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Black Inc.
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I am Melba Melba: the story of an Australian girl who defied convention and became the most famous singer of her era. Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell dreamed of fame, but her devout father disapproved. As a young wife and mother on the Queensland cane-fields, her longing for an exciting life intensified. Travelling to London and Paris, she trusted in her musical talent and hoped for a lucky break. Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with European royalty and collaborating with some of the most renowned composers of the age. Audiences swooned over the “heavenly pleasures” of her voice, while the public showed an insatiable appetite for news of her sometimes passionate private life. Feted and chastised by critics, pursued by the press and mobbed by fans, Dame Nellie Melba was Australia's first international superstar. In this important biography, enhanced by new research, Ann Blainey captures the exuberance, controversy and pathos of Melba’s remarkable career. Please click here to see details on upcoming events with Ann Blainey. $32.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-183-8 - Black Inc. - 14 April 2008 |
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From Seeds to Leaves ‘This book is a must-have for anyone who is keen to preserve our native environment.’ – Jamie Durie If you have an interest in the power of seeds to transform $27.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-225-5 - Black Inc. - April 2008 |
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Van Diemen’s Land “The most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore. In re-imagining Australia’s past, it invents a new future.” – Richard Flanagan Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen’s Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life. Awards: Shortlisted - Newcomer of the Year in the 2008 Australian Book Industry Awards Please click here to read an extract. Please click here to watch the launch. $49.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-413-6 - Black Inc. - 6 February 2008 |
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The Elements of Cooking The Elements of Cooking is an opinionated reference work destined to stand among the great works of the kitchen. It is slim, clear and to the point: here are the things you need to know how to do, here are the key words of the language of food, and here are the absolute essentials that every great chef knows. The Elements of Cooking defines vital terms, explains the fundamental ratios of important preparations (sauces, cakes, etc.) so that you will never need a recipe again, and provides countless chef’s “secrets”. This is a book that can be returned to time and again, and its lessons practised for a lifetime. Please click here to visit the author's website. $34.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-143-2 - Black Inc. - March 2008
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Poll Dancing Acerbic and very funny, Poll Dancing is a blow-by-blow account of the most hotly contested election in years – from the early days of water wars and education revolutions to territorial invasions and dirty campaigns on industrial relations, and the final, bitter battle of the nerds. Please click here to read an extract from Poll Dancing. Please click here to watch a video of Mungo MacCallum and Shane Maloney in conversation. $24.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-420-4 - Black Inc. - 10 December 2007 |
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It’s Not My Fault They Print Them Each week in the pages of the Age, Catherine Deveny tackles the big issues of modern life with hilarity and passion and in her own inimitable style. From 4WD owners to Nick Giannopolous to women who take their husband’s name, Deveny isn’t backward in coming forward. It’s Not My Fault They Print Them collects Deveny’s funniest, most biting work, published and unpublishable (till now). Bound to spark heated debate and riotous laughter, it includes her views on elective caesareans, private education, McLeod’s Daughters, Sam Newman and much, much more. Prepare to be tickled, cajoled, outraged, baited and amused. Please click here to watch the launch of It’s Not My Fault They Print Them. $19.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-119-7 - Black Inc. - November 2007 |
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The Best Australian Stories 2007 In this seductively diverse collection, Robert Drewe has assembled the country’s best short fiction of the past year. Here are sparkling stories from established favourites, alongside exciting new work from a younger generation. Some are whimsical, some wry, and some devastatingly realistic; there is love, grief, murder, tenderness and revenge. Drawn from all over the country and spanning a remarkable range of styles, Best Australian Stories showcases Australia’s most vibrant contemporary writing. As Robert Drewe says, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you the Australian short story is dead. It’s thriving.’ Please click here to watch the Best Australian Stories Newcastle event. $27.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-418-1 - Black Inc. - November 2007 |
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The Best Australian Essays 2007 The Best Australian Essays 2007 is a rich and diverting collection of essays, compiled by one of Australia’s finest writers, Drusilla Modjeska. As well as showcasing some of Australia’s best non-fiction writers, Modjeska demonstrates through her selection the wonderful versatility and beauty of the essay form. $27.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-419-8 - Black Inc. - November 2007 |
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The Best Australian Poems 2007 In The Best Australian Poems 2007, Peter Rose collects many of the outstanding poems of the previous year. Among the poets are some of the abiding luminaries of Australian poetry, along with some impressive if unfamiliar new voices. Peter Rose writes in his introduction, ‘I have looked for poetry that is, if not reductively personal, then highly expressive and resonant and open-hearted’. This entertaining anthology makes a fine entrée to the pleasures and provocations of Australian poetry today. Please click here to watch the launch of Best Australian Poems 2007. $24.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-417-4 - Black Inc. - November 2007 |
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Stuffed and Starved Here’s a book that takes Jamie’s Dinners, Supersize Me, mangoes in the Arctic Circle and McFatties, and puts them in a blender to make an intoxicating cocktail. Stuffed and Starved takes us into the supermarket aisles and reveals the stories behind the products in our trolleys, some of them very dark indeed. Raj Patel’s definitive account of the global food system ranges across GM crops, history and export issues, rising levels of obesity and other health crises. This is a groundbreaking look and the people and products of the New Food Order. Please click here to visit the author's website. Please click here to read a review of Stuffed and Starved in Time Magazine. $34.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-398-6 - Black Inc. - September 2007 |
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The Green & Golden Age In the last decade, Australian cricket has ruled the roost, keeping seldom challenged custody of the World Cup, the Ashes, the Frank Worrell Trophy, and the World Test and One-Day Championships. The Green and Golden Age collects Gideon Haigh’s writings on this extraordinary dynasty: the great players, the big matches, the seedy scandals, the striving rivals. Haigh reports not just what made the history, but what it has meant for international cricket to have a nation on top for so long, and the challenges and contradictions facing a game pervaded by commerce and politics. The Green & Golden Age is sports writing at its most passionate, intelligent and irreverent. $32.00 - ISBN 978-1-86395-416-7 - Black Inc. - 8 October 2007 |
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People in Glass Houses
Tanya Levin grew up in the church that became Hillsong – the country’s most ambitious, entrepreneurial and influential religious corporation. People in Glass Houses tells how a small Assemblies of God church in a suburban school hall became a multi-million dollar tax-free enterprise, a cult and a powerful force in Australia today. Opening up the world of Christian fundamentalism, this is a powerful, personal and at times very funny exploration of an all singing, all swaying mega church. Click here to watch Tanya Levin's interview on ABC TV's Enough Rope Awards: Shortlisted - 2007 Walkley Non-Fiction Book Award $29.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-414-3 - Black Inc. - August 2007 |
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Scorcher 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 |
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Unpolished Gem This is an original take on a classic story - how a child of immigrants moves between two cultures. In place of piety and predictability, however, Unpolished Gem offers a vivid and ironic sense of both worlds. It combines the story of Pung's life growing up in suburban Footscray with the inherited stories of the women in her family - stories of madness, survival and heartbreak. Original and brave, this is a girl's own story that introduces an unforgettable voice and captures the experience of Asian immigrants to Australia. Further Details: Click here to visit Alice Pung's website. Click here for Teacher's Notes Also available as an audio book - please visit Louis Braille Audio Selected in the 2007 Books Alive Great Read Guide Voted one of Victoria’s top 5 summer reads in the State Library of Victoria's Summer Read program. Awards: Winner- Australian Newcomer of the Year in the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards Shortlisted - Australian Biography of the Year and Australian Book of the Year in the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards Shortlisted - 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Shortlisted - 2007 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2007 Shortlisted - 2007 Age Book of the Year Awards Shortlisted - 2006 Colin Roderick Award Shortlisted - 2007 The Westfield/Waverley Library Award for Literature $24.95 - ISBN 9781863951586 - Black Inc. - September 2006 |
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Muck Here is the hilarious and riveting sequel to the acclaimed memoir Hoi Polloi. Muck is about what happens when things go wrong—hilariously, tragically— on the path to adulthood. Set in Sydney and New Zealand, it features a cow called Miss Beautiful, an encounter with the Prime Minister and a church-going atheist who sings like Dean Martin. It is about overbearing parents, farm life, mental illness and the extremes of human vanity. Most of all it is about a young man and the world he constructs in order to survive his family and—somehow—discover a self of his own. $27.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-411-2 - Black Inc. - September 2007 |
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Other People’s Thoughts ‘Most people are other people,’ Oscar Wilde remarked, ‘their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation..’ $19.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-415-0 - Black Inc. - October 2007 |
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Selected Poems Selected Poems is the latest, completely up-to-date collection of Les Murray’s poetry. It comprises what Murray himself considers his most successfully realised poems, drawn from all his collections up to and including The Biplane Houses but not including his two verse novels. It is the first port of call for anyone wanting to experience the poetry of Les Murray, whether it be those who have always loved his work or those wanting an introduction to Australia’s greatest poet. It is a distillation of Murray’s best work and an ideal introduction. $27.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-4044 - Black Inc. - September 2007 |
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Under the Volcano Under the Volcano is dramatic history written by a master storyteller. Travellers come to Bali looking for paradise. Nehru called it “the morning of the world”. Yet this small island has seen much bloodshed – from the ritual suicides of Balinese warriors fighting the Dutch, to the massacres of 1965–66 and the bombings of 2002 and 2005. In Under the Volcano, Cameron Forbes looks at the blood and beauty of Bali through interviews, legends, reporting and history. He tells the stories of explorers, colonisers, surfers, artists, jihadists and drug-runners and above all of the Balinese themselves. In doing so he brings the island paradise into vibrant and disturbing focus. $32.95 - ISBN 978-1-86395-409-9 - Black Inc. - August 2007 |
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The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 In this fascinating collection, John Hirst has assembled the key assessments of the national character of Australia and Australians. There are insiders and outsiders. There is celebration and criticism. There is the difference between what Australian think of themselves and what they are really like. Hirst provides a set of dazzling introductory essays to accompany his selections. Contributors include Winston Churchill, Tim Flannery, Carmen Lawrence, Charles Dickens, Captain James Cook, Barry Humphries, H.G. Wells, Peter Cosgrove, and many, many more. $29.95 - ISBN: 9781863954082 - Black Inc. - July 2007 |
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The Pocketbook of Aussie Patriotism When was the first Melbourne Cup race, and which horse won? $14.95 - ISBN 1863953582 - Black Inc. - January 2007 |
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Silent Revolutions The game we play today is scarcely like that of my boyhood‚' mused Dr W.G. Grace a century ago. 'There have been silent revolutions transforming cricket in many directions, improving it in some ways and in others robbing it of some elements of its charm.' In this panoramic collection of his writings, Gideon Haigh, ranges over 250 years of cricket history, picking out those events, characters and even objects that have mattered – sometimes far more than we know. From giants of the game such as Bradman, Larwood and Miller to subjects including our fascination with wasted talent and the evolution of the protector, Silent Revolutions reveals the game within the game known only to the subtlest observers. $32.00 - ISBN 1863953108 - Black Inc. - November 2006 |
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Another Country For several years now, Nicolas Rothwell has travelled the length and breadth of Northern and Central Australia. This book tells the story of desert journeys and encounters with mystics and artists, explorers and healers. It also gathers together groundbreaking pieces on Aboriginal art and society, and on Darwin and the lure of the North. Another Country is a portrait of people and places. It is also a literary achievement – a mesmerising, many-faceted journey into the landscape, and beyond. $32.00 - ISBN 9781863953825 - Black Inc. - February 2007 |
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Gallipoli: The Pilgrimage Guide Each year, thousands of Australians – young and old – make the pilgrimage to Turkey. Gallipoli: the Pilgrimage Guide is packed with essential information for those visitors, and for armchair travellers too. More than a travel guide, it introduces Gallipoli– the people and places, battles and memorials – in just enough detail to bring the past to life. Fully illustrated and up-to-date, this is the ideal introduction to one of Australia’s sacred places. $14.95 - ISBN 9781863954037 - Black Inc. - April 2007 |
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Pilgrimage- A Traveller’s Guide to Australia’s Battlefields There has never been a book like Pilgrimage before. Journeying through time and place, author Garrie Hutchinson visits the battlefields where Australians have fought and reveals their past and present. Ideal for armchair travellers and lovers of history, Pilgrimage invites readers on a voyage of discovery. It shows the changing face of Australian battlefields around the world and the tragedy and heroism of a nation at war. Awards: Winner - 2006 FAW Barbara Ramsden Award $44.95 - ISBN 186 395 3876- Black Inc- August 2006 |
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Eyewitness: Australians Write from the Frontline This is the essential collection of the most vivid, exciting and informative Australian writing about war. Garrie Hutchinson has collected and edited a great range of front-lines stories from the variety of conflicts in which Australia has been involved. Contributors include Charles Bean, Osmar White, Alan Moorehead, Wilfred Burchett, Paul McGeough, John Martinkus and Tony Clifton. $34.95 - ISBN 186 395 1660 - Black Inc. - November 2005 |
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The Biplane Houses This is Les Murray's first new volume of poems since 2002's Poems the Size of Photographs. In it we find Murray at his near-miraculous best. The collection exhibits both Murray's unfailing grace as a writer and his ability to write in any voice, style and genre: there are story poems, word-plays, history - and myth-makings, aphorisitc fragments and domestic portraits. As ever, Murray's evocation of the natural world is unparalleled in its inventiveness and virtuosity. Awards: Shortlisted - Age Book of the Year Awards 2006 $24.95 - ISBN 186 395 2144 - Black Inc. - April 2006 |
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The Weapons Detective 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 |
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Sense and Nonsense in Australian History 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. $34.95 - ISBN 097507699X - Black Inc. Agenda - March 2006 |
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A City Lost and Found The demolition firm of Whelan the Wrecker was a Melbourne institution for a hundred years (1892-1992). Its famous sign - 'Whelan the Wrecker Was Here' on a pile of smoking rubble - was a laconic masterpiece and served as a vital sign of the city's progress. In A City Lost and Found, Robyn Annear uses Whelan's demolition sites as portals to explore layers of the city laid bare by their pick-axes and iron balls. This is a book about the making - and remaking of a city. $29.95 - ISBN 186 395 3892 - Black Inc. - August 2005 |
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The Death of Napoleon "In this deliciously sardonic fable, Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from imprisonment on the isle of St. Helena. Leys writes an elegant, precise prose that ironically evokes the Napoleonic age. His exquisite tale, a gem of a book, can be read as a parable on the folly of hero-worship, the perils of self-justifying notions of destiny and the vanity of all human striving." – Publisher's Weekly This is a new edition of the award-winning novel, out of print now for several years. The Death of Napoleon is now a motion picture, and this edition contains a new preface by the author. $19.95 - ISBN 1863953345 - Black Inc. - October 2006 |
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The Wreck of the Batavia and Prosper In 1629, the ship Batavia, pride of the Dutch East India Company, was wrecked on a coral archipelago off the west coast of Australia. Most people on board escaped from drowning, only to become victims of a visionary psychopath who organised a terrifying methodical massacre. Acclaimed sinologist and author Simon Leys travelled to the site, discovering that the natural environment could have provided decent living conditions for the survivors; the massacre therefore appearing all the more aberrant. $29.95 - ISBN 186 395 1504 - Black Inc. - November 2005 |
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Hoi Polloi "Craig Sherborne has written one of the great Australian memoirs. Not since Hal Porter have we had an account of Australian childhood so scurrilous and unashamed. Hoi Polloi is a pure comic outrage of a book that will keep you wide-eyed with wonder way past dawn." - Peter Craven Hoi Polloi is about innocence and experience. See-sawing between low-life and high-life, it depicts a mother and father who are comical terrifying and unique. It finds fresh and hilarious things to say about growing up. Hoi Polloi is an instant classic about raw youth and the ways of the world. Further Details: Also available as an audio book - please visit Louis Braille Audio Selected in the State Library of Victoria's Summer Read program. Selected - 2006 Books Alive Great Read Guide Extract: Please click here to read the first chapter. Awards: Shortlisted - 2006 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards $27.95 - ISBN 186 395 2217 - Black Inc. - September 2005 |
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Do Not Disturb 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 |
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Axis of Deceit 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 |
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