NewSouth Publishing NewSouth Publishing i(6442557 works by) (Organisation) assertion (a.k.a. NewSouth Books)
Born: Established: Sydney, New South Wales, ;
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1 2 y separately published work icon Making Picture Books Libby Gleeson , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 Z1111374 2003 single work prose Libby Gleeson draws on her own experiences as a writer of children's books, and includes reflections from other writers and from illustrators, to explore the different stages and processes in the making of picture books. She especially highlights the work of illustrator Armin Greder, with whom she has collaborated on many books.
1 y separately published work icon James Fairfax : Portrait of the Collector in 11 Objects Alex Gilly , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 28849661 2024 single work biography

'James Fairfax was one of the nation's greatest philanthropists, collectors and champions of Australian art. Chairman of what was then known as John Fairfax Ltd, he put together one of the country's most important collections of European Old Masters, and was a generous benefactor to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

'In this evocative biography his nephew, Alexander Gilly, pieces together Fairfax's life through the prism of his art collection. Through a long-case clock built by Fairfax's grandfather and given to his parents as a wedding gift, a painting by Rubens, a sculpture by Robert Klippel, a mural created for his country home by Donald Friend and other treasured objects, Gilly reveals the complex private and public lives of a man at the centre of a media dynasty.'  (Publication summary)
1 y separately published work icon The Best Australian Science Writing 2024 Jackson Ryan (editor), Carl Smith (editor), Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 28760292 2024 anthology poetry

'The finest voices in Australian science writing.

'This much-loved anthology now in its fourteenth year selects the most riveting, entertaining, poignant and fascinating science stories from Australian writers, poets and scientists.

'The Best Australian Science Writing 2024 anthologises another major year in science. From AI to the climate crisis, the long tail of the pandemic and the changing nature of what science looks like, there's been plenty of ground to cover over the past year. Science writers have been vital in decoding these at times worrying glimpses of the future, and the many solutions that scientists are working on.

'With a foreword by DeadlyScience founder Corey Tutt, this collection includes the shortlisted entries for the 2024 UNSW Press Bragg Prize and the 2023 student prize-winning essay.' (Publication summary)
1 y separately published work icon Swimming Sydney Chris Baker , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 28760133 2024 selected work autobiography travel

'Swimming Sydney is a tale of 52 swims in and around Sydney that take place over a calendar year. From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi, Chris Baker swims at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour baths, tidal rock pools, bushland lakes and a backyard pool.

'Taking his weekly plunges, Baker reflects on friendship, history and family, and how swimming can help us better understand ourselves.

'Swimming Sydney is a valentine to the beautiful obsession of swimming in the world's most beautiful city. It's a book for everyone who loves swimming, who loves Sydney, and who understands that storytelling is the best way to navigate life's emotional currents.' (Publication summary)
1 y separately published work icon Take Flight : Incredible Stories of Australian Women Who Reach for the Sky Kathy Mexted , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 28549937 2024 multi chapter work biography

''We'd taken three weeks to climb the mountain and three minutes to fly down. I felt small but enormous and so much more than this little human shell.' Heather Swan, wingsuit BASE jumper

'From balancing on a wing tip to paragliding with an eagle, Take Flight tells the stories of Australian women who have leapt, tumbled and dived, and reached for the stars.

'These inspirational women share stories of their lives in the skies. Helicopter pilot Alida Soemawinata ascends over Kata Tjua. Speed skydiver Jessica Johnston joins a formation of 'horny gorillas' hurtling through an azure African sky. Paramotor pilot Sacha Dench follows the flight path of Bewick's swans for thousands of kilometres. Hot air balloonist Donna Tasker fills the envelope and glides over Western Australia. Gomeroi astrophysicist Krystal De Napoli points up to the Seven Sisters in the dark night sky.

'Author and pilot Kathy Mexted weaves a moving narrative of the determination, skill and expertise of these women who have beaten the odds to find success and joy in the skies.' (Publication summary)
1 4 y separately published work icon Travelling to Tomorrow : The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s Romance with America Yves Rees , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 28347342 2024 single work biography

'A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk.

'A century ago, ten Australian women did something remarkable. Throwing convention to the wind, they headed across the Pacific to make their fortune. In doing so, they reoriented Australia towards the United States years before politicians began to lumber down the same path.

'For the artist Mary Cecil Allen, this meant spreading the word about American abstract expressionism. For the naturopath Alice Caporn, it meant evangelising fruit juices and salads. For the swimmer Isabel Letham, it was teaching synchronised swimming. Others imported the latest thinking in dentistry, fashion, economics, law, music, medicine and more. They were rebels, they were trailblazers, they were disruptors. Individually, they have extraordinary stories; together, they change the narrative of Australian history.' (Publication summary)
1 5 y separately published work icon John Büsst : Bohemian Artist and Saviour of Reef and Rainforest Iain McCalman , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 27274354 2024 single work biography

'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)
1 2 y separately published work icon How to Knit a Human : A Memoir Anna Jacobson , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 27274292 2024 single work autobiography

'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)
1 11 y separately published work icon The End of the Morning Charmian Clift , Nadia Wheatley (editor), Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 27274236 2024 single work novel

'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)
1 5 y separately published work icon Hazzard and Harrower : The Letters Shirley Hazzard , Elizabeth Harrower , Brigitta Olubas (editor), Susan Wyndham (editor), Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 27274164 2024 selected work correspondence

'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)
1 5 y separately published work icon Peripathetic : Notes on (Un) Belonging Cher Tan , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2024 26087500 2024 selected work essay

‘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)
1 1 y separately published work icon Saving Lieutenant Kennedy Brett Mason , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 26646477 2023 single work biography

'The incredible story of an Australian hero who helped save the life of a future president.

'On a moonless night in August 1943, a US torpedo boat commanded by Lt John F Kennedy, on patrol in Solomon Islands, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Left clinging to wreckage within sight of Japanese encampments, the eleven surviving members of Kennedy’s crew eventually struggled ashore on a small uninhabited island. Missing, presumed dead, behind enemy lines, with no food or water, and with several injured, the future looked bleak for the shipwrecked Americans. Fortunately, Australian ‘coast watcher’ Lt Reg Evans witnessed the immediate aftermath of the collision from his nearby jungle hideaway. Working under the searching eye of the Japanese military, over the next five days Evans and two Solomon Islander scouts — Eroni Kumana and Biuku Gasa — located Kennedy and his crew and ensured their rescue.

'This story of wartime bravery and survival helped create JFK’s legend and paved his way to the White House. It also shone a spotlight on Australia and America’s shared wartime experience. In Saving Lieutenant Kennedy, Brett Mason, author of Wizards of Oz, sets the heroic rescue and its colourful aftermath against the background of the Pacific war and the birth of the Australia–US alliance, which remains as vital today as when Kennedy and Evans first shook hands.' (Publication summary)
1 2 y separately published work icon Tiwi Story : Turning History Downside Up Mavis Kerinaiua , Laura Rademaker , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 26364699 2023 anthology essay Indigenous story

'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)
1 5 y separately published work icon Media Monsters : The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires Sally Young , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 26087629 2023 multi chapter work criticism

'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)
1 y separately published work icon Border Crossings : My Journey as an Outsider Mohammad Chowdhury , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 26025267 2023 single work autobiography

'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)
1 5 y separately published work icon Cast Mates : Australian Actors in Hollywood and at Home Sam Twyford-Moore , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 26025176 2023 multi chapter work biography

'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)
1 1 y separately published work icon Bhutan to Blacktown : Losing Everything and Finding Australia Om Dhungel , James Button , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 25773896 2023 single work autobiography

'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)
1 2 y separately published work icon Dispatch from Berlin, 1943 : The Story of Five Journalists Who Risked Everything Anthony Cooper , Thorsten Perl , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 25674705 2023 single work biography

''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)
1 2 y separately published work icon Women and Whitlam : Revisiting the Revolution Michelle Arrow (editor), Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2023 25674562 2023 anthology autobiography

'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) 
1 2 y separately published work icon Sydney : A Biography Louis Nowra , Sydney : NewSouth Publishing , 2022 25524355 2022 multi chapter work biography

'‘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)
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