Black Inc. Agenda

Robert Manne : Series Editor
Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia and one of Australia's foremost public intellectuals.

The purpose of Black Inc Agenda is to produce high quality scholarly books with a distinctively political edge. The series began in 2003 with Whitewash, a comprehensive response from genuine experts to Keith Windschuttle’s influential, denialist history on the dispossession of the Aborigines. Since that time Black Inc. Agenda has produced seminal work on some of the most contentious and significant issues in Australian public life—the invasion of Iraq; the Howard Government; the influence of the Murdoch press; the treatment of asylum seekers; the shape of Australian history; the virtue of civility; the politics of global warming. The books are all designed to deepen public discussion in Australia by significant and timely interventions in seminal political and cultural debates.

Dear Mr Rudd
Ideas for a Better Australia
Edited by Robert Manne

With the election of the Rudd government, there is revived interest in the nation’s future – both the challenges and the opportunities. What kind of future can we imagine for Australia?

Dear Mr Rudd offers new essays by leading Australian thinkers on the key areas of interest: climate change, indigenous affairs, the economy, human rights, education, health, the republic and much more besides.

Each essay serves up in a readable and inspiring way a set of new ideas to consider. This is not an academic contribution or a set of policy statements. Rather, at this time of national renewal, it is an invitation to debate and discussion issued by many passionate and imaginative Australians.

Please click here to read an extract.

Please click here to view details of upcoming Dear Mr Rudd events.

Click here to view the Dear Mr Rudd conversation series on SlowTV.

$29.95 - ISBN 978-0-9775949-1-7 - Black Inc. Agenda - March 2008

Scorcher
The Dirty Politics of Climate Change

By Clive Hamilton

This is the book that blows the whistle on the politics of global warming in Australia. Why have our political leaders been so slow to act? Which are the fossil-fuel lobby groups that still set the policy agenda? How many different ways can one spin, deceive, lie and obfuscate instead of facing facts and looking for the solutions that are desperately needed?

Written with humour, urgency and great authority, this is the definitive account of the politics of climate change in Australia.

Please click here to watch Clive Hamilton discuss Scorcher at the Brisbane Writers Festival 2007.

Awards:

Longlisted - 2007 Walkley Non-Fiction Book Award

$29.95 - ISBN 978-0-9775949-0-0 - Black Inc. Agenda - 23 April 2007

The Weapons Detective
The Inside Story of Australia's Top Weapons Inspector

By Rod Barton

This is the most authentic and reliable inside account of Iraq's weapon inspections, written with humour and urgency by an unsung hero. Rod Barton, an Australian, worked as one of the four weapon inspectors (along with David Kelly) who discovered Iraq's biological weapons program. He was special advisor to Hans Blix, writing parts of his speeches, and later returned to Iraq after the 2003 war. There he dealt with the political attempts, by the head of Britain's MI6 among others, to hide the truth about the lack of WMD. The Weapons Detective describes the fascinating chess-game of weapons inspection, with its mixture of detective work, scientific analysis and mind-games.

$29.95 - ISBN 097 5076 957 - Black Inc- May 2006

Sense and Nonsense in Australian History

By John Hirst

Sense and Nonsense in Australian History represents a lifetime's original reflection by Australia's most innovative and penetrating historian. In these essays, John Hirst blends the intimacy of the insider with the objectivity usually only available to the outsider. The result is Australian history seen at once from within and without.
Included here are classic essays on the pioneer legend, Australian egalitarianism and colonial culture. There are also celebrated critiques of The Tyranny of Distance, multiculturalism and narrowly nationalistic history, as well as a substantial new essay on Aboriginal dispossession and the history wars. In Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, John Hirst overturns familiar conceptions and deepens our sense of Australia's development from convict society to distinctive democracy.

$34.95 - ISBN 097507699X - Black Inc. Agenda - March 2006

Do Not Disturb
Is the Media Failing Australia?

Edited By Robert Manne

At a time when the Howard government has radically narrowed the national vision, the mainstream media has failed to notice or to hold it to account. Do Not Disturb offers diverse and enlightening explanations for this failure. Featuring an array of independent insiders, including: Eric Beecher, Guy Rundle, Jon Faine, Margaret Simons, David Marr, plus many more.

Awards:

Winner - 2006 Victorian Premier's Literary Award- Essay Category, for David Marr's 'Is the Media Asleep?'

$29.95 - ISBN 0975076949 - Black Inc. Agenda - August 2005

Civil Passions
Selected Essays

By Martin Krygier

A collection of superbly readable pieces on politics and society, Australia and Eastern Europe by the eminent Sydney law professor and Boyer Lecturer, Martin Krygier. In this powerful, reflective collection, Krygier looks at the end of communism, Keith Windschuttle, the liberalism of fear and Cassandra Pybus on James McAuley, amongst many other things.

$34.95 - ISBN 097 507 6981- Black Inc. Agenda - July 2005

Following Them Home
The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers

By David Corlett

In mid-2004, David Corlett travelled to meet asylum seekers whom Australia had returned to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. His intention was to witness first-hand the circumstances into which Australia returns people it deems not to need protection. This is the story of that expedition. In a series of vivid travelogue-style accounts and personal stories, Corlett charts the tide of contemporary history and how the Western world can treat those adrift in it.

$24.95 - ISBN 097 507 6965 - Black Inc. Agenda - July 2005

Axis of Deceit

By Andrew Wilkie

In March 2003, Andrew Wilkie resigned from Australia’s senior intelligence agency, ONA, in protest over the looming Iraq war. He was the only serving Intelligence Officer from the Coalition of the Willing – the US, UK and Australia – to do so. The dramatic move was reported throughout the world. In Axis of Deceit, Wilkie looks at how the case for war was made in Washington, London and Canberra. With unique insight, he explains how the three governments routinely skewed, spun and fabricated the relevant intelligence. Axis of Deceit is also the story of a whistleblower: how an act of conscience put an intelligence officer on a collision course with his country’s government. Wilkie also offers some of the most up-to-date insights available into the world of international intelligence and life as a spook.

$29.95 - ISBN 097 507 6922 - Black Inc. Agenda - July 2004

The Howard Years

Edited by Robert Manne

A powerful collection of essays by Australia's leading thinkers on what the Howard years have meant for Australia, edited by renowned political commentator, Robert Manne. Contributors include: Mungo MacCallum, Judith Brett, Mick Dodson, Helen Irving and William Maley.

$29.95 - ISBN 097 507 6914 - Black Inc. Agenda - February 2004

Whitewash
On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History

Edited by Robert Manne

An important reply to Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One. Whitewash provides not only a demolition of Windschuttle's revisionism but also a vivid and illuminating history of one of the most famous and tragic episodes in the history of the British empire - the dispossession of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Contributors include: Henry Reynolds, Cassandra Pybus, Lyndall Ryan and Martin Krygier.

$29.95 - ISBN 097 507 6906 - Black Inc. Agenda - August 2003