Month August 2015
ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam, by host of CBN’s The Watchman Erick Stakelbeck, unveils how the propaganda masters of Islamic State are determined to get the West’s attention. They’ve humiliated the Iraqi Army trained by America and seized territory in Iraq that had been secured at the cost of so much American blood and treasure. They’ve beheaded American journalists on camera in a direct challenge to the power and resolve of the United States. And now ISIS is calling for “city wolves” across the United States, Europe and Australia to act on their dedication to the Islamic State’s blood-drenched ideology and murder random Americans going about our daily business.
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror is a revelatory look at the world’s most dangerous terrorist group. Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, along with other fledgling terrorist groups, as a “jayvee squad” compared to al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law.
Bali 9: The Untold Story, written by two of Australia’s most respected journalists, tells a harrowing story. Earlier this year convicted Bali 9 drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran sang Amazing Grace as they faced a firing squad after being denied presidential pardons and having lost their final appeals in the notorious Indonesian justice system. Relations between Australia and Indonesia plummeted to new lows as a result of the murderous Widoto regimes embrace of the death sentence.
When Kate Grenville’s mother died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult. For many years, Nance recorded her memories in ordinary exercise books. The neatly handwritten stories start confidently, peter out after a few pages, and give way to Italian language exercises and other scribbled notes. One Life is an act of great imaginative sympathy, a daughter’s intimate account of the patterns in her mother’s life. It is a deeply moving homage by one of Australia’s finest writers.
Blackwater USA was the private army that the US government quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. Its contacts ran from miltiary and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House; it had a military base, a fleet of aircraft and 20,000 troops, but since September 2007 the firm has been hit by a series of scandals that, far from damaging the company, have led to an unprecedented period of expansion. This revised and updated edition includes Scahill’s continued investigative work into one of the greatest outrages of our time: the privatisation of war. While Barack Obama pledged to rein in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.
From the mystique of the glamorous Kennedys to the tumult that surrounded Bill and Hillary Clinton during the president’s impeachment to the historic yet polarizing residency of Barack and Michelle Obama, each new administration brings a unique set of personalities to the White House; and a new set of challenges to the fiercely loyal and hardworking people who serve them: the White House residence staff. No one understands the president of the United States, and his family, like the men and women who make the White House run every day. Now, for the first time, their stories of fifty years, ten administrations, and countless crises, large and small, are told in The Residence. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with butlers, maids, chefs, florists, doormen, and other staffers–as well as former first ladies and first family members–Kate Andersen Brower offers a group portrait of the dedicated professionals who orchestrate lavish state dinners; stand ready during meetings with foreign dignitaries; care for the president and first lady’s young children; and cater to every need the first couple may have, however sublime or, on occasion, ridiculous.
From its birth in the late 1990s as the jihadist dream of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Islamic State has grown into a massive enterprise, redrawing national borders across the Middle East and subjecting an area larger than the United Kingdom to its own vicious brand of Sharia law. This is not another terrorist network but a formidable enemy in tune with the new modernity of the current world disorder. One of the world’s leading experts on terror financing Loretta Napoleoni argues that Ignoring these facts is more than misleading and superficial, it is dangerous. ‘Know your enemy’ remains the most important adage in the fight against terrorism. Here is a book extract.
The Archipelago of Souls is a novel set on two islands. The experiences on one become an antidote for the dark experiences of the other. The exposed place is King Island, in Bass Strait, where Australian soldier Wesley Cress comes to live after World War II. Wesley grew up in the Western Districts of Victoria, joined the Australian army from Manly in NSW and ended up fighting a solo war on Crete after he managed to get left behind by his unit and thus became its only survivor. On Crete, the second island in the novel, Cress fought an idiosyncratic war both with himself and with a largely unseen enemy. Day’s account of Cress’ grinding struggle on Crete is remarkable in every way. It is based on exhaustive research into the combat on Crete, a less familiar chapter than some other battles, a theatre in which geography played no small part.
A Sense of Place Publishing is proud to announce the forthcoming book Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost.
Prepubication drafts are now available for interested reviewers.
Please request a copy at: asenseofplacepublishing@gmail.com
This book is a sidewinding missile into the heart of Australian hypocrisy.
Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost, by veteran journalist John Stapleton, is a beautifully written snapshot of a pivotal turning point in the history of the so-called Lucky Country.
Will Hillary Clinton be the next US President? A showdown between her and Donald Trump could turn out to be one of the most colourful presidential campaigns in the nation’s history. Don’t you want to see a woman in the White House? Clinton asks. Well yes, but whether or not it is her, on that question Americans are deeply divided. Critics believe her election would be a disaster for the nation’s security and foreign policy. In an attempt to humanise herself, in Hard Choices: A Memoir the 67-year-old pitches herself as a mother and a grandmother as much as a politician and a diplomat.
Kerry Packer was instrumental in shaping Australia’s media landscape and culture. For 30 years he controlled television’s perennial ratings leader Channel Nine, and a large percentage of the nation’s most influential magazines. So much of what Australians watched, read and believed came through the prism of this larger-than-life man. Beneath all the billionaire clutter, Kerry Packer had plenty in common with the average Joe: a cheeky humour, a competitive drive, deep love for his kids, a passion for sports and movies. In business, Kerry Packer would fight to the last dollar in a deal. Yet the same man would take his private jet to Las Vegas and lose more than $20 million in a week – then leave a $1 million tip. In his Park Street, Sydney office, where the visitors’ chairs were clustered in front of his giant desk, Packer would verbally dissect a hapless executive, but no less often, the very same man would step in silently and invisibly when hardship or tragedy struck a loyal staffer or their family.
The Australian Moment: How We Were Made For These Times is the book on which the 2015 television series Making Australia Great is based. Journalist George Megalogenis won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the 2012 Walkley Book Award for his bestselling political book. This newly published additions includes a new afterward and appendix. Megalogenis argues that there is no better place to be during economic turbulence than Australia: “Brilliant in a bust, we’ve learnt to use our brains in a boom. Despite a lingering inability to acknowledge our achievements at home, the rest of the world asks: how did we get it right?”
Rolling Stone dismissed the movie American Sniper as being “too dumb to comment”. Thankfully the public saw it differently; it was nominated for an Oscar and rapidly took its place as one of the most commercially successful films of all time. Clint Eastwood was born to direct this powerful movie, starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. This special edition of the book on which it was based, the #1 New York Times bestseller American Sniper, the autobiography of Chris Kyle, is packed with brand new material to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.
Malcolm Fraser, Australia’s 22nd Prime Minister, has passed away, remembered as a “a giant of Australian politics” and a “great moral compass”. Malcolm Fraser: A Political Memoir, was written as part authorised biography, part personal testament with journalist Margaret Simons. It was published in 2010 and much praised by the reading public. Scion of a wealthy country family, educated at Oxford, he became one of the towering figures of Australian politics, championing multiculturalism, Aboriginal rights and a greater role for the country internationally.
Washington insider Michael O’Brien’s new book, America’s Destruction of Iraq, details the origins of the Islamic State’s rise to power now being witnessed on the world’s televisions.
Bound to be one of the most significant Australian political books of 2015, Paul Keating: The Biography by David Day is arguably the most substantial biography yet of one of the country’s most admired and derided of political figures. As time has passed Keating’s detractors have become more respectful as he has attained the aura of a grand old man of the left. He is increasingly looked back on as inspired and temperamental, as reflecting a time when Australian politics were full of excitement.