Tag A Sense of Place Publishing
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.
The city-state’s Prime Minister for 31 years, Lee Kuan Yew oversaw Singapore’s independence from Britain and separation from Malaysia. At the time of his passing in March, 2015, he had been in hospital for several weeks with pneumonia and was on life support. The BBC recorded: “He was widely respected as the architect of Singapore’s prosperity. But he was criticised for his iron grip on power. Under him freedom of speech was tightly restricted and political opponents were targeted by the courts. In March there was a state funeral after a week of mourning. Singapore came to a standstill. Thousands of Singaporeans braved heavy rains to farewell the country’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, whose funeral drew a long list of leaders and dignitaries from across the globe. From Third World To First: Singapore and the Asian Economic Boom tells in Lee Kuan Yew’s own words the story of the transformation of Singapore. He was revered as the creator of one of the greatest economic and social success stories of modern times.
Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. His fortieth Discworld novel, Raising Steam, was published in 2013. It is a world peopled by incompetent wizards, upside-down mountains, slow-witted barbarians and a wry incarnation of Death which began as a cheerful parody of fantasy authors from JRR Tolkien to Ursula K Le Guin. His 70 plus novels are reported to have sold more than 75 million copies; he was one of the UK’s most beloved authors. There were so many visitors to his website after the news of his death earlier this year at the age of 66 his publisher’s website crashed.
The protagonist in the novella Attack at the Dolphin is caught between an enduring love for her husband and lust for a “toy boy”, a cadet at the newspaper where she works. Set against the backdrop of the high rolling heavy drinking Sydney of the 1990s, this delightful romp is written by former Sydney Morning Herald journalist and woman-about-town Bridget Wilson.
Attack at the Dolphin is a sometimes painful, always moving, often funny meditation on marriage and infidelity, love and lust, loyalty and treachery.
Australia’s best known Muslim community spokesman Keysar Trad has confounded friend and foe with his first serious book of poetry, Forays of the Heart. The book conflicts with the rabid reputation given to Keysar Trad by some talk back radio hosts and more extreme bloggers. Trad describes the book as a “broadcast of profound love”. The poems are peans of love directed at women other than his wife. The book records the distractions of love that came the author’s way during his toughest challenges. Humorous at times, the soul searching in these poems brings the reader to the universal experience of “love”. At a time when so-called marriage equality is the chant of the mainstream media, others are asking why these issues should be on the statute books at all, why a cultural institution like marriage belongs in the hands of the law makers, when, depending on your perspective, it belongs in the hands of the people themselves. Who are these people to tell other people how to live?
Last year was a “blood year” in the Middle East – massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of Western strategy. We saw the rise of ISIS, the splintering of government in Iraq, and foreign fighters – many from Europe, Australia and Africa – flowing into Syria at a rate ten times that during the height of the Iraq War. What went wrong?
Thousands of hours of research by renowned theater and television writer Eric Bogosian’s has turned his new book Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged The Armenian Genoicide into a fluid, riveting.
2015 marks the Centenary of the largest ever massacre of Christians in history, in Armenia in 1915, when Muslim Turks turned the streets to blood. This is a masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide.
An Indonesian court recently rejected the final appeals for clemency for a group of foreigners facing the death penalty for drug charges, attracting worldwide condemnation. The Indonesians didn’t care. The foreigners were perfect fodder for one of the largest and most expensively orchestrated jihad spectacles the world has ever seen. Snowing in Bali lays bare just how common drugs have been in Bali for decades, and how closely allied with the trade are the Indonesian elites. Indonesia’s President Wododo faced a storm of international criticism for refusing to grant clemency; and was entirely indifferent. In the world’s largest Muslim country, a religious grouping incensed worldwide by the conduct of Westerners in the Middle East, the killing of foreigners is not something that on the face of it caused any distress to the locals. Amongst others, Australian taxpayers contribute almost a billion dollars in foreign aid to Indonesia each year, but the President did not even bothered to take the Australian Prime Minister’s calls. The Indonesian justice system is notoriously corrupt; and has now been laid bare for the world to see. Those who sold the drugs to the foreigners were never charged. The police who took their usual bribes were never charged. And Indonesia got exactly the jihad spectacle it wanted.
Inside Australia’s Anti-terrorism Laws and Trials, by leading legal experts Andrew Lynch, Nicola McGarrity and George Williams, tracks developments since the nation’s first anti-terrorism laws were introduced in great haste and, as the authors observe, were stunning in scope and number. They claim latest laws introduced in 2014 were similarly extensive and controversial. Yet again, powers and sanctions once thought to lie outside the rules of a liberal democracy except during wartime have become part of Australian law.
With Australia’s terror alert at the highest level possible and following the recent detention of terrorists planning attacks on the Centenary celebrations of Anzac Day, security has been stepped up around Australia; and most notably at Gallipoli in Turkey, where both the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot and New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Key will attend. Both Prime Ministers, having taken their nation’s military back into Iraq in the fight against Islamic State, are prime targets. Peter Fitzsimons best selling book Gallipoli records how, on 25 April 1915, Allied forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in present-day Turkey to secure the sea route between Britain and France.
The Story: A Reporter’s Journey is written by Judith Miller, star reporter for the New York Times, the world’s most powerful newspaper. She was the journalist most responsible for triggering the Iraq War with stories claiming the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. She got it wrong.
Anna Bligh made history when she became the first woman to lead a party to victory in a State election in Australia. Through the Wall: Reflections on Leadership, Love and Survival tells her story.
Big Time is the back-story of Mr Big from the TV series Sex and the City. It follows 10 years of Mr Big’s life from a carefree thirty-year-old banker to a married man, through his subsequent divorce, before he met Carrie in the first episode of the show. The story – from a man’s perspective – gives depth to a character many viewers of the television series were attracted to yet thought of as narcissistic. The intent in writing this story was for the reader to get to know and understand the man who was reluctant – or even unable – to commit to Carrie in the series.
Diabolically clever, massively entertaining, the announcement by Netflix that House of Cards is to go into a fourth season in 2016 has delighted millions of fans. If you’ve ever wondered how the phenomenon began, here’s your chance to buy the book which started it all. The new season coincides with the US election campaign. Both the series and the election will be fascinating to watch!!
The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving …
Thailand: Deadly Destination exposes the worst scandal in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths of foreigners in the so-called Land of Smiles.
Thailand: Deadly Destination exposes one of the worst scandals in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths befalling foreigners in the so-called Land of Smiles.
Thailand: Deadly Destination exposes one of the worst scandals in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths befalling foreigners in the so-called Land of Smiles.
Thailand: Deadly Destination exposes one of the worst scandals in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths befalling foreigners in the so-called Land of Smiles.
Thailand: Deadly Destination exposes the worst scandal in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths of foreigners in the so-called Land of Smiles.