Cirrus@Austlit

'Should we alter animals’ DNA to save them from extinction? What secrets will old ice reveal to us about the Earth’s deep past? How is the world’s most expensive — and explosive — substance made?

'Great science writing offers fascinating insights into our surrounding environments, inspires awe at the wonders of the natural world, and also seeks to understand and address some of the biggest problems of our time.

'Science writing encompasses the vastness of the universe and all the diverse life forms within it. Stories abound in both the microscopic and the astronomical, from the scientists trying to reverse-engineer brain circuitry to the largest radio telescope of its kind on Earth which could help us detect alien life.

'This much-loved anthology — now in its thirteenth year — selects the most thought-provoking, poignant and dazzling science stories and essays from Australian writers, poets and scientists.

'With a foreword by scientist and engineer Professor Mary O’Kane AC, The Best Australian Science Writing 2023 covers another remarkable year filled with watershed moments in science.' (Publication summary)

'Everywhen is a groundbreaking collection about diverse ways of conceiving, knowing, and narrating time and deep history.

'Looking beyond the linear, Everywhen asks how knowledge systems of Aboriginal people can broaden understandings of the past and of our history. Indigenous embodied practices for knowing, narrating, and re-enacting the past in the present blur the distinctions of linear time, making all history now. Questions of time and language are questions of Indigenous sovereignty — and recognising First Nations’ time concepts embedded in languages and practices is a route to recognising diverse forms of Indigenous sovereignty.

'Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker and Jakelin Troy, this collection draws attention to every when, arguing that First Nations’ ways of thinking of time are vital to understanding history and offers a new framework for how it is practiced in the Western tradition. Everywhen shows us that history is not as straightforward as some might think.'(Publication summary)

‘I am sir [sure] you will act as human bean’, wrote one distressed pensioner to Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1953, pleading for assistance.

'Robert Menzies received 22,000 letters during his record-breaking 1949-1966 second term as Australian Prime Minister. From war veterans, widows and political leaders to school students and homespun philosophers. Ordinary citizens sent their congratulations and grievances and commented on speeches they had heard on radio. They lectured him, quoted Shakespeare and the Bible at him and sent advice on how to eliminate the rabbit problem. In Dear Prime Minister, Menzies’ fabled ‘Forgotten People’ write back. 

'Revealed here for the first time, the letters respond to the royal visit of 1954, Communism, Australia’s British connection and the dire poverty of aged pensioners. For many writers, these were not post-war boom years, but a time of anxiety and conflict, punctuated by fears of war, another Great Depression, or a nuclear Armageddon. Dear Prime Minister is a fascinating insight into the concerns, assumptions and political beliefs of 1950s and 1960s Australians.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'What does it mean to be an academic in today's rapidly changing world?

'The new academic must not only be outstanding in their chosen field, they must be able to write knock-out articles, speak with flair and wit, and share it all with their huge social media following. But how do you do all that?

'In The New Academic, Simon Clews offers a wealth of practical advice on how to write and speak in an entertaining, informative and, above all, accessible way. He will also help you to take care of the practicalities, the business if you like, of being a writer and communicator. Aimed at researchers at all levels of experience, this book will take you from the basics of writing and speaking, how to develop a public profile, gain traction online – starting with a simple letter to the editor and then moving through writing for newspapers and magazines, radio and TV interviews, as well as podcasting, and even exhibitions and documentary film. This book will teach experts how to be front and centre in public debate so we can all benefit from their knowledge and make informed decisions about the things that matter. Funny, lively and constructive, this is your hands-on guidebook to excelling in academia.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

'On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read out. This clear and urgent call for reform to the community from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples asked for the establishment of a First Nations Voice to Parliament protected in the constitution and a process of agreement-making and truth-telling. Voice. Treaty. Truth.

'What was the journey to this point? What do Australians need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart? And how can these reforms be achieved?

'Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart , written by Megan Davis and George Williams, two of Australia’s best-known constitutional experts, is essential reading on how our Constitution was drafted, what the 1967 referendum achieved, and the lead-up and response to the Uluru Statement. Importantly, it explains how the Uluru Statement offers change that will benefit the whole nation.' (Publication summary)

Archived website. Based on research conducted for a project funded by the Heritage Office of NSW, the website explores the history of Aboriginal trackers who worked for the New South Wales Police Force between 1863 and 1972.

'There are few Aboriginal icons in White Australia history.

'From the explorer to the pioneer, the swagman to the drover’s wife, with a few bushrangers for good measure, Europeans play all the leading roles. A rare exception is the redoubtable tracker. With skills passed down over millennia, trackers could trace the movements of people across vast swathes of country. Celebrated as saviours of lost children and disoriented adults, and finders of missing livestock, they were also cursed by robbers on the run.

'Trackers live in the collective memory as one of the few examples of Aboriginal people’s skills being sought after in colonial society. In New South Wales alone, more than a thousand Aboriginal men and a smaller number of women toiled for authorities across the state after 1862. This book tells the often unlikely stories of trackers including Billy Bogan, Jimmy Governor, Tommy Gordon, Frank Williams and Alec Riley.

'Through his work on native title claims, historian Michael Bennett realised that the role of trackers – and how they moved between two worlds – has been largely unacknowledged. His important book reveals that their work grew out of traditional society and was sustained by the vast family networks that endure to this day. Pathfinders brings the skilled and diverse work of trackers not only to the forefront of law enforcement history but to the general shared histories of black and white Australia.' (Print publication summary)

 

'Before newspapers were ravaged by the digital age, they were a powerful force everywhere – especially in Australia, a country of newspaper giants and kingmakers.

'This magisterial book reveals who owned Australia’s newspapers and how they used them to wield political power. A corporate and political history spanning 140 years, Paper Emperors reveals how Australia’s media system came to be dominated by a handful of empires and powerful family dynasties who influenced public policies, lobbied and bullied politicians, and shaped internal party politics. Unexplored until now, Sally Young shows that this set the shape of Australian newspapers for the next century.'

'The book begins in 1803 with Australia's first newspaper owner - a convict who became a wealthy bank owner - giving the industry a blend of notoriety, power and wealth from the start. Throughout the twentieth century, Australians were unaware that they were reading newspapers owned by secret bankrupts and failed land boomers, powerful mining magnates, Underbelly-style gangsters, bankers, and corporate titans. It ends with the downfall of Menzies in 1941 and his conviction that a handful of press barons brought him down. The intervening years are packed with political drama, business machinations and a struggle for readers, all while the newspaper barons are peddling power and influence. 

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'As Australia became a nation in 1901, no-one anticipated that ‘Aboriginal affairs’ would become an on-going national preoccupation.

'Not ‘dying out’ as predicted, Aboriginal numbers recovered and – along with Torres Strait Islanders – they became an articulate presence, aggrieved at colonial authority’s interventions into family life and continuing dispossession. Indigenous and Other Australians since 1901 narrates their recovery – not only in numbers but in cultural confidence and critical self-awareness. Pointing to Indigenous leaders, it also reassesses the contribution of government and mission ‘protection’ policies and the revised definitions of ‘Aboriginal’. Timothy Rowse explains why Australia has conceded a large Indigenous Land and Sea Estate since the 1960s, and argues that the crisis in ‘self-determination’ since 2000 has been fuelled by Indigenous critique of the selves that they have become.

'As Indigenous people put themselves at the centre of arguments about their future, this book could not be more timely.' (Publication summary)

'I became an urban historian because I believed that our cities deserved more of our curiosity and idealism.

'City Dreamers restores Australian cities, and those who created them, to their rightful place in the national imagination. Building on a lifetime’s work, Graeme Davison views Australian history, from 1788 to the present day, through the eyes of city dreamers – such as Henry Lawson, Charles Bean and 'Hugh Stretton – and others who have helped make the cities we inhabit. Davison looks at significant individuals or groups that he calls snobs, slummers, pessimists, exodists, suburbans and anti-suburbans – and argues that there’s a particular twist to the ways in which Australians think about cities. And the way we live in them.

'This extraordinary book excavates the cultural history of the Australian city by focusing on ‘dreamers’, those who battle to make and re-make our cities. It reminds us that for most of us the city is home, and it is there that we find belonging.' (Publication summary)

'The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day.'

'Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonisation, warfare and exile. It emphasises the regionalism and separateness, a consistent feature of Aboriginal life since time immemorial that has led to the distinct identities we see in the present, including the unique place of the islanders of Bass Strait.'

'Carefully researched, using the findings of archaeologists and extensive documentary evidence, some only recently uncovered, this important book fills a long-time gap in Tasmanian history. ' (Source: Publishers' website)

'Bulldog and Musquito, Aboriginal warriors from the Hawkesbury, were captured and sent to Norfolk Island following frontier skirmishes in New South Wales. Eventually, Bulldog seems to have made it home. Musquito was transported to Van Diemen's Land, where he laboured as a convict servant. He never returned. Hohepa Te Umuroa was arrested near Wellington in 1846, with a group of Maori warriors. Five of the men were transported to Van Diemen's Land where Te Umuroa died in custody. More than 140 years later, his remains were carried home to New Zealand. Booy Piet, a twenty-six year-old Khoisan soldier from the Cape Colony, was transported to Van Diemen's Land for desertion in 1842. After three years of convict labour, he died in Hobart General Hospital. These men are among 130 aboriginal convicts who were transported to and within the Australian penal colonies. They lived, laboured, were punished, and died alongside other convicts, but until this groundbreaking book, their stories had largely been forgotten.' (Publisher's blurb)

'In the baking heat of February 1973, wearing a purple nylon bodyshirt and an expression of confidence that belied his nerves, Ned Manning faced down a classroom full of kids in Tenterfield in remote NSW. It was the start of many years of teaching, by turns exhilarating, nerve-fraying and inspiring.

'Packed with stories of students both bored and enthusiastic, lesson plans, staff rooms and drama as studied for the HSC and lived every day, the book roams from high schools in dusty country towns to the edgy Newtown School of Performing Arts in Sydney's inner-city and a crucible of creativity at EORA Aboriginal College. Through the challenges he inevitably faces, Mr Manning finds the common thread of possibility and hope that runs through his profession.

'A funny and disarmingly honest memoir of a full life of teaching, Playground Duty has the power to rekindle a spark of glee and optimism about teachers, kids and even schools.'  (Publication summary)