Non-Fiction Bestsellers
Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music (HB), archie roach
A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend.
No one has lived as many lives as Archie Roach - stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader - but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was.
Roach was only a few years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of.
In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Roach's story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal - and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Roach voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today - beloved by fans worldwide.
Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit - and of a great love story.
488 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Idiots, KITTY FLANAGAN
''You won’t agree with all her rules – I, for one, am a great believer in the word ‘pash’ – but there is a good laugh, and a lively argument, to be had on every page.'' - Richard Glover.
488 Rules for Life is Kitty Flanagan's way of making the world a more pleasant place to live. Applying truth and wit to modern problems. An antidote to stupidity. 488 Rules for Life is not a self-help book, because it's not you who needs help, it's other people. Whether they're walking and texting, asphyxiating you on public transport with their noxious perfume cloud, or leaving one useless square of toilet paper on the roll, a lot of people just don't know the rules.
But thanks to Kitty Flanagan's comprehensive guide to modern behaviour, our world will soon be a much better place. A place where people don't ruin the fruit salad by putting banana in it … where your co-workers respect your olfactory system and don't reheat their fish curry in the office microwave ... where middle aged men don't have ponytails …
What started as a joke on Kitty Flanagan's popular segment on ABC TV's The Weekly, is now a quintessential reference book with the power to change society. (Or, at least, make it a bit less irritating.)
Love Is Strong As Death: Poems Chosen by Paul Kelly (HB), PAUL KELLY
Paul Kelly's songs are steeped in poetry. And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves - poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature's great themes that have proven so powerful in his music - love and death - plus everything in between.
Here are poems by Yehuda Amichai, W.H. Auden, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, William Blake, Bertolt Brecht, Constantine Cavafy, Alison Croggon, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Fenton, Thomas Hardy, Kevin Hart, Gwen Harwood, Seamus Heaney, Philip Hodgins, Homer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Ono No Komachi, Maxine Kumin, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Norman MacCaig, Paula Meehan, Czeslaw Milosz, Les Murray, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Porter, Rumi, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Izumi Shikibu, Warsan Shire, Kenneth Slessor, Wislawa Szymborska, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Ko Un, Walt Whitman, Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats and many more.
The Body: A Guide for Occupants, BILL BRYSON
In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe. Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself.
Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.
The Man in the Red Coat (HB), JULIAN BARNES
The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi.
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The three men's lives play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. The age of glamour and pleasure often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. Barnes' touchpoint through this world is the third man, Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker, a rational and scientific man with a famously complicated private life.
The Man in the Red Coat is at once a fresh and original portrait of the French Belle Époque -its heroes and villains, its writers, its dandies, its artists and thinkers - and a life of a man ahead of his time. Witty, surprising and deeply researched, this new book from Julian Barnes illuminates the fruitful and longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France, and makes a compelling case for keeping that exchange alive.
Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret. CRAIG BROWN
Winner of the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Award 2018, a Guardian Book of the Year, a Times Book of the Year, a Sunday Times Book of the Year, a Daily Mail Book of the Year.
“A masterpiece” - Mail on Sunday. “I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich” - Observer.
She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando clam up. She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine and Pablo Picasso lusted over her. To her friends, Princess Margaret was witty and regal; to her enemies, she was rude and demanding.
Ma'am Darling looks at her from many angles, creating a kaleidoscopic biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.
The Education of an Idealist, SAMANTHA POWER
Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power is widely known as the moral voice of her generation. A relentless advocate for promoting human rights, she has been heralded by President Barack Obama as one of America's "foremost thinkers on foreign policy."
The Education of an Idealist traces Power's extraordinary journey, from Irish immigrant to human rights activist to United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Power began her career as a war correspondent and as a vocal critic of US foreign policy, and then put her ideals into practice while working with Obama in the Senate, on the campaign trail, and throughout his presidency.
In her characteristically gripping prose, Power illuminates the messy and complex worlds of politics and geopolitics while laying bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life. She also reveals what it's like to juggle the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children. And, in the face of great challenges, she shows us not just how the United States can lead, but why there is always something each of us can do to advance the cause of human dignity. The Education of an Idealist is a humorous, stirring, and ultimately unforgettable account of the world-changing power of idealism - and of one person's fierce determination to make a difference.
A Short Philosophy of Birds, PHILIPPE J. DUBOIS; ELISE ROUSSEAU
The greatest wisdom comes from the smallest creature.
There is so much we can learn from birds. Through twenty-two little lessons of wisdom inspired by how birds live, this charming French book will help you spread your wings and soar.
We often need the help from those smaller than us. Having spent a lifetime watching birds, Philippe and Elise - a French ornithologist and a philosopher - draw out the secret lessons that birds can teach us about how to live, and the wisdom of the natural world. Along the way you'll discover why the robin is braver than the eagle, what the Arctic tern can teach us about the joy of travel, and whether the head or the heart is the best route to love (as shown by the mallard and the penguin).
By the end you will feel more in touch with the rhythms of nature and have a fresh perspective on how to live the fullest life you can.
Finding the Heart of the Nation: The Journey of the Uluru Statement Towards Voice, Treaty and Truth, THOMAS MAYOR
'If Australia were a child, she would be traumatised by a past that she is told to forget. She has witnessed her custodians being murdered and raped, scattered to the margins of society. She suffers for what she has seen. She cannot forget. Her heart beat is fading. On 26 May 2017, a historic moment at Uluru gave this country hope. Those custodians came together, reached in to their own hearts, and gifted us with a roadmap to find the heart of the nation - The Uluru Statement from the Heart. When you read this book, you will be feeling the pulse of this beautiful country, Australia. Finding the Heart of the Nation is a book full of stories about extraordinary people who will take you on an unforgettable journey to a place where we can start a new beginning. This book is a call to action that you will never forget.' - Thomas Mayor, 2019
This is a book for all Australians. Since the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart was formed in 2017, Thomas Mayor has travelled around the country to promote its vision of a better future for Indigenous Australians. He's visited communities big and small, often with the Uluru Statement canvas rolled up in a tube under his arm. Through the story of his own journey and interviews with 20 key people, Thomas taps into a deep sense of our shared humanity.
The voices within these chapters make clear what the Uluru Statement is and why it is so important. And Thomas hopes you will be moved to join them, along with the growing movement of Australians who want to see substantive constitutional change. Thomas believes that we will only find the heart of our nation when the First peoples - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders - are recognised with a representative voice enshrined in the Australian Constitution.
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, MALCOLM GLADWELL
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers - and why they often go wrong.
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?
Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky paedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland - throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt.
Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
Pain and Prejudice: A Call to Arms for Women and Their Bodies, GABRIELLE JACKSON
Fourteen years after being diagnosed with endometriosis, Gabrielle Jackson couldn't believe how little had changed in the treatment and knowledge of the disease. In 2015, her personal story kick-started a worldwide investigation into the disease by The Guardian; thousands of women got in touch to tell their own stories and many more read and shared the material.
What began as one issue led Jackson to explore how women - historically and through to the present day - are under-served by the systems that should keep them happy, healthy and informed about their bodies. Pain and Prejudice is a vital testament to how social taboos and medical ignorance keep women sick and in anguish. The stark reality is that women's pain is not taken as seriously as men's. Women are more likely to be disbelieved and denied treatment than men, even though women are far more likely to be suffering from chronic pain.
In a potent blend of personal memoir and polemic, Jackson confronts the private concerns and questions women face regarding their health and medical treatment.
'A major contribution to feminist writing of the 21st century' - Caroline de Costa, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, James Cook University. ‘Gabrielle Jackson deploys facts to tear away the destructive myths that surround women's health' - Lenore Taylor, Editor, Guardian Australia. 'This book could not be more timely or important.' - Katharine Viner, Editor, The Guardian.
any ordinary day, leigh sales
As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories - and a terrifying brush with her own mortality - sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?
In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows. Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don’t know we have.
EDUCATED, TARA WESTOVER
'A memoir to stand alongside classics by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Lorna Sage ... a compelling and ultimately joyous account of self-determination’ Sunday Times.
Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. She spent her summers bottling peaches and her winters rotating emergency supplies, hoping that when the World of Men failed, her family would continue on, unaffected. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in doctors or hospitals. According to the state and federal government, she didn’t exist. As she grew older, her father became more radical, and her brother, more violent. At sixteen Tara decided to educate herself. Her struggle for knowledge would take her far from her Idaho mountains, over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she had travelled too far. If there was still a way home. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers - the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.
The barefoot Investor for Families, Scott pape
The new book from Scott Pape, the Barefoot Investor.
The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need is a phenomenon, sprinting through one million copies to become one of the best selling Australian books ever. Why is it so successful? It's simple, funny and practical. And it has changed people's lives. The eagerly anticipated follow-up, The Barefoot Investor for Families, sticks to the same script. It's aimed fairly and squarely at parents, grandparents, and basically anyone who read that book and said: 'Why the hell wasn't I taught this years ago?' Scott lays out ten money milestones kids need to have nailed before they leave home, and it's all structured around one family 'money meal' each week (so roughly 20 minutes). If you follow the roadmap, with tailor-made lessons for each age group, your kids will know how to do things like: ∗ Learn the life-changing value of hard work , ∗ Set up a fee-free bank account (or jam jars!), ∗ Go on a Treasure Hunt around the house, and sell some of their 'stuff' second-hand, ∗ Save your parents $100 on household bills, even ... ∗Learn to cook at least two low-cost, delicious, nutritious meals from scratch. Scott's mission is to make sure your kids are financially strong so they never, ever get sucked into the traps that middle-aged bankers have devised to rob them of their money and their confidence.
Ottolenghi simple
Everything you love about Ottolenghi, made simple.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s award-winning recipes are always a celebration - an unforgettable combination of abundance, taste and surprise. Ottolenghi SIMPLE is no different, with 130 brand-new dishes that contain all the inventive elements and flavour combinations that Ottolenghi is loved for, but with minimal hassle for maximum joy. Bursting with colourful photography, Ottolenghi SIMPLE showcases Yotam’s standout dishes that will suit whatever type of cooking you find easy - whether that’s getting wonderful food on the table in under 30 minutes, using just one pot to make a delicious meal, or a flavoursome dish that can be prepared ahead and then served when you’re ready. These brilliant, flavour-forward dishes are all SIMPLE in at least one (but very often more than one) way: S - short on time - less than 30 minutes, I - 10 ingredients or less, M - make ahead, P - pantry, L - lazy, E - easier than you think. Ottolenghi SIMPLE is the stunning new cookbook we have all been wishing for - Yotam Ottolengh’s vibrant food made easy.
Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture, Bruce pascoe
Joe Skyrnski, Co-founder Champ Equity:
'A must read for every Australian! Drawn from the diaries of European explorers, it comprehensively explodes the self-serving myth we perpetrated about Terra Nullius, that the first Australians were hunter-gatherer savages with no traits of civilisation. Pascoe clearly documents extensive contemporary evidence to the contrary … Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent ... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.'
Judges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards:
‘Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources. Bruce's comments on his book compared to Gammage's: "My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn't contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument.”’