultimately, however, the highest recommendation one can give is that Clive James is, in these poems, unmistakably himself – an assured and dazzling wordsmith.
The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems
by Peter PorterSatirist, philosopher, elegist, aphorist, cultural historian – Peter Porter is perhaps too singular a talent to be described as ‘representative’ of the age: an Australian whose easy familiarity with the breadth of European culture puts most Europeans to shame, he has long held the reputation of one of our most intellectually promiscuous and culturally sophisticated writers. Porter uses the poem as a means through which a thought can be pursued; this selection from fifty years’ work allows us the first opportunity to fully survey the quality and breadth of that thought, and the unfailing intensity of its light. In short, his Selected Poems is a one-volume education: Porter’s subtle and profound sense of history permits him to read any event as a point in a dynamic space where the forces of time and culture converge. From these coordinates, he gives perspective, direction and bearing to our contemporary life, and allows us to read the pattern of our ideas, art and loves on the map of an ancient terrain. That he has done all this with such immense good humour and human compassion is one of the literary miracles of our time.
Shades of the Sublime & Beautiful
by John KinsellaAustralian John Kinsella is one of the most highly regarded poets currently writing in English. Taking Edmund Burke’s 250-year old masterpiece A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful as his template, Kinsella has produced his most accomplished and broadly representative work to date. Shades of the Sublime & Beautiful is a warm, human, anecdotally rich book, concentrating many of the themes that have obsessed its author over the last twenty years: language, love, the invocation of place, the mysteries of the Australian wilderness, and our mediations between the human and natural realms. Together, these lyric meditations build towards a profound thesis on the ecology of the imagination, and are always conducted in concrete, vivid and exuberant language that is unmistakably Kinsella’s own. ‘Kinsella’s poems are a very rare feat: they are narratives of feeling. Vivid sight – of landscapes, of animals, of human forms in distant light – becomes insight. There is, often, the shock of the new. But somehow awaited, even familiar. Which is the homecoming of a true poet’ George Steiner ‘John Kinsella is an Orphic fountain, a prodigy of the imagination . . . he frequently makes me think of John Ashbery: improbable fecundity, eclecticism, and a stand that fuses populism and elitism in poetic audience’ Harold Bloom
Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Vintage Departures Ser.)
by Alexander FraterPart memoir, part travelogue, Tales From the Torrid Zone is rooted in Alex Frater's birthplace, the tiny tropical republic of Vanuatu where his father ran its hospital and his mother, in her front garden, built its first school. From this obscure South Seas group he ranges over the hot, wet, beautiful swathe of the world that has haunted him ever since – dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, makes his way across tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a forty-four-year-old flying boat, delivers a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island and visits scores of countries to learn about their history, politics, medicine, flora and fauna (including the remarkable role of the coconut in tropical life). But, as becomes plain, the torrid zone is not just a geographical phenomenon, it’s also a state of mind. The result is a witty, entertaining and immensely readable book from a fine storyteller.
Still Here: Memoirs of Trauma, Illness and Loss (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Bunty Avieson Fiona Giles Sue JosephStill Here: Memoirs of Trauma, Illness and Loss explores the history, ethics, and cross-cultural range of memoirs focusing on illness, death, loss, displacement, and other experiences of trauma. From Walt Whitman’s Civil War diaries to kitchen table survivor-to-survivor storytelling following Hurricane Katrina, from social media posts from a refugee detention centre, to poetry by exiles fleeing war zones, the collection investigates trauma memoir writing as healing, as documentation of suffering and disability, and as political activism. Editors Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles and Sue Joseph have brought together this scholarly collection as a sequel to their earlier Mediating Memory (Routledge 2018), providing a closer look at the specific concerns of trauma memoir, including conflict and intergenerational trauma; the therapeutic potential and risks of trauma life writing; its ethical challenges; and trauma memoir giving voice to minority experiences.
Still Here: Memoirs of Trauma, Illness and Loss (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Bunty Avieson Fiona Giles Sue JosephStill Here: Memoirs of Trauma, Illness and Loss explores the history, ethics, and cross-cultural range of memoirs focusing on illness, death, loss, displacement, and other experiences of trauma. From Walt Whitman’s Civil War diaries to kitchen table survivor-to-survivor storytelling following Hurricane Katrina, from social media posts from a refugee detention centre, to poetry by exiles fleeing war zones, the collection investigates trauma memoir writing as healing, as documentation of suffering and disability, and as political activism. Editors Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles and Sue Joseph have brought together this scholarly collection as a sequel to their earlier Mediating Memory (Routledge 2018), providing a closer look at the specific concerns of trauma memoir, including conflict and intergenerational trauma; the therapeutic potential and risks of trauma life writing; its ethical challenges; and trauma memoir giving voice to minority experiences.
Anxieties of Belonging in Settler Colonialism: Australia, Race and Place (Routledge Studies in Cultural History #65)
by Lisa SlaterThis book analyses the anxiety "well-intentioned" settler Australian women experience when engaging with Indigenous politics. Drawing upon cultural theory and studies of affect and emotion, Slater argues that settler anxiety is an historical subjectivity which shapes perception and senses of belonging. Why does Indigenous political will continue to provoke and disturb? How does settler anxiety inform public opinion and "solutions" to Indigenous inequality? In its rigorous interrogation of the dynamics of settler colonialism, emotions and ethical belonging, Anxieties of Belonging has far-reaching implications for understanding Indigenous-settler relations.
Anxieties of Belonging in Settler Colonialism: Australia, Race and Place (Routledge Studies in Cultural History #65)
by Lisa SlaterThis book analyses the anxiety "well-intentioned" settler Australian women experience when engaging with Indigenous politics. Drawing upon cultural theory and studies of affect and emotion, Slater argues that settler anxiety is an historical subjectivity which shapes perception and senses of belonging. Why does Indigenous political will continue to provoke and disturb? How does settler anxiety inform public opinion and "solutions" to Indigenous inequality? In its rigorous interrogation of the dynamics of settler colonialism, emotions and ethical belonging, Anxieties of Belonging has far-reaching implications for understanding Indigenous-settler relations.
Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land? (Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000)
by Jane LydonBringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together changes our view of both. This book explores the anti-slavery movement in imperial scope, arguing that colonization in Australasia facilitated emancipation in the Caribbean, even as abolition powerfully shaped the Settler Revolution. The anti-slavery campaign was deeply entwined with the administration of the empire and its diverse peoples, as well as the radical changes demanded by industrialization and rapid social change in Britain. Abolition posed problems to which colonial expansion provided the answer, intimately linking the end of slavery to systematic colonization and Indigenous dispossession. By defining slavery in the Caribbean as the opposite of freedom, a lasting impact of abolition was to relegate other forms of oppression to lesser status, or to deny them. Through the shared concerns of abolitionists, slave-owners, and colonizers, a plastic ideology of ‘free labour’ was embedded within post-emancipation imperialist geopolitics, justifying the proliferation of new forms of unfree labour and defining new racial categories. The celebration of abolition has overshadowed post-emancipation continuities and transformations of slavery that continue to shape the modern world.
Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land? (Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000)
by Jane LydonBringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together changes our view of both. This book explores the anti-slavery movement in imperial scope, arguing that colonization in Australasia facilitated emancipation in the Caribbean, even as abolition powerfully shaped the Settler Revolution. The anti-slavery campaign was deeply entwined with the administration of the empire and its diverse peoples, as well as the radical changes demanded by industrialization and rapid social change in Britain. Abolition posed problems to which colonial expansion provided the answer, intimately linking the end of slavery to systematic colonization and Indigenous dispossession. By defining slavery in the Caribbean as the opposite of freedom, a lasting impact of abolition was to relegate other forms of oppression to lesser status, or to deny them. Through the shared concerns of abolitionists, slave-owners, and colonizers, a plastic ideology of ‘free labour’ was embedded within post-emancipation imperialist geopolitics, justifying the proliferation of new forms of unfree labour and defining new racial categories. The celebration of abolition has overshadowed post-emancipation continuities and transformations of slavery that continue to shape the modern world.
The Enlightenment, Philanthropy and the Idea of Social Progress in Early Australia: Creating a Happier Race? (Routledge Studies in Cultural History #63)
by Ilya LazarevThis book seeks to highlight the influence of the Enlightenment idea of social progress on the character of the "civilising mission" in early Australia by tracing its presence in the various "civilising" attempts undertaken between 1788 and 1850. It also represents an attempt to marry the history of the British Enlightenment and the history of settler-Aboriginal interactions. The chronological structure of the book, as well as the breadth of its content, will facilitate the readers’ understanding of the evolution of "civilising attempts" and their epistemological underpinnings, while throwing additional light on the influence of the Enlightenment on Australian history as a whole.
The Enlightenment, Philanthropy and the Idea of Social Progress in Early Australia: Creating a Happier Race? (Routledge Studies in Cultural History #63)
by Ilya LazarevThis book seeks to highlight the influence of the Enlightenment idea of social progress on the character of the "civilising mission" in early Australia by tracing its presence in the various "civilising" attempts undertaken between 1788 and 1850. It also represents an attempt to marry the history of the British Enlightenment and the history of settler-Aboriginal interactions. The chronological structure of the book, as well as the breadth of its content, will facilitate the readers’ understanding of the evolution of "civilising attempts" and their epistemological underpinnings, while throwing additional light on the influence of the Enlightenment on Australian history as a whole.
Australian Climate Policy and Diplomacy: Government-Industry Discourses (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
by Ben L. ParrAustralian Climate Policy and Diplomacy provides a well overdue critique of existing, and high-profile, publications that convey the ‘greenhouse mafia’ hypothesis, which posits that Australia’s weak policy response to climate change is the result of a menacing domestic fossil fuel lobby. Ben L. Parr argues that the shared government–industry discourse about protecting Australia’s industrial competitiveness has had a more decisive influence in shaping and legitimising Australian climate policy than the direct lobbying tactics of the fossil fuel industry. Parr also reveals how the divergent foreign policy discourses and traditions of Australia’s two major political parties – as internationalist versus alliance-focused – have enabled and constrained their climate diplomacy and domestic policies over time. To demonstrate his argument, he presents a discourse analysis woven into a chronological policy narrative, comprising more than 1000 primary texts (media releases, interviews, and speeches) generated by prime ministers and key fossil fuel lobbyists. Overall, this volume illustrates how domestic forces have and are influencing Australia’s climate policy. In doing so, it also provides a framework that can be adapted to examine climate mitigation policies in other countries, notably Canada and the US. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental policy and governance, and Australian climate change policy and politics more specifically, as well as policymakers and practitioners working in these fields.