Issue #250 October 2010

Atlas of Out of the Black Land Remote Islands Kerry GREENWOOD  Pb $29.95 Fifty Islands I Have Not  Visited and Never Will 18th Dynasty Egypt is peaceful  and prosperous under the dual Judith SCHALANSKY rule of the Pharaohs Amenhotep III C 144pp Hb $45.00 and IV, until the younger Pharaoh Tom McCarthy Schalansky was born in 1980 begins to dream new and terrifying on the wrong side of the Berlin dreams. Ptah-hotep, a young peasantnt boyboy studyingstudying Hb $39.95 Wall. The Soviets wouldn’t let anyone travel so to be a scribe, wants to live a simple life in a Nile everything she learnt about the world came from hut with his lover Kheperren. But Amenhotep IV her parents’ battered old atlas. An acclaimed appoints him as Great Royal Scribe. Surrounded Parrot and Olivierr novelist and award-winning graphic designer, by bitterly envious rivals and enemies, how long will she has spent years creating this, her own Ptah-hotep survive? The child-princess Mutnodjme in America imaginative atlas of the world’s loneliest places. sees her beautiful sister Nefertiti married off to the Peter Carey She lures us across all the oceans of the world to impotent young Amenhotep. But Nefertiti must bear Tp $32.95 50 remote islands - from St Kilda to Easter Island royal children, so the ladies of the court devise a and from Tristan da Cunha to Disappointment shocking plan. Kheperren, meanwhile, serves as Island - and proves that some of the most scribe to the daring teenage General Horemheb. memorable journeys can be taken by armchair But while the Pharaoh’s shrinking army guards the The Finkler travellers. On one page are perfect maps, on the Land of the Nile from enemies on every border, other unfold bizarre stories from the history of the a far greater menace impends. For, not content Question islands themselves. Rare animals and strange with his own devotion to one god alone, the newly- Howard Jacobsonn people abound: from marooned slaves to lonely renamed Akhnaten plans to suppress the worship Tp $32.99 scientists, lost explorers to confused lighthouse of all other gods. His horrifi ed court soon realise keepers, mutinous sailors to forgotten castaways. that the Pharaoh is not merely deformed, but Recently awarded the prize of Germany’s most irretrievably mad - and that the biggest danger to beautiful book, Die Ziet magazine describes: the Empire is in the royal palace itself. “Tenderly tracing one fi nger over the maps, we The Long Song lose ourselves in the beauty of fi ligree lines, Obama’s Wars Andrea Levy points and letters. We smell the sea, hear the Bob WOODWARD surf breaking, see icebergs and rocks, and under 464pp Hb $39.99 Tp $32.99 our feet feel fi ne sand. Anyone who opens this is Working behind the scenes for 18 likely to get as lost as Robinson Crusoe.” months, Woodward has written In a The Briefest the most intimate and sweeping portrait of Obama making Strange Room Punctuation Guide the critical decisions on the Damon Galgut Ever! Afghanistan War, the secret war in Pb $29.99 Ruth COLMAN Pakistan and the worldwide fi ght againstitt terrorism. i 88pp Pb $16.95 Drawing on internal memos, classifi ed documents, Not sure when you should start meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews a new sentence? Or whether with the key players, including Obama himself, this a comma should go before or is an original, fl y-on-the-wall account of Obama and Room after a word? Or if you should use an apostrophe his team in this time of turmoil and uncertainty. Emma Donoghue or not? Colman strips out all the jargon to make Tp $32.99 understanding punctuation easy. This concise and The Axe and the Oath practical guide sheds light on the most common Ordinary Life in questions: When do I end a sentence? Where the Middle Ages should I put commas? Should I capitalise that or Robert FOSSIER  not? How do I make something a possessive? 400pp Hb $57.00 How do I treat quotes and lists? When should I What did men and women eat, use a hyphen? It’s not that hard, really. Just a few drink and wear in the Middle Ages? simple rules, presented in a simple way and you’ll How did they work, fi ght, pray be writing perfect sentences that say what you and laugh? This book reduces medievalieval life to its  want to say, and what you mean to say. This little most elemental functions. It encompasses not only book started life as a self-published, spiral-bound material and social conditions, thought and belief, book which our customers would buy in lots of but the natural environment as well. Viewed in their Labour Day Mon 4 Oct fi ve for friends. Now it’s at the top of every text bare fl esh, humans living in the Middle Ages appear and reference list. not much different from us. Open 10am - 5pm www.abbeys.com.au 1 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Ape House By Nightfall FICTION Sara GRUEN Michael CUNNINGHAM A Dead Hand 352pp Tp $32.99 256pp PbS $27.99 A Crime in Calcutta An absorbing, heart-warming The whole course of one’s life really and ultimately uplifting story of can change in an instant. Peter Paul THEROUX how six bonobo apes change is 44, prosperous, childless, the 272pp Pb $24.95 the lives of three humans, from owner of a big New York apartment, Theroux’s new book, set in present the author of the international a player in the contemporary art day Calcutta, is a compelling story bestseller, Water for Elephants dealing scene. He has been married to Rebecca of obsession and depravity. His (Pb $23.95). Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo,bJlid Jelani and for close on 20 years. Their marriage is sound, in descriptions of the crumbling, Makena are no ordinary apes. These bonobos, the way marriages are. Peter might even describe hot city, its traffi c-choked streets, andnd pavements like others of their species, are capable of reason himself to be happy. But when Mizzy, Rebecca’s teeming with a struggling populace are vivid and and carrying on deep relationships - but, unlike much younger brother, comes to stay, Peter’s world give the story its atmosphere and menace. Jerry, most bonobos, they also know American Sign is turned upside down. Returning to their fl at after a travel writer, has dead hand, or writer’s block, Language. Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great work one day, he sees the outline of Rebecca in and is killing time in the city when he receives Ape Language Lab, doesn’t understand people, the shower. But when he opens the shower door, a letter from a wealthy American woman who is but animals she gets, especially the bonobos. She it is Mizzy he comes face to face with. From that running a children’s hostel, funded by her own feels more comfortable in their world than she has moment on, it is Mizzy who occupies all of Peter’s money, to save some of the ragged children who ever felt among humans - until she meets John thoughts. His fascination with him is erotic but not roam, neglected and hungry, throughout Calcutta’s Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the exactly sexual. Without ever really falling out of myriad streets. She is beautiful and regal, and ever-present animal rights protesters outside the love with his wife, he tumbles into love with her Jerry is soon under her spell. He is beguiled by her lab to see what’s really going on inside. When an brother. selfl ess generosity, fascinated by her control and explosion tears apart the lab, severely injuring standing in Calcutta and, when she requests that Isabel and ‘liberating’ the apes to an unknown The Anthologist he investigate the mysterious dumping of a body in destination, John’s human interest piece turns into Nicholson BAKER a hotel room where her son’s friend is staying, he the story of a lifetime, one he’ll risk his career and 308pp Pb $22.99 is eager to help. He lives for her company, the very his marriage to follow. This story is narrated by Paul sight of her is an erotic experience and he longs to Chowder, a poet of some little please her. As the story unfolds, a mounting sense I Came to renown who is sitting in his of dread emerges and the conclusion is inevitable Say Goodbye barn most of the time trying to and heartbreaking. Immensely readable and Caroline OVERINGTON write the introduction to a new thought-provoking. Peter Tp $32.95 anthology of poetry called Only A Pure Clear Light It was four o’clock in the morning. Rhyme. He’s having a hard time gettingtti started t t d Madeline ST JOHN A young woman pushed through because his career is falling apart, his girlfriend 288pp Tp $32.95 the hospital doors. Staff would Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about later say they thought the woman the poets throughout history who have suffered Simon and Flora Beaufort have far worse and actually deserve to feel sorry for three perfect children and a was a new mother, returning to her child - and in a way, she was. She walked into the nursery, themselves. He has also promised his readers comfortable, happy life in London. that he will reveal many wonderful secrets and When Flora takes the children for where a baby girl lay sleeping. The infant didn’t wake when the woman placed her gently in the tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the a month-long vacation in France, introduction will be a little longer than he’d thought. Simon stays home to work on his latesttest fi lmlm projectproject shopping bag she had brought with her. There is CCTV footage of what happened next, and most What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling - what could go wrong? Simon succumbs to the love story about poetry, among other things; Paul temptation of his cool, blonde accountant and Flora Australians would have seen it, either on the internet or the news. The woman walked out to the tells us about the great poets, from Tennyson, heeds the cry of her reawakened faith. Ultimately, Swinburne and Yeats and the moderns (Roethke, though, neither can escape the revelation that lies car park, towards an old Corolla. For a moment, she held the child gently against her breast and, Bogan, Merwin) to the contemporary scene as well beyond excuses and remorse and candour, at the as the editorial staff of The New Yorker. What he heart of the phenomenon called love. with her eyes closed, she smelled her. She then clipped the infant into the car, got in and drove off. reveals about the rhythm and music of poetry itself The Blue Notebook That is where the footage ends. It isn’t where the is astonishing. A tender, often hilarious and inspired novel. James LEVINE story ends, however. 224pp Pb $24.99 What Becomes Blossoms and Shadows Levine’s fi rst novel tells the A L KENNEDY Lian HEARN haunting story of Batuk, a 15-year- 224pp Pb $24.95 496pp Tp $34.99 old girl whose family, living in the Always attuned to the moment This is the story of the birth of Indian countryside, is in such modern Japan, told by Tsuru, a poverty and debt that she is sold of epiphany, these 12 stories are profound, intimate observations young woman who breaks every into sexual slavery and lives in a stereotype of the Japanese cage on the streets of Mumbai. She is just one of of men and women whose lives ache with possibility - each story lady. We meet her on the day of many girls forced into prostitution, but against the her sister’s wedding, and soon odds, she manages to put pen to paper, writing a dramatisation of the instant in a lifeftht that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack realise that she will not accept stories of her life that help her transcend and make the same domestic role that her a certain sense of her daily existence. The novel is of hope. These men and women are perfectly ordinary people - whose marriages founder; who sister is about to take on. Instead, Tsuru is ready powerfully told in Batuk’s voice, through the words to embrace the new world, defend her beliefs, look she writes in her journal. sit on their own in a cinema watching a fi lm with no soundtrack; and who risk sex in a hotel with an for love and follow her career as a doctor working Kamchatka anonymous stranger. They conceal tenderness alongside her husband on the battlefi elds. In the and disappointment, vulnerability and longing - mid-1860s, Japan was in the grip of a revolution Marcelo FIGUERAS almost as tumultuous as the French Revolution 256pp Pb $29.99 and, with each of them, Kennedy fi nds and opens up that extraordinary emotional wound, that insight 100 years earlier, yet we in the West know very Set in Argentina during the bloody into their experiences. In Saturday Teatime a little about it. Hearn lets readers feel they are there coup d’etat of 1976, this is an woman tries to relax in a fl otation tank, before among the revolutionaries, guided by the engaging adventure story about a young her memories hijack her, taking her back to last character of Tsuru. By the end of the fi rst chapter, boy forced to square his fantasy weekend’s party - to a boy with a hamster, and we feel we know her, and want to fi ght with her as world of comics and TV against his lecherous father - and then further back to she battles against the conventions of the day and reality. Amid a political climate another Saturday, when she was nine years old, falls into a forbidden love. of fear and intimidation, people are beginning when the troubling of her life began. Kennedy’s to disappear without a trace. This shocking new fi fth remarkable collection of short stories shows us reality is more improbable than any fi ction. exactly what becomes of the broken-hearted. www.abbeys.com.au 2 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Justinian CHILDREN’S REVIEWED BY LINDY JONES FICTION The Sleepless One The Lion and the Mouse Inherent Vice Ross LAIDLAW 320pp Pb $29.95 Jerry PINKNEY Thomas PYNCHON 32pp Hb $29.95 384pp Pb $24.95 Nephew of a semi-literate peasant, Justinian I was one of This is a wordless retelling Private eye Doc Sportello comes the most fascinating of the Roman of the Aesop’s fable, and is out of a marijuana haze to watch emperors. His reign marked a one of the most beautifully the end of an era, as free love blossoming of Byzantine culture andd his proli fi c presented versions I have ever slips away and paranoia creeps building works yielded such masterpieces as seen. A mouse disturbs a lion, who disdainfully in with the LA fog. It’s been a the church of Hagia Sophia, which remains the lets it go, only for the mouse to humbly repay the while since he has seen his ex- third largest church in Christendom. Although he favour when the lion is caught in a hunter’s net. In girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere sheh showsh up never personally took part in military campaigns, full glowing colour, rich and golden, the illustrations with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land he managed to expand considerably the Eastern are technically brilliant, with a wealth of detail and developer she just happens to be in love with. It’s Roman Empire’s territory. His wife Theodora, realistic depictions. Pinkney won a very much the tail end of the psychedelic 60s and Doc knows daughter of a bear keeper and former prostitute, deserved Caldecott Medal for this; it is sure to be that ‘love’ is another of those words going around was his partner in one of the greatest love stories a classic! at the moment, like ‘trip’ or ‘groovy’, except that in history. this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which, Museum of Thieves he soon fi nds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle My Last Duchess The Keepers #1 of motives and passions whose cast of characters Daisy GOODWIN Lian TANNER includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a 480pp Pb $29.99 murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working 252pp Hb $22.99 undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a Beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, In the city of Jewel, children fondness for Ethel Merman and a mysterious entity the wealthiest debutante in are considered so precious and known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a America, is spirited away from the so fragile they are kept on fi ne tax dodge set up by some dentists. glamour and comfort of her Park chains attached to adults so they Avenue mansion and suddenly may come to no harm. Impatience, boldness Nemesis fi nds herself Duchess of Wareham, mistressit of f and thinking for yourself are the biggest sins a Philip ROTH Lulworth Castle, married to Ivo, the most eligible child can commit; by that account, Goldie is a 304pp Hb $35.00 bachelor in England. As Cora is soon to discover, danger to herself and others. She is resourceful, nothing in this strange new world is quite as it a practised thief and very eager to escape the A wartime polio epidemic in the seems. Her handsome new husband is withdrawn summer of 1944 devastates chains. When the rules of the city are changed so and secretive; the English social scene is stuffed children may be freed early, she is lucky enough a closely-knit, family-oriented with pitfalls and traps, and there are increasingly Newark community and its to be the fi rst one - and the last, as the Fugelman, dangerous forces at work, people who wish she’d one of the fi gureheads of the city, stages a coup. children. At the centre of Nemesis never met Ivo in the fi rst place... is a vigorous, dutiful, 23-year- She escapes and fi nds herself in the mysterious Museum of Thieves, a place that innocently old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin Sacred Treason thrower and a weightlifter, who is devoted to his masquerades as a fusty, little-visited institution, but James FORRESTER which hides amazing secrets - and a feisty boy, charges and disappointed with himself because 416pp Tp $32.99 his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in Toadspit. A really enjoyable story, full of interesting the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing London, December 1563. England ideas and characters and, even better, promises of on Bucky’s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his is a troubled nation. Catholic more to come! Ages 12+ plots against the young Queen playground - and on the everyday realities he faces iBoy - Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such Elizabeth spring up all over the a pestilence can breed: the fear, panic, anger, country. At his house in the parish Kevin BROOKS bewilderment and suffering. Through this story of St Bride, the herald William Harley - known to 304pp Pb $18.95 runs the dark question that haunts all four of Roth’s everyone as Clarenceux - receives a book from Brooks is defi nitely not for gentle short novels, Everyman (Pb $22.95), Indignation his friend and fellow Catholic, Henry Machyn. But readers and this is no exception. and The Humbling (both Pb $24.95): what choices Machyn is in fear of his life, claiming the book is Tom lives in a housing estate, fatally shape a life? How powerless is each of us deadly... And then Clarenceux is visited by the known for its drugs, violence and up against the force of circumstances? State in the form of Francis Walsingham and his general seediness. He is a quiet boy,y justjust gettinggetting ruthless enforcers, who will stop at nothing to gain about his life, when one day an iPhone is dropped All the Hopeful Lovers possession of it. If Clarenceux and his family are from 25 stories up and shatters his skull. When he William NICHOLSON to survive the terror of Walsingham, and to plead comes out of a coma after surgery, he discovers 320pp Tp $32.95 with the queen’s Secretary of State Sir William he is connected - somehow the iPhone has lodged Cecil for their lives, Clarenceux must solve the Belinda, just 50, wistfully refl ects in his brain and joined him to the Web. On the clues contained in the book to unlock its dangerous same day he was targeted, his best friend Lucy how much better she is at sex now secrets before it’s too late. than when she was young and was raped, and when he gets out of hospital, he gradually tracks down those responsible and gorgeous, and then discovers to Fall of Giants her fury that her husband Tom is enacts revenge. A tough, thought-provoking novel, Ken FOLLETT which asks questions about morality, philosophy having an affair. She lives through an emotional 640pp Hb $49.99 rollercoaster over the seven days following her and ability. Ages 15+ discovery. Weaving through this web of middle- It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a My Island Home by Neil MURRAY aged lovers is a tangle of teenage ones, as Solid Rock by Shane HOWARD Belinda’s fl irty daughter Chloe tries to set up Welsh coal-mining family, is linked Took the Children Away Jack with shy Alice, without realising that Jack by romance and enmity to the is full of secret longings for Chloe herself. These Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. LadyL d by Archie ROACH each Pb $19.95$ personal dramas are unfolding in December in Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Taking three important and the tense run-up to Christmas. Nicholson casts an Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. inspirational songs, these three unfl inching eye on men’s attitude to sex, on women Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious books have forewords by Martin and marriage and family life, and his empathy and young aide to US President Woodrow Wilson and Flanagan and explanations by intelligence shines through on every page. to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to the songwriters of what their emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription song means to them and how and revolution. The story moves seamlessly from it came about. Colourfully illustratedd by children Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and from different communities, with paintings by Peter danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers Hudson. Beautiful, moving, powerful. A percentage of a palace, from the corridors of power to the of profi ts goes to Ian Thorpe’s Foundation for bedrooms of the mighty. Youth. www.abbeys.com.au 3 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 The Romantic And Furthermore BIOGRAPHY Italian Days and Nights Judi DENCH Hb $45.00 Kate HOLDEN From the moment Judi Dench Tell Me the Truth 256pp Tp $32.95 appeared as a teenager in Conversations with my This is the spellbinding follow-up the York Mystery Plays, it was Patients About Life and Death to Holden’s memoir In My Skin clear that acting would be her career. Trained at London’s Ranjana SRIVASTAVA (Pb $25.95), but it has a different Central School of Speech and 320pp Tp $32.955 story to tell. Here she describes her journeyourney fromfrom Melbourne to Rome and Naples, from romance Drama, it was her performance in her twenties “Cancer patients put up with the as Juliet in Franco Zeffi relli’s memorable Old most and complain the least, and sex to love, from loss to understanding and back again. This is a book about everything from Vic production that turned her into a star. She endowed with an uncommon became a household name via television, thanks wisdom that is a privilege to observe. It is not sex with strangers to the heartbreaking realities of being in love. But most of all, it is the story of one initially to a sit-com, A Fine Romance, in which simply that they see the big picture; if you spend she played alongside the actor Michael Williams, long enough with them, they help you see it too.” woman’s pilgrimage to discover who she really is. And to learn to like what she fi nds. whom she married in 1971. She has since made What really happens when someone hears the nine series of the beloved sit-com, As Time Goes words, “You have cancer”? What has preceded Conversations with Myself By. Her fi lm credits include Ladies In Lavender it and what comes after? Written with great Nelson MANDELA 344pppp Hb $54.99$ (opposite Maggie Smith), Notes on a Scandal and compassion and honesty, this is a rare view from Shakespeare in Love, in which she played Queen the other side of the desk. The author refl ects on Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring Elizabeth, a role which gained her an Oscar. But it the very human side of the medical profession - the is her role as ‘M’ in six James Bond fi lms beginning moral dilemmas, the anxieties and the empathy - and iconic fi gures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of putting with Goldeneye in 1995 that has gained her showing us that the best doctors are the ones who worldwide recognition. keep learning by listening to their patients. pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and Inside Story The Donald Friend Diaries victories, these precious and From ABC Foreign Chronicles and Confessions of an previously private documents have been gathered together into one volumel Correspondent to Australian Artist that offers an unprecedented insight into his life. Singapore Prisoner #12988 Ian BRITAIN 496pp Tp $39.95 Included are: journals kept on the run during the Peter LLOYD 276pp Tp $35.00 At age 14, Friend declared: “Have anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries In July 2008, one of ABC-TV’s best- done quite a lot of painting lately, and draft letters written on Robben Island and in known foreign correspondents, Peter and have made up my mind that other South African prisons during his 27 years of Lloyd, was arrested on the streets of Singapore. I shall be an artist. And I shall be incarceration; notebooks from the post-apartheid And so began a dramatic and highly publicised famous!” He achieved his aim. transition; private recorded conversations; ordeal. In the years before this turning point in He also left behind more than two speeches; and correspondence written during his his life, it was Lloyd doing the publicising. He had million words of brilliant, intimate diary entries - one presidency. stood among the gruesome human wreckage of the greatest acts of autobiography in Australian laid out in an improvised outdoor mortuary after history. This is the fi rst single-volume selection of Hey, You in the Black T-Shirt the Bali Bombing and joined Thailand’s disaster these writings and includes material from the two The Real Story of Touring recovery workers collecting the bloated fl otsam ‘lost’ wartime diaries recently unearthed in America the World’s Biggest Acts of the Boxing Day Tsunami. Such horrifi c events by Ian Britain, along with handsome sketches became the stuff of recurring nightmares, a by Friend. Everyone is here: Russell Drysdale, Michael CHUGG Tp $34.999 private agony that took a huge toll and led to a Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart, Robert Helpmann, Chugg was only 15 years old personal disintegration. After his arrest, he became Barry Humphries and Robert Hughes, Mick Jagger when he began managing and embroiled in Singapore’s judicial system and, as and Gore Vidal. Friend’s frank and often acerbic promoting music in his home town Prisoner #12988, suffered the small and large refl ections trace his career, acquaintances and of Launceston, Tasmania. That was humiliations of prison life. But he is far from bitter. love affairs – in Australia, England, Italy, Nigeria, in 1962. Fast forward to the present To survive in gaol, he entered it with the mindset of Sri Lanka, Bali - as well as many of the notable and ‘Chuggi’, as he is affectionately known, has a seasoned journalist on assignment. He tells his characters and events of the 20th century. been a pioneer in bringing the newest, biggest and baddest musical acts to Australia, including story with compelling candour, warmth and wit. High Financier The Police, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli, Fleetwood Public Life, Private Grief The Lives and Times of Mac, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kiss, Pearl Jam and many more. Chuggi has developed a reputation A Memoir of Political Life and Loss Siegmund Warburg as a hard-ass, often walking on stage to shout Mary DELAHUNTY 240pp Pb $29.95 Niall FERGUSON down the crowd or pull the talent into line. He also Delahunty is a celebrity journalist elected to 548pp Hb $55.000 never minces words – writing in shocking detail Parliament, sparkling in the breathless publicity of Ferguson returns to his roots as a about what goes on behind closed doors when an ALP ‘star recruit’. In less than a year, the party fi nancial historian to tell the story of big international acts come to town. This is an wins the election Jeff Kennett couldn’t lose and Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinaryy man whose honest, open and blunt expose of the underbelly of she is thrust, with her startled new colleagues, philosophy of fi nance was the antithesis of the Australian music events. into government. Dubbed a team ‘on training debt-fuelled, algorithm-driven banking of our own wheels’, the Bracks government sets about time. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, Warburg How to Make Gravy restoring services to a Victoria brittle with anger. rose to become the dominant fi gure in the post- Paul KELLY She becomes Minister for Education and the war City of London and one of the architects of 576pp Hb $49.955 Arts. The fairy dust fades, though, when her soul European fi nancial integration. Seared by events Hb & 8 CDs set $125.000 mate, husband and father of their two children in the 1930s, when the long-established Warburg is struck down with a rampant cancer. This is a Bank was fi rst almost destroyed by the Depression Kelly is a born storyteller and this is his much-anticipated memoir. The meditation on how a public fi gure copes, or fails to and then ‘Aryanised’ by the Nazis, Warburg was cope, with private grief, during the long dying and determined that his own bank would learn from the 100 chapters, in alphabetical order by song title, include each song’s lyrics, followed the unending absence. It explores our society’s past and contribute to the economic recovery of deep disdain for death and sickness, and how Britain, the unity of Western Europe and the birth by Kelly’s observations of contemporary music and the people who play it, as well as football, cricket, the gladiatorial dark arts of politics don’t pause of globalisation. He was a complex and ambivalent for anyone. Delahunty is honest and entertaining man, as much a psychologist, politician and actor- literature, opera, social issues, love, loss, poetry, the land and the history of Australia. Insightful, about her mistakes, her political unravelling, her manager as a banker. Ferguson reveals Warburg’s ‘sacking’ and the understanding of a new shape idiosyncracies: the love-hate relationships, the funny, honest and very thought-provoking. The special edition slipcased set also includes eight of life after ‘the bear pit’. This is a compelling read feline intuitions, the mercurial temper-tantrums, as a charmed life comes spectacularly undone in CDs of new live recordings of the songs that form recapturing the meticulous business methods public. and strict ethical code that set him apart from the the book’s chapters, as well as a 64-page booklet mere speculators and traders who inhabit today’s of colour photographs. fi nancial world. www.abbeys.com.au 4 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Washington Cultures of War HISTORY A Life Pearl Harbor/ Hiroshima/ Ron CHERNOW 9-11/ Iraq The Great Fire of Romeme 928pp Hb 65.00 Embracing Defeat The Fall of the Emperor Despite the reverence his name John DOWER Nero and His City inspires, Washington remains 596pp Hb $49.95 Stephen DANDO-COLLINS a lifeless waxwork for many Over recent decades, Dower, 288pp Hb $42.00 Americans, worthy but dull. one of America’s preeminent On a warm summer night in A laconic man of granite self-control,lh he often ft historians, has addressed the rootss and 64 CE, a small fi re broke out arouses more respect than affection. Chernow consequences of war from multiple perspectives. in a Roman shop; fanned by dashes the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional Turning to an even larger canvas, he now winds, the fi re spread quickly, man. A strapping six feet, Washington was a examines the cultures of war revealed by four destroying huge parts of the city. Thehe emperor emperor celebrated horseman, elegant dancer and tireless powerful events - Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11 Nero, an accomplished lyre player and singer, hunter, with a fi ercely guarded emotional life. and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on was in Antium for a singing competition, and Probing his private life, this book explores his terror. The list of issues examined and themes when news of the fi re reached him, he reluctantly fraught relationship with his crusty mother, his explored is wide-ranging: failures of intelligence set sail for home. He announced an ambitious youthful infatuation with the married Sally Fairfax, and imagination, wars of choice and “strategic rebuilding plan, with bounties for landowners who and his often confl icted feelings toward his adopted imbecilities”, faith-based secular thinking, as well completed reconstruction of buildings on their children. But he was a canny political genius who as more overtly holy wars, the targeting of non- land in a prescribed period. He also planned for knew how to inspire people. Not only did he gather combatants and the almost irresistible logic - and wider streets, which made him unpopular with around himself the foremost fi gures of the age, allure - of mass destruction. He offers comparative many. Seeking to assign blame for the fi re, he including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, insights into individual and institutional behaviour settled on the priests of Isis, persecuting them John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but he also and pathologies that transcend “cultures” in the at public festivals. This drew the ire of his critics, brilliantly orchestrated their actions to shape the more traditional sense, and that ultimately go who believed the emperor himself had set the fi re. new federal government, defi ne the separation of beyond war-making alone. Drawing heavily upon the confl icting accounts of powers and establish the offi ce of the presidency. the fi re, and Nero’s rise and demise in the works This is a page-turning journey through all the The New Nobility of Roman historians, Dando-Collins energetically formative events of America’s founding. The Rebirth of the recreates the days leading up to the fi re, the Berlin at War Russian Security State confl agration itself and the subsequent decline of Andrei SOLDATOV Nero’s fortunes. Life and Death in Hitler’s & Irina BOROGAN Capital, 1939-45 What Makes Civilization? 320pp Hb $45.00 Roger MOORHOUSE Two courageous Russian The Ancient Near East and 448pp Hb $55.00 investigative journalists open the Future of the West Berlin was the nerve centre of up the closed and murky world of theth Russian R i David WENGROW 240pp Hb $39.95 Hitler’s Germany. It was the Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin Wengrow provides a vivid backdrop for the most lavish of Nazizi ceremonies,ceremonies, has been president and prime minister of Russia, new account of the ‘birth of the venue for Albert Speer’s grandiose plans to the Kremlin has deployed security services to civilization’ in ancient Egypt forge a new ‘world metropolis’ and the scene of intimidate the political opposition, reassert the and Mesopotamia (today’s the fi nal climactic battle to defeat Nazism. It was power of the state and carry out assassinations Iraq). These two regions, where the stage upon which the rise and fall of the Third overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies many foundations of modern life Reich was most visibly played out. Yet while our were put beyond public accountability and blessed were laid, are usually treated in understanding of the Holocaust is well developed, with the prestige, benefi ts and legitimacy lost isolation. Wengrow brings them we know little about the wider challenges posed to since the Soviet collapse. The security services together within a unifi ed history the German people by living under a dictatorship are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and of how people fi rst created in wartime, the compromises demanded and the sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is cities, kingdoms and monumental templestemples to thethe hardships endured. As a result, our understanding clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they gods. But civilisation is not only about such grand of everyday life in Nazi Germany is profoundly were sidelined, they have made a remarkable monuments. Just as importantly, it is also about imbalanced: we know in intimate detail how a return to power, abetted by their most famous the ordinary but fundamental practices of everyday minority died under Nazism, but we understand alumnus, Putin. life that we might take for granted, such as cooking precious little about how the majority lived. food and keeping the house and body clean. Moorhouse portrays the German experience of Three Armies on the Somme Tracing the development of such practices, from WWII, not through an examination of grand politics, The First Battle of the prehistoric times to the age of the pyramids, the but rather from the viewpoint of the capital’s Twentieth Century book reveals unsuspected connections between streets and homes, which goes to the heart of the William PHILPOTT experience of war and dictatorship. distant regions and provides new insights into the 656pp Hb $57.00 workings of societies we have come to regard as remote from our own. Inside the Nazi War Machine For decades, the Battle of the How Three Generals Unleashed Somme has exemplifi ed the The Blitz horrors and futility of trench Hitler’s Blitzkrieg Upon the World warfare. It was the most brutal The British Under Attack Bevin ALEXANDER 320pp Hb $45.00 fi ght in a war that scarred Juliet GARDINER In 1940, as Nazi Germany spread its wings of generations. Infantrymen 352pp Hb $49.99 war, France stood secure in the knowledge that lined up opposite massed artillery and machine From the author of The they possessed the largest, most formidable and guns. Chlorine gas fi lled the air. The dead and Thirties (Hb $64.99) comes best-equipped army in Europe. France also had a dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s an outstanding history of the stalwart ally in Britain, and the support of Holland land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We most prolonged and devastating and Belgium. But they were all about to face a remember the shedding of so much young blood attack ever endured by Britain’s civilianci ilian population pop lation new kind of enemy who fought a new kind of war. and condemn the generals who sent their men - the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning Alexander examines the ground-breaking martial to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been of Nazi Germany’s sustained attack on civilian concepts developed by three brilliant generals seen as a waste: even as the war continued, Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new - Erwin Rommel, Erich von Manstein and Heinz respected leaders - Winston Churchill and David and terrible form of warfare that had been widely Guderian. Their plan was to unleash the power Lloyd George among them - judged the battle a feared since Neville Chamberlain’s declaration that of the tank, grouping them into juggernauts that pointless one. Yet Philpott makes a convincing Britain was at war. would slam into - and through - enemy lines, as argument that the battle ultimately gave the British aircraft supported them and ground forces swept and French forces on the Western Front the in behind them. It was the Blitzkrieg. And it alerted knowledge and experience to bring World War I to the world that the deadly might of Germany could a victorious end. no longer be ignored... www.abbeys.com.au 5 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 The Fourth Part of the World ISTORY An Astonishing Epic of H AUSTRALIAN HISTORYTORY Churchill Defi ant Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, People Power Fighting On: 1945-1955 and the Birth of America The History and the Barbara LEAMING Future of the Referendum 368pp Hb $45.00 Toby LESTER 496pp Pb $29.95 in Australia “I am an obstinate pig.” This was how Winston Churchill described For millennia, Europeans believed George WILLIAMS & David himself. At the end of July 1945, he that the world consisted of three HUME 321pp Pb $34.95 was a defeated man - hurled from parts: Europe, Africa and Asia. Theyy drewdrew thethe threethree From the failed attempt to power by the British people at the end of the war continents in countless shapes and sizes on their ban communism in 1951 to in which he had just saved his country. This is the maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence the unsuccessful republican story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill of a fourth part of the world, a mysterious, referendum of 1999, Australians have been fought his way back over the next six years to inaccessible place, separated from the rest by cautious about constitutional change, approving the centre of great events - the only place he a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth only eight out of 44 referendum proposals in ever wanted to be. In 1951, at last prime minister - until 1507, that is, when Martin Waldseemuller just over 100 years – a success rate of about once more, he was ready to begin his dash to and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars 18%. This is the only full history of constitutional win “the last prize I seek”: the enduring peace working in the mountains of eastern France, made change in Australia. It closely examines Australia’s that had eluded the world after Hitler’s defeat. it real. After reading about the Atlantic discoveries referendum record and explains why success has But Churchill’s battles were just beginning... A of Columbus’s contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, been so rare. It includes interviews with leading compelling portrait of the great man at a time when they came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had proponents for constitutional change, alongside almost no one wanted him to remain on the public reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate political cartoons, advertising and brochures stage and when he was willing to do absolutely his achievement, they printed a huge map, for the from key referendum campaigns. Following their anything to stay there. fi rst time showing the New World surrounded by sustained analysis of each referendum campaign, water and distinct from Asia, and they gave this the public response and the forces that shaped The Secret History New World a name: America. This is the story the outcome, the authors argue that the key to a of Georgian London behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical successful referendum is truly engaging the people and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers in the political process. How the Wages of Sin and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Shaped the Capital Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. Cockatoo Dan CRUICKSHANK His narrative sweeps across continents and My Life in Cape York 672pp Pb $24.95 centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the Roy McIVOR Georgian London evokes images map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical 160pp Pb $34.95 prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, of elegant buildings and fi ne art, The exile of the Indigenous imperial ambitions and more. but it was also a city where prostitution was rife, population of Hope Valley - in houses of ill repute widespread, and many tens Paris Between the Wars the coastal region of Cape of thousands of people dependent in some way York in far north Queensland - duringuring WWII is is a or other on the wages of sin. The sex industry Art, Style and Glamour shameful, yet seldom told, chapter in Indigenous was, in fact, a very powerful force indeed, and in the Crazy Years Australian history. McIvor was just 10 when Cruickshank compellingly shows how it came to Vincent BOUVET & Gerard his family and community were rounded up affect almost every aspect of life and culture in DUROZOI 416pp Hb $65.00 by the military and shipped 1,500 km south to the capital. Examining the nature of the sex trade, In the years between 1919 Woorabinda because of allegations that his people he offers a tantalising insight into the impact of and 1939, Paris experienced were collaborating with the Japanese under the prostitution to give us vivid portraits of some of the a cultural and intellectual guidance of German Lutheran Missionary George women who became involved in its world. And he boom. Packed with amazing Schwarz. McIvor’s community was deserted by the discusses the varied attitudes of contemporaries - illustrations, this book explores everyery aspectaspect ofof authorities and more than a third of them perished those who sympathised, those who indulged and the city during the interwar years, when Paris truly during their seven-year exile. Today he is one of those who condemned. As he powerfully argues, was the City of Light. Featuring a stellar array of Cape York’s leading Indigenous artists. these women, and many thousands like them, not artists, writers, composers, musicians, designers only shaped 18th century London, they also helped and artists, this book covers everything from Crumps and Camoufl ets determine its future development. architecture and technology to fashion, cafe culture Australian Tunnelling Newton and the Counterfeiter and the gay scene. Companies on the Thomas LEVENSON Russia Against Napoleon Western Front 320pp Pb $24.99 Damien FINLAYSON The Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814 Already famous throughout 480pp Hb $34.99 Dominic LIEVEN Europe for his theories of Crump - “hard hit, heavy fall, 656pp Tp $32.95 planetary motion and gravity, bursting shell (army slang); Isaac Newton decided to In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, sound of bursting bomb or shell”. take on the job of running the the master of Europe, marched Camoufl et - “subterranean cavity formedformed byb bombbomb Royal Mint. There he became into Russia with the largest army exploding beneath the surface of the earth”. Over drawn into a battle with William ever assembled, confi dent that he 4,500 Australians served on the Western Front Chaloner, the most skilful of would sweep everything before in three Australian tunnelling companies and counterfeiters, a man who not onlyl gott away withith him. Yet less than two years later, their unique support unit, the Alphabet Company. faking His Majesty’s coins (a crime the law equated his empire lay in ruins and Russia Around 330 men did not return. The remains of with treason), but was trying to take over the Mint had triumphed. This is the fi rst historytor toto exploree plore most lie in carefully tended military cemeteries itself. But Chaloner had no idea who he was taking in depth Russia’s crucial role in the Napoleonic spread along the entire length of what was the on. Newton pursued his enemy with the cold, Wars, recreating the epic battle between two British sector of the front, from the Belgian coast implacable logic that he brought to his scientifi c empires as never before. Lieven writes with great at Nieuport Bains in the north, to Bellicourt in research. Set against the backdrop of early 18th insight to describe from the Russians’ viewpoint the south. Some lie in German soil, where they century London - with its sewers running down the how they went from retreat, defeat and the burning died in captivity. Others are lost in the dark, silent middle of the streets, fetid rivers, packed houses, of Moscow to becoming the new liberators of embrace of the earth. This is the fi rst complete smoke and fog, industries and its great port - this Europe; the consequences of which could not have history of Australia’s role in the tunnelling war of dark tale of obsession and revenge transforms our been more important. Ultimately he shows Russia 1914-1919, of the men and units in which they image of Britain’s greatest scientist. embarking on its strange, central role in Europe’s served and of life in the tomb-like tunnels of the existence, as both threat and protector - a role war underground. that continues, in all its complexity, into our own lifetimes. www.abbeys.com.au 6 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Gallipoli Faith and Power A Short History PHILOSOPHY & RELIGIONLIGION Religion and Politics Michael McKERNAN in the Middle East 304pp Pb $27.99 Learning to Live Bernard LEWIS Jack Fothergill worked on Philosophy for Beginners 232 pp Hb $47.95 Melbourne’s trams before he went Luc FERRY 240pp Pb $29.95 For more than four decades, to war and was killed on Pine Instead of treating philosophy as a Lewis has been one of the most Ridge on 25 April 1915. McKernan dry academic subject, Ferry shows respected scholars and prolifi c tells Jack’s story and that of his family,mily who never how it is essential to our everyday writers on the history and politics off the th Middle Middl recovered from their grief. He also tells the stories lives. Both a sparkling, accessible East. In this compilation of more than 50 journal of journalist Charles Bean, Chaplain Bill McKenzie, history of Western thought and articles and essays, he displays the full range of John Treloar and General Ian Hamilton, capturing a courageous dissection of how religiongion andand his eloquence, knowledge and insight regarding the essence of what it was really like for the men philosophy have converged and clashed through this pivotal and volatile region. who fought on the Gallipoli peninsula during the ages, this book aims to answer once and for that long campaign. While saluting the bravery, all (and without any obscure jargon) the question: C Street determination and resourcefulness of the Anzacs, what use is philosophy anyway? The Fundamentalist McKernan also tells of the failed leadership in Threat to Democracy London and on the Peninsula that caused great Fingerprints of God Jeff SHARLET loss of life. He makes clear that the most dramatic What Science is Learning 352pp Tp $34.95 moment in Australian history was known to be About the Brain and unwinnable within 15 hours of the fi rst Anzacs What are the true global going ashore. There are few, if any, new issues to Spiritual Experience implications of religious emerge from the story of Anzac, but this book puts Barbara BRADLEY fundamentalism in American politics?s? The The the facts in a new context and brings to the fore the HAGERTY 336pp Pb $24.95 secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as essential moments in the campaign. Is spiritual experience real? Or ‘The Family’ is leading a new crusade for “God-led is it a delusion? When we pray, whatth happens?? government” in the Western world. Sharlet, author The Tin Ticket Can science explain God? The author attempts to of the New York Times bestseller The Family (Pb The Heroic Journey of answer these and other vexing questions about $34.95), is the only journalist to have reported from within the organisation. The Family garnered Australia’s Convict Women the science of spiritual experience. Along the way, she tells the story of her own intriguing spiritual intense media coverage in 2009 when it was Deborah SWISS evolution, delves into the discoveries science is revealed that their townhouse on Washington’s C 352pp Hb $42.00 making about how faith affects our brains and Street was central to three Republican politicians’ Swiss tells the heartbreaking, explores what near-death experiences reveal sex scandals, including Governor Mark Sandford horrifying yet ultimately triumphant about the afterlife. The result is a rich and insightful and Senator John Ensign. Sharlet shows how The story of the women exiled from the BritishB iti h Isles I l examination of what science is learning about how Family, steeped in the infl uence and corruption and forced into slavery and savagery who created and why we believe. one usually associates with the notorious lobbying the most liberated society of their time. Agnes industry, fuels and funds political fundamentalism McMillan and Janet Houston were convicted for A World Without Islam from within government. His exclusive access to shoplifting. Bridget Mulligan stole a bucket of milk; Graham FULLER 352pp Tp $29.99 sources and explosive documents show the true Widow Ludlow Tedder, 11 spoons. For their crimes, What if Islam never existed? To some,me, it’sit s a implications of fundamentalism in American and they would be sent not to jail, but to ships teeming comforting thought: no clash of world politics. with other female convicts. Tin tickets, stamped civilisations, no holy wars, no with numbers, were hung around the women’s terrorists. But what if that weren’t The Quest for Meaning necks, and the ships set out to carry them to the case at all? Fuller guides Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism their new home: Van Diemen’s Land, later known us along an illuminating journey Tariq RAMADAN as Tasmania, part of the British Empire’s crown through history, geopolitics and 256pp Tp $32.95 jewel, Australia. Men outnumbered women nine religion to investigate whether or to one and few ‘proper’ citizens were interested Ramadan, a philosopher and not Islam is indeed the cause of in emigrating. The deportation of thousands of Islamic scholar, invites us to join some of today’s most emotional petty criminals - the vast majority non-violent fi rst him on a journey to the deep and important international crises. From the offenders - provided a convenient solution for the ocean of religious, secular and birth of Islam to the fall of Rome, to the rise and government. Crossing shark-infested waters, some indigenous spiritual traditions collapse of the Ottoman Empire, he analyses the died in shipwrecks during the four-month journey, to explore the most pressing roots of terrorism, the confl ict in Israel and the or succumbed to infections and were sent to a contemporary issues. He role of Islam in supporting and energising the watery grave. Others were impregnated against interrogates the concepts that anti-imperial struggle. Provocatively, he fi nds that - their will by their captors. They arrived as nothing frame current debates including: faithf ith andd reason, contrary to the claims of many politicians, thinkers, more than property. This is the story of women emotions and spirituality, tradition and modernity, theologians and soldiers - a world without Islam discarded by their homeland and forgotten by freedom, equality, universality and civilisation. might not look vastly different from what we know history, who, by sheer force of will, become the He acknowledges the greatest fl ashpoints and today. heart and soul of a new nation. attempts to bridge divergent paths to a common ground between these religious and intellectual Australia’s Military History The Cambridge Companion to traditions. for Dummies Science and Religion Peter HARRISON The Logical Leap David HORNER 384pp Pb $45.00 322pp Pb $49.95 Induction in Physics Your essential guide to our defence forces, from In recent years, the relations David HARRIMAN the arrival of the British settlers in Australia, between science and religion 275pp Pb $19.95 through the wars of the 20th century (particularly have been the object of renewed World Wars I and II) and to recent peacekeeping Harriman presents the result of attention. Developments in physics, duties in East Timor and Afghanistan. a collaboration between scientist biology and the neurosciences have and philosopher. Beginning with Events that Shaped Australia reinvigorated discussions about the a detailed discussion of the role of mathematicsmathematics nature of life and ultimate reality. Wendy LEWIS, Simon BALDERSTONE and experimentation in validating generalisations At the same time, the growth of anti-evolutionary & John BOWAN 304ppp Hb $49.95 in physics - looking closely at the reasoning and Intelligent Design movements has led many to of scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, This updated second edition sets the view that science and religion are necessarily Lavoisier and Maxwell - Harriman skillfully argues out the details, the people, the in confl ict. This book provides a comprehensive that the inductive method used in philosophy is, in images and the after-effects of the introduction to the relations between science principle, indistinguishable from the method used most important turning points in our and religion, with contributions from historians, in physics. nation’s history. philosophers, scientists and theologians. www.abbeys.com.au 7 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Why Does E=mc2? Here on Earth SCIENCE (And Why Should We Care?) An Argument for Hope Proofi ness Brian COX & Jeff FORSHAW Tim FLANNERY The Dark Arts of 264pp Pb $24.99 336pp Tp $34.95 Mathematical Deception What does E=mc2 actually mean? “We stand at a crossroads, where Charles SEIFE The authors take a journey to the comprehension of our place in 304pp Pb $43.00 frontier of 21st century science to nature - of our true abilities and unpack Einstein’s famous equation. of our history - is supremely The bestselling author of Explaining and simplifying notions of energy, important. We have formed a global civilisationi ili ti off Zero (Pb $27.00) shows how mass and light - while exploding commonly unprecedented might, driven forward by the power mathematical misinformation held misconceptions - they demonstrate how of our minds - a civilisation which is transforming pervades our daily lives. Good Morning America the structure of nature itself is contained within our Earth. We are masters of technology and of has announced that natural blondes will be extinct this equation. Along the way, they visit the site comprehension, but it’s what we believe that may, within 200 years. Pundits estimated there were of one of the largest scientifi c experiments ever from now on, determine our fate.” In his fi rst major more than a million demonstrators at a tea party conducted: the now-famous Large Hadron Collider, book since The Weather Makers (Pb $26.95), rally in Washington, DC, when in fact only 60,000 a gigantic particle accelerator capable of recreating Flannery charts the history of life on our planet. were there. Numbers have peculiar powers - they conditions that existed fractions of a second after This book, which draws its point of departure can disarm skeptics, befuddle journalists and the Big Bang. A collaboration between one of the from Darwin and Wallace, Lovelock and Dawkins, hoodwink the public into believing almost anything. youngest professors in the United Kingdom and a is an extraordinary exploration of evolution and Proofi ness, as Seife explains, is the art of using distinguished popular physicist, this is one of the sustainability. Our success as a species has pure mathematics for impure ends, and reminds most exciting and accessible explanations of the had disastrous effects on many of the Earth’s readers that bad mathematics has a dark side. It is theory of relativity. ecosystems and could lead to our downfall. But used to bring down beloved government offi cials equally, Flannery argues, we are now equipped as and to appoint undeserving ones (both Democratic Pythagoras never before to explore our true relationship with and Republican), to convict the innocent and His Lives and the Legacy the planet on which our biological, economic and acquit the guilty, to ruin our economy and to fi x the cultural futures depend. outcomes of future elections. of a Rational Universe Kitty FERGUSON Delusions of Gender The Wave 368pp Hb $45.00 The Real Science Behind Sex In Pursuit of the Rogues, Einstein said that the most Differences Freaks and Giants incredible thing about our universe Cordelia FINE of the Ocean was that it was comprehensible at all. As Ferguson explains, Pythagoras had much 320pp Pb $29.99 Susan CASEY the same idea - but 2,500 years earlier. Although Sex discrimination is supposedly 352pp Hb $46.00 known by many only for his famous Theorem, in a distant memory. Yet popular Casey travels across the world fact the pillars of our scientifi c tradition - the belief books, magazines and even and into the past to confront that the universe is rational, that there is unity to scientifi c articles defend the largest waves the oceans have to offer. This all things, and that numbers and mathematics inequalities by citing immutable dangerous water includes rogue waves south of are a powerful guide to truth about nature and biological differences between Africa, storm-born giants near Hawaii and the the cosmos - hark back to the convictions of this the male and female brain. Why are there so few biggest wave ever recorded, a 1,740 foot-high wall legendary scholar. Ferguson brilliantly evokes women in science and engineering, so few men in of wave (taller than one and a third Empire State the ancient world of Pythagoras, showing how the laundry room? Well, they say, it’s our brains. Buildings) that blasted the Alaskan coastline in ideas spread in antiquity. She chronicles the Drawing on the latest research in developmental 1958. She follows big-wave surfers in their often incredible infl uence he and his followers have had psychology, neuroscience and social psychology, suicidal attempts to tackle monsters made of water on so many extraordinary people in the history of Fine rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, and also interviews scientists exploring the danger Western thought and science. dressed up in new scientifi c fi nery, help perpetuate that global warming will bring us more and larger the status quo. She reveals the mind’s remarkable waves. She writes compellingly of the threat and Voyages of Discovery plasticity, shows the substantial infl uence of culture beauty of the ocean at its most dangerous and A Visual Celebration of Ten of the on identity and, ultimately, exposes just how smoothly translates the science of her subject into Greatest Natural History Expeditions much of what we consider ‘hardwired’ is actually engaging prose. Tony RICE 336pp Tp $39.99 malleable. A passionately argued and much- needed corrective to the belief that men’s and Among the many stories of Out of Water women’s brains are intrinsically different. From Abundance to adventure and great scientifi c Scarcity and How to Solve endeavour presented here are Why Balloons Rise James Cook’s perilous Pacifi c the World’s Water Problems crossings and Darwin’s historic and Apples Fall Colin CHARTRES & voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. The Laws that Make the Samyuktha VARMA Hand-picked from the vast Library of the Natural World Work 244pp Hb $29.95 History Museum, London, the illustrations and Jeff STEWART From cities to biofuels, competition for water artworks form a rare collection, most of which are 192pp Hb $24.99 is accelerating. Climate change threatens to exclusively presented in this stunning book. A We all know the world works in intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis mesmerising visual record! mysterious ways. But have you in several regions of the developing world. This is ever itched to know why? Why don’tt heavierh i thingsthi already happening throughout much of Asia, the The Biggest Twitch fall faster? Why do we have more energy when Mediterranean, southwestern Australia and the Around the World in 4,000 Birds we’re sitting upstairs? Is time travel really possible? southwestern US. Along with water shortages, Alan DAVIES & Ruth MILER And what happened to Schrodinger’s poor cat? unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread 320pp Pb $24.99 This is an accessible look at the fascinating, awe- problem, too. As water crises trigger food and Most people dream of packing in their inspiring and sometimes downright weird world health crises, billions may slip further into poverty, humdrum city life and heading off into of physics. It covers all the basics we learnt at leading to greater social and political unrest, the unknown for a life of adventure. school from: what is physics; motion and forces; new wars and worsening national security. This For the authors, this dream became work and energy; matter and heat, electricity and book illuminates the coming global water crisis a reality, but with a twist; they magnetism. It even covers the more thought- and presents innovative solutions in agriculture, decided to pack in their jobs, sell their househouse andand provoking and complex questions of relativity, engineering, governance and beyond, including take on the ultimate birder’s challenge - to smash quantum physics and astrophysics, as well as all state-of-the art techniques for integrated water the world record for the number of species seen in the exciting philosophical questions that arise out management. one calendar year. This is the story of their great of these subjects. expedition, searching for birds from Ecuador to Ethiopia via Argentina, Australia and Arizona. www.abbeys.com.au 8 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Decade History of Greed MISCELLANEOUS Eamonn McCABE & Terence Financial Fraud from Tulip McNAMEE 512pp Hb $59.95 Twentieth-Century Mania to Bernie Madoff This book presents 500 engaging David SARNA French Poetry photographic images, arranged 416pp Hb $39.95 A Critical Anthology in chronological order, to tell the Sarna exposes the true and often Hugues AZERAD & Peter story of the fi rst decade in our new millennium.ill i riveting stories of how both naive COLLIER (Eds) Global in scope, the photographs tackle subjects and sophisticated investors alike 356pp Pb $54.95 ranging from the World Trade Centre attacks of were fooled by unscrupulous entrepreneurs, Modern French poetry is unique 9/11 to the AIDS epidemic in Africa, from the fi rst lawyers, hedge fund managers, Texan billionaires, in the boldness and creativity of its experiments in tests of the Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva political fundraisers, music managers, fi nancial form and genre, from classical verse to vers libre, to the death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. advisers and even former Mossad agents. From from calligrammes to prose poems and poesie Award-winning documentary photography sits the people behind the fi nancial fraud and how sonore. This anthology includes 32 poems by alongside the new ‘citizen journalism’, which has they did it, to why people continually fall prey to French and francophone poets, each followed by seen ordinary bystanders capture historic events scam artists, Sarna outlines what actions you an accessibly written, detailed commentary. The equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a can take today to protect yourself from becoming different approaches adopted in the close readings mobile phone camera. Each image is accompanied the victim of tomorrow’s ‘too good to be true’ by specialists in their fi eld refl ect the major trends by a short descriptive and an extended, historical investment opportunity. He details how markets are in current literary criticism and theory. A foreword caption to provide a wider context within which to manipulated, books are cooked, Ponzi schemes by one of France’s foremost poets, Yves Bonnefoy, understand these often beautiful, always surprising, are hatched and how the government only closes a general introduction and an afterword provide photographs. the barn door once the cows have all escaped. a helpful theoretical framework for the study of What Makes Us Tick? modern poetry. An extensive bibliography, concise The Flight of the Intellectuals biographies of the poets and a glossary of literary The 10 Desires that Paul BERMAN 304pp Pb $29.95 terms are included. Drive Us Tariq Ramadan is one of the Hugh MACKAY Muslim world’s most charismatic Young Michelangelo 352pp Tp $35.00 and infl uential fi gures, with a long The Path to the Sistine Why do we talk as if we’re career at prominent European A Biography rational, but act as if we’re not? universities advocating peaceful John SPIKE Why are some people such coexistence with the West. It 312pp Hb $46.00 control freaks? What is the true created a worldwide furore when role of religion? Why do we seek change,hange yetyet he was barred from accepting a This book weaves together resist it? Why do we want more of the things that prestigious appointment at a US university.iversity ButBut in the personal and professional relationshipsionships that have already failed to satisfy us? Why are we this portrait, Berman details Ramadan’s disturbing shaped the fi rst 30 years of Michelangelo’s career, so passionate about sport? Why do we need to ties to radical Islam. This book notes a troubling from his early days in the Medicis’ sculpture communicate? Why do we fall out of love? Why tendency among Western liberals to overlook garden to the commissions that culminated in do we exaggerate stories about what’s happened Ramadan’s questionable tenets in the rush to his work in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was to us? As a social researcher, Mackay has spent embrace a moderate. By comparing Ramadan’s driven relentlessly by ambition, an obligation to most of his working life exploring why we do the own writing with his coverage in the press, it provide for his dysfunctional family and a fi rm things we do, ranging from the television programs touches on many of today’s most important conviction of his own genius. Although he lacked we watch or the politicians we vote for to the issues - the debate over the veil in French schools, the social graces of contemporaries Da Vinci decisions that shape our lives - who (or whether) to contemporary anti-Semitism, anti-feminism and the and Raphael, he attracted the patronage of the marry, where to live, whether to have children and presence of home-grown Islamic fundamentalism most important political fi gures of the time. He what job to do. Part refl ection, part psychological in the West - presenting a commentary about was probably one of the very few who could fl ee analysis, this is a highly personal account of the the media’s inability to detect dangerous ideas in Rome in the middle of completing the pope’s tomb, things Mackay has learnt from the experience of contemporary society. repeatedly refuse orders to return, and still receive listening to people talk about their dreams, fears, an even more important commission for a bronze faith, hopes, disappointments, frustrations and Merchants of Culture sculpture. Spike crystallises historical detail into fantasies. The Publishing vivid, memorable imagery. One scene stands out Business in the Twenty- in particular: Michelangelo’s six-ton David being A Book to Love slowly dragged through the streets of Florence First Century to its place in front of the Palazzo della Signoria. Favourite Guests of ABC TV’s First John THOMPSON Alternating between accounts of the turbulent Tuesday Book Club 440pp Hb $39.95 political atmosphere and details of Michelangelo’s 186pp Pb $27.99 The world of book publishing is most private moments in the sculpture studio, In this companion publication going through turbulent times. this is a rich narrative that reads like the best to the ABC TV show, well- For nearly fi ve centuries, the adventure novel. known authors share their methods and practices of book passion for a book they love. publishing remained largely unchanged,hanged but at the French Kitchen Contributors include Ian dawn of the 21st century the industry fi nds itself Classic Recipes for Home Cooks Rankin, Augusten Burroughs, faced with perhaps the greatest challenges since Serge DANSEREAU 400pp Hb $59.99 Christos Tsiolkas, Michael Gutenberg. A combination of economic pressures In this beautifully photographed Robotham, Sophie Gee, and technological change is forcing publishers to and designed cookbook from Peter Corris, Emily Maguire, alter their practices and think hard about the future leading chef Serge Dansereau, Matthew Reilly, Di Morrisey, Peter FitzSimons, of the book in the digital age. Thompson situates you will fi nd 230 classic French Catherine Jinks and Malcolm Knox, as well as the current challenges facing the industry in an recipes for the home kitchen, host Jennifer Byrne and regular panellists Marieke historical context, analysing the transformation of all carefully developed to make Hardy and Jason Steger. trade publishing in the US and Britain since the French food accessible to the 1960s. He gives a detailed account of how the everyday Australian cook. world of trade publishing really works, dissecting Combining expert French technique and wonderful the roles of publishers, agents and booksellers and Australian produce, Serge shares with us the kind showing how their practices are shaped by a fi eld of food he cooks at home. Whether brioche or that has a distinctive structure and dynamic. The lemon crepes, cassoulet or clafoutis, these recipes big question is the impact of the digital revolution bring us the style and fl avours of everyday French on book publishing and the pressures that are cooking and offer us a chef’s know-how that helps If you are after one of the fi ne titles from reshaping the fi eld of trade publishing today. turn a good dish into a great one. Cambridge University Press, please ask us fi rst. We stock virtually all titles held by Cambridge in Australia, plus a few more! www.abbeys.com.au 9 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993  MISCELLANEOUS The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden The Elephant to Tim RICHARDSON Tp $49.95 $15.00 Hollywood The true story of the invention of Britain’s greatest - and most underappreciated - art form. Introduces us to a period of intrigue, where the installation of a water feature was a Michael CAINE political act. 384pp Tp $32.99 It’s been a long journey for Stephen Spender: The Authorised Biography Maurice Micklewhite - born with John SUTHERLAND Hb $79.95 $20.00 rickets in London’s poverty- This account of the life of this brilliant, but enigmatic, man ranges from Oxford, to the stricken Elephant and Castle breakaway years during the 30s in Weimar Germany, through the war as Britain’s most area - to the bright lights of famous fi reman, to the postwar years of international celebrity. Hollywood. With a glittering careerer spanning more The Varieties of Scientifi c Experience: than fi ve decades and starring roles which have A Personal View of the Search for God earned him two Oscars, a knighthood and an Carl SAGAN Hb $56.00 $20.00 iconic place in the Hollywood pantheon, the man Sagan easily discusses his views on topics ranging from manic depression and the now known to us as Michael Caine looks back possibly chemical nature of transcendence to creationism and so-called Intelligent over it all. Funny, warm and honest, he brings Design to the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets. his insider’s view of Hollywood (where there’s neither holly nor woods). He recalls the fi lms, the David and Solomon: legendary stars and the off-screen moments with In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of Western Civilization a gift for storytelling only equalled by David Niven. Israel FINKELSTEIN & Neil Asher SILBERMAN Hb $49.95 $20.00 Hollywood has been his home and his playground. The authors of The Bible Unearthed (Pb $29.95) reveal the sacred kings and founding But England is where his heart lies. And where fathers of Western civilisation. David and Solomon are famous in the Bible for their he blames the French for the abundance of snails warrior prowess, wisdom, poetry, conquests and building programs. Yet the historical in his garden. His handprint is one of only 200 to David was a bandit leader, and he and his successor were reshaped into symbols of decorate Hollywood Boulevard since 1927. Caine hope in times of strife and despair. has played everyone, yet always remained himself. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare James SHAPIRO Pb $26.95 $10.00 637 Gorillas on the Run An intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year that changed not and Other Feats, Facts and only his fortunes, but the course of literature. We follow what he reads and writes, what Astonishing Stats he saw and who he worked with as he creates four of his most famous plays. John CROUCHER To Conquer Hell: The Battle of Meuse-Argonne 1918 272pp Pb $24.95 Edward LENGEL Hb $49.99 $25.00 The long-standing Number The fi ght for the Meuse-Argonne region of France was the last great battle of WWI. It Crunch newspaper column was the bloodiest battle the Americans, who fought it, had ever seen, and remains the in The Age and The Sydney single most costly engagement in its military history. “One of the most powerful war Morning Herald is a weekly books that I have read.” - Martin Gilbert bite of diverse, but always Monster of God: fascinating, stats and facts. The Man-eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind This compendium is the David QUAMMEN Hb $49.95 $20.00 second in a series of books that bringb i togetherh theh With rapidly diminishing areas where predators still reign, Quammen examines the fate very best of the facts, feats and stats discovered of lions, saltwater crocodiles, brown bears and Siberian tigers. In the ferocity of these by Croucher over many years of compiling the creatures, we recognise something primeval within us, something in danger of vanishing column. It includes a fresh new suite of cartoons forever. by Roger Harvey. ‘637 Gorillas’ refers to the largest number of people running in gorilla suits in one Faust in Copenhagen: race. Bananas, if you ask us! A Struggle for the Soul of Physics and the Birth of the Nuclear Age Gino SEGRE Tp $44.95 $15.00 Alice in Waterland In April 1932, about 40 scientists attended the Copenhagen Institute for their annual physics conference. The era of nuclear physics, nuclear power, big science and large- Lewis Carroll and the scale experiments had begun… River Thames in Oxford Mark DAVIES London Lights: The Minds That Moved the City That Shook the World 144pp Pb $29.95 James HAMILTON Hb $80.00 $20.00 From the time of Nelson’s death to the opening of the Great Exhibition nearly 50 years A world-famous Oxford story later, London spread like a disease across the fi elds of Middlesex and Surrey. Foul and from a new angle: the essential dangerous though it was to inhabit, London developed a new confi dence in the promise role played by the River of art, technology and science. Thames in the creation of Alice’ss AdventuresAdventures iinn Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Daily Life in Ancient India: From 200 BC to 700 AD (both Pb $9.95). It was on rowing trips with Alice Jeannine AUBOYER Pb $39.99 $10.00 Liddell and her sisters that Lewis Carroll (the Evokes the fascinating complexities of India’s ancient epoch, with its caste system, Oxford don Charles Dodgson) invented many of endless ritual and the ceremonial nature of human relations - even in matters of love. the tales which were later incorporated into the It’s Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock - A Personal Biography books; it was on the riverbank on 4 July 1862 Charlotte CHANDLER Pb $24.95 $10.00 that Wonderland had its birth; and it was from Hitchcock never wrote an autobiography and this is as close to one as we will ever have. particular incidents on or near the Thames that he Drawn from years of interviews with Hitchcock, his friends and the actors who worked drew inspiration for some well-known episodes. with him, Chandler has created a rich, complex, affectionate and honest picture. Combining excerpts from his diaries and the ‘Alice’ books with contemporary images, memoirs The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists and fi ction, Davies sets the Oxford scene of the Irene & Alan TAYLOR (eds) Tp $35.00 $15.00 time (including the burgeoning Pre-Raphaelite Pays tribute to a fascinating genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all movement) and sheds new light on the real literary forms. Beginning with Pepys, it includes Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, individuals who inspired characters such as the Evelyn Waugh, Anne Frank, Goebbels, Che Guevara and Queen Victoria. Hatter, the Sheep and the Red Queen.    www.abbeys.com.au 10 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 Ashley Hay’s previous books illustrate the range of her interests - Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and their Champions (Pb $25), and a terrifi c account of one of the most famous and scandalous feuds of the 19th century, The Secret: FROM EVE ABBEY The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron ($19.95 Pb Have you looked at our fabulous new website? www.abbeys.com.au 280pp). Hay also contributed the Essays in Herbarium ($89.95 Hb 164pp), a book of stunning photographs by Robyn Stacey about the collections held at There are now more than three million books available on the site, so it’s Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens. The essays deal with the nature of collecting a great place to browse. However, to save time, if you know what you and the scientifi c background of each specimen, some now extinct. A Glossary want, or if you only want a book which is readily available, you can go to of Botanical Descriptions is included. We also have a special slipcase edition of Narrow Your Search on the left hand side and click on, for example, Herbarium (normally $199, but we have one copy available for $100). “in stock and ready to ship”. (This facility comes up after you enter a Search or click on a Category). In the Search Box, you can enter Title, Jon Cleary died in July at the age of 92. The author of 55 books, he was notably Author, Keywords, ISBN or any combination of these, in any order. So the creator of Sydney detective Scobie Malone. We usually have some of his go ahead and explore! You can choose to arrange results by Relevancy, titles in Australian Crime, and in Australian Fiction we have The Sundowners Title, Author or Price. And one more quick tip – as with most websites, ($22.95 Pb 309pp) and Mornings Gone ($22.99 Pb). you can simply click on the Abbey’s oval in the top left corner at any time It is interesting to read Crime Fiction from other lands, so I was glad to be lent a to return Home. Once again, Abbey’s offers a real wealth of information nice little book recently which is set in Laos. The author, Colin Cotterill, has lived about books. and taught in Laos for many years and takes the opportunity in his detective Theatre and social historians will be interested to fi nd a small book in stories to recount some of the recent history of Laos. His chief character, and Theatre Studies which has been issued to celebrate 75 Years of the New detective, is Dr Siri Paiboun, who as National Coroner of Laos fi nds plenty of Theatre. This left-wing radical cooperative, where every member’s voice bodies landing in his morgue which need explaining. Dr Siri is a delightfully has equal power, was fi rst in Pitt Street as part of the Sydney Workers’ curious older man who has seen it all before and is ready for any new Art Club, but is now at 542 King Street in Newtown. At one time, there adventure. Titles in stock are Anarchy and Old Dogs ($24.95 Pb 272pp), The were New Theatres in each capital city, but today only the Sydney one Curse of the Pogo Stick ($24.95 Pb 272pp), Thirty-Three Teeth ($32.95 Pb survives. Many famous theatre performers and directors have taken their 304pp), Disco for the Departed ($32.95 Pb 256pp) and The Merry Misogynist fi rst footsteps in the New Theatre, and writers such as Katherine Susannah ($29.95 Pb 272pp). A refreshing change. Prichard, Betty Roland and Oriel Gray began the tradition of providing local Are you one of the fans of Mad Men, the stylish SBS drama on Sunday night? plays. It is called The New Years 1932- ($15 Pb 98pp). Lots of people have bought the complete set on DVD and are way ahead. Set Have you discovered that upstairs in Language Book Centre we have in 1960s America in Madison Avenue advertising kingdom, it is a pleasure to a very nice selection of DVDs? These are mostly foreign language and watch, and not only for the clothes and sets! I can assure you, all that smoking classics, but also many crime thrillers, TV series and documentaries. and drinking and sexism is too true! In Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Many DVDs are reduced in price, including limited stock of Asterix movies Romp Through 1960s America ($29.95 Pb 231pp incl index), reduced to only $9.95 - Asterix and the Big Fight, Asterix in Britain, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, who is a fan, has taken the opportunity Asterix and the Twelve Tasks, Asterix Conquers America and Asterix to explain just how the references fall – from reading Mary and Caesar. In the Children’s section we have CDs for Young People, McCarthy’s The Group (Pb $29.99) or John Cheever’s short including Young Audio titles Alice in Wonderland ($29.95 3 CDs), story The Swimmer (included in Cheever’s Collected Stories Little Lord Fauntleroy ($18.95 2 CDs), Paul Jennings’ Cabbage Patch Tp $35) to being a Kennedy volunteer. Fans of The Gruen Fibs ($16.95 4 CDs) and Peasant Prince ($29.95 1 CD), which is the Transfer will appreciate this as well. Find it in Popular Culture. abbreviated edition of Mao’s Last Dancer. Another very American title I am reading just now is Annette Gordon-Reed’s If you don’t like going upstairs via our internal staircase, please ask one The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family ($27.95 Pb 802pp). The of the staff to take you up in the elevator. author was the fi rst African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for History, for this book, which has also won many other awards. The slave family of Hemings After my big journey through The Diaries of Sofi a descend from Elizabeth, a mulatto (part white) woman who, later in life, became Tolstoy (now in paperback, $29.95 650pp), I tackled one of the slaves on Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, when he married Simon Sebag-Montefi ore’s Stalin: The Court of Martha Eppes (the daughter of John Wayles, the original owner). It was said the Red Tsar ($29.99 Pb 852pp incl index and that one of her daughters, Sally, was Jefferson’s ‘substitute wife’ and mother bibliography). Not another biography of the monster, but of several of his children, and this was recently confi rmed by a grimly amusing rundown of the plotters and planners DNA tests. This book, written with some bias, I must admit, is who lived in the village that was the Kremlin and their a most interesting take on 18th century Virginian society, as activities throughout the country. Can it be true that well as slavery and the American Revolution. A big melting the larger-than-life Stalin was only 5ft 6in? Although pot because some of the siblings of Sally were children of the Wikipedia says he was 5ft 3in! father of Martha, Jefferson’s wife. How did Jefferson reconcile I think you know how much I enjoy the writing of Simon Winchester. his role as a slave owner who penned the words “all men are My favourite biography last year was Bomb, Book and Compass: created equal”? He did indeed treat them rather well, as you Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China ($26.95 Pb 336pp). will discover if you read this fascinating book. Winchester’s latest book is Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories I’ve put up the posters for the University of Cambridge Summer School ($35 Pb 400pp incl index and bibliography). I notice the blurb calls him a programs. Classes go from 10 July to 20 August (variously) and include Medieval master of narrative non-fi ction, which nicely describes his work - always Studies, Art History, Literature, Science, Shakespeare and History, as well as an knowledgeable and enthusiastic and well above regular journalism. Inter Disciplinary Program which goes for the entire period. The full brochure is Jonathan Franzen, winner of many prizes including the National Book available in December, but if you want information sooner, try www.cont-ed.cam. Award, has received excellent reviews for his new book Freedom ac.uk/intsummer or email [email protected] and ask for a brochure ($32.99 Pb 570pp), so I thought I should try again to read the book that to be posted to you when available. These classes in the beautiful city of created the fi rst sensation, The Corrections ($24.99 Pb 653pp). No Cambridge make a good holiday. I’ve been several times and recommend them. better luck this time! I’m afraid I am one of the not-so-many readers who The Australian Book Review, with the support of Copyright Agency Limited, is think Franzen is a bit over-the-top. I had to remind myself it was intended offering a $10,000 prize - the Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay - on any as satire, but I still didn’t appreciate the joke. They may be vivid pictures subject you like (3,000 to 10,000 words). Entries close 10 December 2010, so of modern life in America, but I just hope they are not universal. The hero you have time to let fl y on your current thoughts. There is also a Young Calibre spends an awful lot of time masturbating and thinking about sex. Prize for an Outstanding Essay by a youth 21 years or younger (1,000 to 3,000 There is a new book by an Australian writer I much admire. This time it words). For conditions see www.australianbookreview.com.au. Good Luck! is a novel by Ashley Hay called The Body in the Clouds ($29.99 Pb The Australian Book Review is also offering a fi rst prize of $4,000 for the Peter 304pp), which deals with the extraordinary moment when a body falls Porter Poetry Prize 2011. Entries close 15 November 2010. Entry forms in the from the clouds and is seen at three different times by three different September issue of ABR or go to www.australianbookreview.com.au. Any new men – the astronomer William Dawes (of Dawes Point fame), a Sydney poets out there? Harbour Bridge worker in 1930 and a banker returning home to Sydney early this century. Hay muses on time and place and on what it means to Keep well, call a place home and how to be sure you are there. Recommended. Eve www.abbeys.com.au 11 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993 ABBEY’S BESTSELLERS - SEPTEMBER NON-FICTION FICTION 1. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food 1. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Tp $32.99) Guide 2011 by Joanna Savill & Terry Durack 2. 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A Week in December (02) 9264 8993 Fax by Shlomo Sand (Pb $25.00) by Sebastian Faulks (Pb $24.95) Reply Paid 66944 8. God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval 9. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Tp $32.99) World Laid the Foundations of Modern Sydney NSW 2000 Science by James Hannam (Pb $22.99) 10. Empire of Silver (Conqueror #4) (no stamp required) by Conn Iggulden (Tp $32.99) 9. The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir www.abbeys.com.au by Anh Do (Tp $32.99) Editor: Ann Leahy [email protected] 10. 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No literary lavatory will be to the heart of the confl ict. complete without a copy.” - Spectator Calling from Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt Aristocrats by James Lawrence $29.99 outside Sydney? & Steven Dubner $24.95 For 900 years, the British aristocracy has Levitt, the original rogue economist, considered itself ideally qualifi ed to rule others, Language Book and Dubner have spent four years make laws and guide the fortunes of the nation. Centre has a toll uncovering the hidden side of even Tracing the history of this remarkable supremacy, free number: more controversial subjects, from this is a story of wars, intrigue, chicanery and terrorism to shark attacks, cable TV extremes of both selfl essness and greed. 1800 802 432 to hurricanes. www.abbeys.com.au 12 Ph (02) 9264 3111 Fax (02) 9264 8993