Gleebooks Gleaner June 2016

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Vol. 23 No. 5 June 2016

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This month

Annie Proulx

BARKSKINS 1

Oz Poetry

Comfort Food by Ellen Van Neerven ($24.95, PB)

I also saw those spirit dogs/ and poetry travelled with me/ like rivers/ I didn’t ever eat alone. Author of award-winning fiction debut, Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven announces herself as a talented poet with this intoxicating collection. Moving between places & cultures, Comfort Food explores identity, sovereignty and the restless quest for love. Using food as her inspiration, van offers a cross-cultural vision of the exotic & the familiar.

This is what gives us time by Kevin Brophy

This book of poems was written over one intense year of writing, at the B. R. Whiting Studio in Rome. While Brophy’s poems are, on the one hand, often deeply steeped in this sensate, embodied Roman experience, the particular becomes universal as in all powerful poetry. This collection is at heart a dance of dualities & their volatile questions, of which the poetry is delicately aware.

In this, Brophy exemplifies an ethical, even moral, determination.

The work is underlined by love, never sentimentally, both romantic, and for one’s fellow humans and creatures. ($29.95, PB)

Anatomy of Voice by David Musgrave ($29.95, PB)

What is a voice? In this book-length poem the ‘isness’ of voice is its central preoccupation: it is considered from as many different aspects as there are parts to this multiform poem. With words sometimes rising from or inspired by selected Renaissance to early Enlightenment wood-cut engravings, Anatomy of Voice is divided into four Partitions—across which are lyricised the shiftings of the question ‘what is a voice’, and the poem’s speculative and evocative answers. Warmly personal and scholarly, intimate and learned, this meditation was created as a tribute to the late Bill Maidment, a teacher whose influence on Musgrave (as it was for many) was life-changing.

The Wind Outside by Stephen McInerney

These poems celebrate experience in all its physical, sensual & emotional complexity from the streets & beaches of Sydney, where Stephen McInerney lives, to the remembered landscapes of a South Coast childhood; they range as far as Britain, France & the rural villages of Greece. McInerney’s clear eye evokes not only the particularity of a place, but the spiritual & philosophical depths beneath material things. To do so he employs all the technical resources of poetry, both traditional & experimental, writing in regular form when the subject demands it, but adventurous at times in his freedom. ($25, PB)

Content by Liam Ferney ($19.95, PB)

In his latest collection, Liam Ferney focuses on the deep contradictions at the heart of modern life. This is fast-paced poetry that is explosive, critical, and engaged. Ferney uses the argot of politics and the internet to tackle religion, war, love, and late capitalism. Content charts and parodies a hypertextual world, engrossed in media while passionately critical of their effects.

The Heaving Pavement: Epistles on an Anxious Life by Ramon Loyola ($20, PB)

Anxiety is an insidious condition. It is debilitating, frustrating and utterly life changing. It inhabits the shadows, the thick rays of light and the dense corners of the dark. In times when there seems to be no escape from it, the simplest thing—a warm touch, a sincere smile-could offer warmth, salvation and solace. This is how it is to be anxious, in epistles of simple truths. The Heaving Pavement is an experimental memoir in verse, prose and illustrated forms.

Sunset by Maggie Walsh ($25, PB) Maggie Walsh is a Bwcolgamon woman from Palm Island who spent a lot of her childhood years in the Dormitory. She is still finding her family connections. Walsh was born in Townsville in 1964. Her 17 year old mother Anne was in the Dormitory. When she was 2 years old, her mother was sent to work on the mainland.

Walsh remained in the Dormitory & was cared for by the young women friends of her mother, women who had been sent to Palm Island, away from their homes & families. When the Dormitory closed in 1975, 11 year old, Walsh was placed back into the care of her mother. This first collection of her poetry is a reflection of Maggie’s life of hardship & succeeding against all odds.

Carrying the World by Maxine Beneba Clarke

A haunting visit to the International Museum of Slavery, in Liverpool England. A feisty young black girl pushing back against authority. The joy & despair of single parenthood. A love-hate relationship with words. This collection brings the best of a decade-long poetry career to the page. ABIA & Indie award winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke (author of Foreign Soil & the forthcoming memoir The Hate Race) is ‘one of the most compelling voices in Australian poetry this decade’—Overland Literary Journal ($27, PB)

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Australian Literature Wood Green by Sean Rabin ($26.95, PB)

Michael, an aspiring writer who has recently finished his PhD, takes a job as the secretary to his literary hero, Lucian Clarke, a reclusive novelist with a mysterious cosmopolitan past.

Clarke lives in a cottage in a village on a mountain outside Hobart which gives the book its title, Wood Green. Peopled by an ensemble cast—the local publican, the single mother who manages the pub’s kitchen, the unhappily married couple that runs the corner store, a newcomer from Johannesburg with a murky past, a snivelling B&B proprietor and a determined exgirlfriend, Wood Green artfully evokes the claustrophobia of small-town life. While Michael believes he is making a new life for himself, Lucian has other plans. Rabin writes with wit and intelligence, deftly executing a surprising plot twist, in his exploration of the perils of literary ambition and the elusive prospect of artistic legacy.

Venice: Wisdom Tree 2 by Nick Earls ($20, PB)

Nick Earls’ linked novella series continues. Venice is about love and the tensions that pull us apart: the love between Harrison and his uncle Ryan, who is in need of a person to belong to, Natalie, who is pulled between her art and her heart, and Phil’s awkward stilted love. Think, Nick Hornby’s About a Boy. ‘Nick paints the picture of Brisbane perfectly. The smells, sounds, tastes and temperature surround us as we witness Ryan’s relationships grow. A sensory wonderland that carries us on the journey.’—Gyton Grantley

The Healing Party by Micheline Lee ($29.99, PB)

When her mother is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Natasha returns to the home she fled many years before. But her father, a Charismatic Christian, has not changed: he is still the domineering yet magnetic man she ran from, and the family is still in his thrall. He comes home one night with astonishing news: he has received a message from God that his wife is to be healed, and they must hold a party to celebrate. As Natasha and her sisters prepare for the big event—and the miracle—she struggles to reconcile her family’s faith with her sense that they are pretending. ‘A wild family drama, shot through with a furious, pure and grieving love’—Helen Garner

Dodge Rose by Jack Cox ($30, PB)

Eliza travels to Sydney to deal with the estate of her Aunt Dodge, and finds Maxine, a hitherto unknown cousin, occupying Dodge’s apartment. When legal complications derail plans to live it up on their inheritance, the women’s lives become consumed by absurd attempts to deal with Australian tax law, as well their own mounting boredom and squalor. Hailed as the most astonishing debut novel of the decade, Dodge Rose calls to mind Henry Green in its skewed use of colloquial speech, Joyce in its love of inventories, and William Gaddis in its virtuoso lampooning of law, high finance, and national myth.

Between Sky & Sea by Herz Bergner ($12.95, PB) A group of Jewish refugees are thrown together on board a dilapidated freighter charting a course for Australia. Fleeing terrible scenes of destruction in Europe, they are bound by a deep sense of loss and the uncertainty of their fate. As the ship lists, inner conflicts burst to the surface and romance, revenge, guilt and desperation fill the craft. There’s poignancy, drama and an abiding strength of humanity as the passengers’ lives play out in this unbearable hinterland between sky and sea. Seventy years since its publication in 1946, Between Sky & Sea cements its place as a major Australian major work of diaspora fiction.

Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh ($19.95, PB)

A young girl sees ghosts from her third eye, located where her belly button should be. A one-dimensional yellow man steps out of a cinema screen, hoping to lead a three-dimensional life. A journalist goes on assignment to report the latest food trend, which turns ice-cream eating into an extreme sport. Julie Koh re-imagines our world with a dark, satirical twist. These twelve stories combine absurd humour with searing critiques on contemporary society—the rampant consumerism, the casual misogyny, the insidious fear of those who are different. Brilliantly clever and brimming with heart, this unforgettable collection is the work of a significant new talent.

New this month The Chaser Quarterly Winter 2016, $19.95

The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon ($30, PB) Winner of the 2016 The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award.

Pasha Ivanov is a child of the Freeze, born in Moscow during Brezhnev’s repressive rule over the Soviet Union. As a small child, Pasha sat at the kitchen table night after night as his parents and their friends gathered to preserve the memory of terrifying Stalinist violence, and to expose the continued harassment of dissidents. When Gorbachev promises glasnost, openness, Pasha, an eager twenty-four year old, longs to create art and to carry on the work of those who came before him. He writes; falls in love. Yet that hope, too, fragments and by 1999 Pasha lives a solitary life in St Petersburg. Until a phone call in the middle of the night acts as a summons both to Moscow and to memory.

I’m really enjoying this book—a pleasure to read, Brabon’s writing suffers none of the missteps a first novel can fall foul of. Her confident prose is both spare and poetic, which suits the subject matter. I find the concept of Soviet planning with ‘maps that showed the future instead of the present, and entire cities created but never actually lived in ... ghostless ghost towns [and] maps of the roads from Moscow to Leningrad that were never built, but were printed as real on the maps anyway’ particularly moving metaphors for the failed Bolshevik experiment and its accompanying terror. Viki Trencherman by Eben Venter ($29.99, PB)

One rainy night in Australia, Marlouw’s sister phones with the request that he fetch her son ‘from that bloody country’. And Marlouw, with his club foot and hardened spirit, believes it is his fate to carry out this instruction. Drenched in sweat after an ominous flight, his exodus takes him through a South Africa where poverty is rife, infrastructure has collapsed, AIDS has become widespread, and corruption reigns. He is told: ‘the whites who’ve stayed on, stay because they’re not able to leave’. Yet still he journeys deeper into the unknown—past the suffering masses alongside the road to the outer darkness of the rural areas. There are rumours that Koert is on the old family farm, now in the possession of the family’s former workers. Guarded and isolated, he has built himself a powerful empire as the King of Meat. Here, on Ouplaas, at the end of Marlouw’s terrible journey, the heart of terror is cut open.

Watershed by Jane Abbott ($33, PB) Devoid of rain, the earth has shrunk to dust and salt, hemmed by a swollen sea. Survivors gather to re-establish order but it’s nothing like before. It is Jeremiah’s world. Commanded by the cruel Garrick, Jem is a Watchman and hunter of Disses: rebels who dare to challenge the Tower and its ruling Council. Loner by design and killer by nature, he’s unapologetically part of a cruel regime until a new assignment exposes a web of deceit, and past sins demand their reckoning. When a young boy elicits his sympathy, and an enigmatic woman his interest, Jem is made to question everything he believes before undertaking one last terrifying mission.

Now he must do unto others if he’s to take care of his own.

The Paper House by Anna Spargo-Ryan ($33, PB) Heather and Dave have found the perfect place to raise their first child. The house has character, but it’s the garden that really makes it: red-faced impatiens, pockmarked gums, six upright pittosporums to keep the neighbours out. It’s a jungle. A hiding place. A refuge. And then, without warning, that life is over. The Paper House tells the story of a woman sinking into the depths of grief, and the desperate efforts of her loved ones to bring her up for air. A sharp-eyed, bittersweet depiction of the love between parents and children, and the havoc that love can wreak.

The Teacher’s Secret by Suzanne Leal ($30, PB) A popular teacher with something to hide. A new principal determined to uncover the truth. A young mother, suddenly single, who struggles to rebuild her life. A grieving daughter who must learn to face the world again. A family forced to flee their homeland and start afresh. A small town can be a refuge, but while its secrets are held, it’s hard to know who to trust and what to believe.

The Teacher’s Secret is a tender and compelling story of scandal, rumour and dislocation, and the search for grace and dignity in the midst of dishonour and humiliation.

Hang Him When He Is Not There

by Nicholas John Turner ($29.99, PB)

Nicholas John Turner’s debut collection of fiction describes a world on the fringes of great art; editors, audiences, academics, amateurs, lovers, failures, onlookers and innocent bystanders.

From a Centenarian stuck in a shrinking Parisian apartment, to twins arranging escorts on the Caribbean Coast; in place of clear narratives, straightforward logic, and neatly extractable meaning, Turner imposes the strange and irreducible philosophies of his marginal narrators. The effect is a series of curious and intimate profiles that brings an unnerving denominator to the surface, and takes the reader where mere pointing will not.

On D’Hill

Many Dulwich Hill people know my three-legged poodle, Sunday, and often ask after her. Well, Sunday turns 10 years old on June 19th and I’m throwing her a party—the Big One-O! She thinks all my friends are really her besties so the invite list is predictable (sorry, nearest and dearest only!) and of course we’ll have her favourite food—cheese and biscuits, chicken wings, meatballs, potato chips, nuts and ice-cream, so that’s the menu sorted.

In Sunday’s honour, today I’m only going to write about books with the word ‘dog’ in the title. Reprinted in Vintage classics is a powerful novel first published in the US in 1967, The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage. It’s being touted as deserving the same renaissance of popularity as Stoner by William Maxwell which is still selling strongly after being reprinted over two years ago. The Power of the Dog is set in Montana in the 1920s where two brothers, Phil and George, have been successfully running the family farm and sharing a room for the past 40 years. The balance of their lives is upset when sweet, gentle George brings home a wife and there ensues a taut psychological drama as the sadistic and psychotic brother Phil sets out to destroy her. This is a brilliantly written novel which manages to be both a page turner and highly literary.

Georgia Blain’s novel Between a Wolf and a Dog is a contemporary family story about two sisters and their dying mother. Taking place over one very wet Sydney day, it is a beautiful book, wise and true in its portrayal of these quite ordinary women and their complex relationships with each other. Georgia came into the shop the other day (another local author) and it was so good to be able to tell her how much I loved the book. As many of you will know, she has been very ill (see her wonderful and moving articles in The Saturday Paper) and is therefore unable to do the usual book signings, events or interviews—all of which help get the word out about a new novel. So I’m happy to do my bit to help promote it and urge everyone who has loved Between a Wolf and a Dog, to spread the word.

Lastly, now into paperback is one of my fave children’s books, Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio. OK, it doesn’t have the word ‘dog’ in the title but more importantly it is a very amusing story about mistaken identity involving a poodle and a bulldog. On one level, a charming children’s book about being yourself, and on another, much deeper level, a sociological treatise on nature vs nurture…oh OK, that’s stretching it… but really very, very cute—just like my dog Sunday.

See you on D’Hill Morgan

Free Double Passes!!!

Queen of the Desert A Film by Werner Herzog

Thanks to Transmission Films, we have 10 Double Passes to give away to the upcoming film Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco and Robert Pattinson. A true story of the life of British explorer and adventurer, Gertrude Bell, the film chronicles her journey of love and loss in the Middle East during the early 20th Century.

For one of ten free double passes email: vikid@gleebooks.com.au

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International Literature Barkskins by Annie Proulx ($32.99, PB)

THE DRY

THE PAPER HOUSE

Jane Harper

Anna Spargo-Ryan

Who really killed the Hadler family?

A sharp-eyed, bittersweet depiction of the love between parents and children, and the havoc that love can wreak.

‘You will feel the heat, taste the dust and blink into the glare. The Dry is a wonderful crime novel that shines a light into the darkest corner of a sunburnt country.’

MICHAEL ROBOTHAM

#thedry

‘A deeply compassionate novel. It smashed and then repaired my heart a hundred times over, somehow managing to be both intensely, vividly sad and wildly, gorgeously hopeful.’

EMILY MAGUIRE, author of An Isolated Incident

www.panmacmillan.com.au

Gods and Angels by David Park ($28, PB)

A 17 year-old boy visits his estranged mother on Boxing Day in a grey seaside town; a University lecturer falls in with a group of older men who inhabit a very different world while trying to learn how to swim; a detective breaks into his former home to spy on his estranged family; a couple reflect on 25 years of marriage under the Northern Lights; and an old man volunteering in a charity shop forms a tender bond with a young single mother.

Bringing together deeply affecting stories exploring masculinity, loneliness, isolation & longing, Gods and Angels is a masterful collection from one of Ireland’s finest writers.

Serious Sweet by A. L. Kennedy ($49.99, HB) Jon Sigurdsson is 59 & divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues & loathes his work for a government engaged in unmentionable acts. A man of conscience. Meg Williams is ‘a bankrupt accountant—two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV’. She’s 45 & shakily sober, living on Telegraph Hill, where she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety. Two decent, damaged people trying to make moral choices in an immoral world: ready to sacrifice what’s left of themselves for honesty, and for a chance at tenderness, Jon & Meg pass through 24 hours that will change them both for ever, telling a very unusual, and moving love story.

Invincible Summer by Alice Adams ($30, PB)

Inseparable through university, Eva, Benedict, Sylvie and Lucien graduate into an exhilarating world on the brink of the new millennium. Eager to shrug off the hardships of her childhood, Eva breaks away to work at a big bank. Benedict stays behind to complete his PhD in Physics and pine for Eva, while siblings Sylvie and Lucien pursue a more bohemian existence. As the summers, they try to remain as close as they once were—but this is far from easy. One friend’s triumph coincides with another’s disaster, one finds love as another loses it, and one comes to their senses as another is changing their mind.

The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray ($49, HB) John Wray takes us from Viennese salons buzzing with rumours about Einstein’s radical new theory to the death camps of WW2, from the golden age of postwar pulp science fiction to a startling discovery in a Manhattan apartment packed to the ceiling with artifacts of modern life. Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar ‘Waldy’ Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time.

Desperate to find his way back he is forced to reckon not only with the betrayal at the heart of his doomed romance but also the legacy 4 of his great-grandfather’s fatal pursuit of the hidden nature of time itself.

Ten years in the writing, set over three centuries, this is an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about taming the wilderness and destroying the forest. In the late 17th century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel & Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a ‘seigneur’, for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty & ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel & Duquet over 300 years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand; the revenge of rivals; accidents; pestilence; Indian attacks; and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

This will be without a doubt my favourite book for 2016. Following the branches of the Sel & Duquet family trees as they wreak havoc on the great forests of the world is fascinating, complex and compulsive—I’ve already started its 700 pages again. Viki

Gleebooks’ special price $28.95 My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. It looks like Paul is stuck at the airport—until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available there is something else on offer: a bulldozer. With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts and so begins a series of laugh out loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul & his Italian Bulldozer. ($29.99, HB)

Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada ($29.99, PB)

Late April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll, a loner & ‘moderate pessimist’, lives in constant fear. By night, he is haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped—he, and the rest of Germany.

More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a small town in north-east Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army. Dr Doll flees for Berlin, where he finds escape in a morphine addiction: each dose is a ‘small death’. He tries to make his way in the chaos of a city torn apart by war, accompanied by his young wife, who shares his addiction. Fighting to save two lives, he tentatively begins to believe in a better future. Available for the first time in English.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain ($30, PB) Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of WW2 seem distant. He adores his mother but she treats him with bitter severity, disapproving especially of his intense friendship with Anton, the Jewish boy at school. A gifted pianist, Anton is tortured by stage fright; only in secret games with Gustav does his imagination thrive. But Gustav is taught that he must develop a hard shell, ‘like a coconut’, to protect the softness inside—just like the hard shell perfected by his country, to protect its neutrality. But despite this hard shell, nothing in Gustav’s life can be called neutral. Older, and increasingly curious about his absent father, Gustav discovers the traces of an erotic love affair—traces which still glow white-hot even now.

Hystopia by David Means ($30, PB)

At the bitter end of the 1960s, after surviving multiple assassination attempts, President JFK has created a vast federal agency, the Psych Corps, dedicated to maintaining the nation’s mental hygiene by any means necessary. Soldiers returning from Vietnam have their battlefield traumas enfolded-wiped from their memories through drugs & therapy—while veterans too damaged to be enfolded roam at will in Michigan, evading the Psych Corps & reenacting atrocities on civilians. This destabilised, alternate version of American history is the vision of the 22 year-old veteran Eugene Allen, who has returned from Vietnam to write the book at the centre of award winning short story writer, David Means’, first novel.

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody ($30, PB)

Reginald Edward Morse is a man in need of an outlet. And he finds it in a very twenty-first century place: the internet. Specifically, RateYourLodging.com, where Americans go to find out the truth about hotels, motels and, horrors, bed and breakfasts. But the real joy of those sites is not so much the advice they offer, but the people who offer it.

Reginald Edward Morse is one of those people. His reviews scatter clues to his identity—his career as a motivational speaker, his lover ‘K’ and his estrangement from his daughter. Always funny, unexpectedly tragic, this is a book of lonely rooms, long lists, of strong opinion and quiet confession.

The Street Kids by Pier Paolo Pasolini ($30, PB)

The Street Kids tells the story of Riccetto, a poor urchin who lives on the outskirts of Rome. Readers meet him at his first communion in 1944 during the German occupation of Italy. In the years that follow, drifting ever further from family and friends, Riccetto moves from petty theft to more elaborate cons and finally to prostitution. He is arrested and jailed after trying to steal some iron in order to buy his fiancée an engagement ring. The Street Kids was heavily censored, criticized by professional critics, and lambasted by much of the general public upon its publication. But Pasolini’s message of rebellion & transgression is a moving tribute to an entire class of people in danger of being forgotten by art, by institutions, and by society at large.

Shelter by Jung Yun ($29.99, PB)

Kyung Cho owns a house that he can’t afford. His credit cards & student loan debts are spiralling out of control. Kyung & his wife, Gillian, have always lived beyond their means. Now, their bad decisions are catching up with them, & Kyung is worried for his family’s future. A few miles away, Kyung’s parents, Jin & Mae, live in the town’s most exclusive neighbourhood, surrounded by the material comforts. His own childhood, however, was far from comfortable—growing up, he enjoyed every imaginable privilege, but never kindness or affection. He can hardly bear to see his parents, much less ask them for help. Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin & Mae unable to live on their own, he decides to take them in. As the safe distance between them collapses, Kyung is forced to question what it means to be a good husband, father and son, while the life he knew begins to crumble and his own anger demands to be released. Jung Yun’s debut novel leads the through dark & violent territory, where, unexpectedly, the Chos discover hope.

What we are reading up here in the mountains in front of the fire…

Delicious Foods is a darkly funny, often brutal, but brilliant novel by US author James Hannaham, and winner of the PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction 2016. ‘Magical negro’ stereotypes are deftly upended in this clever meditation on racism & violence in America. Narrated by three characters—A mother, her son, and Crack. Yes, crack cocaine. Not to be missed! Hannah Terkes

Boo ks w ith

On the eve of her departure from Boston to find the bones of the walking whale—the fossil that provides a missing link in our evolution—Zubaida Haque falls in love with Elijah Strong. Elijah belongs to a prototypical American family, whereas Zubaida is the adopted daughter of a wealthy family in Dhaka. But when a twist of fate sends her back to her hometown, the inevitable force of society compels her to take a very different path, and before she knows it she’s married to her childhood best friend and discontentedly settled into a traditional Bangladeshi life. In a final bid to escape familial constraints, she moves to Chittagong to help make a documentary film about the infamous shipbreaking beaches. Here she meets Anwar, a shipbreaker whose story holds a key that unlocks for Zubaida not only the mysteries of her past but the possibilities of a new life. ($29.99, PB)

Altitude

BlackBooks

The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam

I’ve just read the new release by Curtis Sittenfeld—Eligible. Although it’s another Austen rewrite, it’s the perfect in-between book to curl up with. Entertaining, funny, fast paced and with a modern day spin, Sittenfeld has done a great job with the story and characters we Austen fans all love. This book is a page turner and the perfect escape before you tackle your next book. Hannah Ley Georgia Blain has done it again for me with Between a Wolf and a Dog. Insightful and beautifully written about complicated relationships within a family dealing with big issues. Set in Sydney over a period of one rainy day, the book follows four characters: sisters Ester and April, Ester’s estranged husband Lawrence and her mother Hilary. As always Georgia Blain’s characters are real and captivating and stay with you for hours after you have put the book down.

Victoria Jefferys We are very excited to be holding an event at The Carrington Hotel, Katoomba on June 16th with Tara Moss who will be in conversation with Kate Fagan about her new book Speaking Out: The 21st century handbook for women & girls. See below for details. Bookings essential at Blackheath shop as it will be a very popular event!

Victoria Jefferys

This Must be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with 20 years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife & home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back? Costa Novel Award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell crosses continents and time zones, giving voice to a diverse and complex cast of characters, and painting an extraordinary portrait of a marriage, the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart. ($33, PB)

SPEAKING OUT with

TARA MOSS in the Blue Mountains

Drawing on 20 years of wide experience in the public sphere, Tara Moss responds to the question: ‘How can I speak out?’ in the most practical way. In this handbook she gives advice on preparation, speaking out and negotiating public spaces – sometimes in the face of downright savage trolling. With a focus particularly on social media and online safety, she offers tips on how to research, form arguments, deliver confidently, find support and handle criticism.

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin ($33, PB)

In life I was a scientist called Fanning. Then, in a jungle in Bolivia, I died. I died, and then I was brought back to life... Prompted by a voice that lives in her blood, the fearsome warrior known as Alicia of Blades is drawn towards to one of the great cities of The Time Before. The ruined city of New York. Ruined but not empty. For this is the final refuge of Zero, the first and last of The Twelve. The one who must be destroyed if mankind is to have a future. What she finds is not what she’s expecting. A journey into the past. To find out how it all began. And an opponent at once deadlier and more human than she could ever have imagined.

A 21st Century HAndbook for Women & Girls

Storyteller by Walter Benjamin ($28, PB)

This is the first major collection of short stories from the legendary German-Jewish critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892– 1940). Benjamin is best known for his groundbreaking studies on culture and literature, including the collections Illuminations, One Way Street and The Arcades Project, but here for the first time are gathered his experiments in fiction, with forms ranging from novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables, and riddles.

As well as highlighting the themes that run throughout his work, the collection demonstrates that his singular style could create extraordinary imaginative worlds that will delight both those who are fascinated by his thinking, but also for a reader of literary fiction such as Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig and the uncanny tales of ETA Hoffman.

Now in B format Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, $25

Tara will be in conversation with author, musician & academic

KATE FAGAN When:

THURSDAY 16TH JUNE, 2016

5.30pm for 6.00pm start Where: The Carrington Hotel Ballroom, Katoomba Cost: $20 ($17 concession) includes drinks & nibbles Bookings essential. Tickets available at Gleebooks Blackheath or phone Gleebooks on 4787 6340 or email blackheath@gleebooks.com.au

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THE WILDER AISLES

Some crime this month, starting with an Australian author, Ann Turner, and her second book, Out of the Ice. I hadn’t read her first, The Lost Swimmer, but after reading this one, it is on the next-to-read pile beside my bed. I found a proof copy of Out of the Ice at the shop and I liked the look of it. It is set in Antarctica, on a small island called Safety Island.

Laura Alvarado, an Australian environmental scientist, is sent to the island to check out an abandoned whaling station called Fredlighaven. The idea is that maybe it could become a tourist attraction for the cruise ships.

The houses are all painted different colours and stand out against the snow and ice. When looking through the buildings, Laura is surprised to see that some of them look as if the inhabitants had left rather suddenly, with furniture, clothing and food left behind. In one house, Laura sees a child’s t-shirt—struck by its size she begins to wonder about the people who lived here. Laura’s friend Kate, a penguin expert, is asked by Georgia, Kate’s friend and boss, to help Kate in her work at the station. The two women find that there is a lot to discover in Fredlighaven—most of it not good. When Laura thinks she sees a boy trapped in the ice on a dive with Kate, Kate worries that Laura may have become ‘toasty’—something that can happen to people in the Antarctic if they stay too long.

However, Laura thinks that if the boy was real, he could be the owner of the t-shirt, and she becomes obsessed with finding him—keeping this a secret from Kate, knowing that Kate thinks she’s losing it. The other big mystery is what is making the penguins and the seals act so strange and start to attack people. The plot becomes complicated as it moves between Norway, Europe and the US. Plus Laura’s father, whom she hasn’t seen for a very long time, suddenly appears on the scene. Laura is astonished to see him, and horrified at what he is up to on Safety Island. I have to say this book really got me in. I loved the setting, the cold and ice, I loved Laura and Kate, and I loved the ending. Very satisfying.

The next book is by an old friend, Camilla Läckberg. She is one of my Scandi authors and I love her books. I especially love Patrik and Erica—the policeman husband and his crime writer wife. The Ice Child starts with a young naked girl, who is run over when walking down an isolated road on the edge of a wood. The victim, Victoria Halberg, has been unbelievably brutally mistreated by her captor, and she later dies in hospital. It turns out that what has happened to Victoria may not be a one off, as three girls have gone missing at earlier dates from different parts of the country. Then another girl disappears—perhaps under different circumstances as it seems she knew her kidnapper. Erica, who often gets in trouble for interfering, finds a link between an old murder, which she has been researching, and the current crimes. Her information turns the investigation on its head, and the police are forced to look at it in an entirely new way. When I am reading these books, I find myself wondering about the terrible things people do to each other. Often, when reading in bed at night, I have to put the book down and read a children’s book before I turn out the light. But still I do love them, and I cope the best I can. Of course in most of the books I read justice prevails, and sometimes I even feel sorry for the bad guys. Anyhow, this book is up there with the best of Läckberg’s—it is complicated, with many twists, and some surprises along the way. Classic Scandi noir.

I must admit I was a bit disappointed with the new Donna Leon, The Waters of Eternal Youth. I felt it took too long to get to the crime—but I can’t help but love my old friends Brunetti and Paola and the children and the food and the wine—so it was still worth reading. The story revolves around an old case concerning Manuela, a young girl who fell or was pushed into a canal. Although not drowned, she suffered brain damage, and now although thirty her mind is that of a young girl. Once a enthusiastic horse rider, she cannot remember her horse, the accident or anything beyond. The Contessa Lando-Continui, a friend of Brunetti’s mother-in-law, is convinced what happened fifteen years ago wasn’t an accident and asks him to look into it, to give her some peace of mind.

Brunetti agrees and secures the help of Commissario Claudia Griffoni, thinking that Manuela would be happier to talk to a woman. Claudia and Manuela become very close, and Claudia also manages to befriend the Countess. Gradually, together, Brunetti and Claudia investigate the past and find that corruption is at the heart of the case. The story covers important aspects of Venetian life, from the effect of tourism, African migrants, historical preservation and the problem of housing in a crowded, crumbling city beset by the threat of aqua alto.

Janice Wilder

6

Crime Fiction

Fatal Pursuit by Martin Walker ($33, PB) Two young racing drivers with a passion for antique cars, compete to find new clues as to the rarest of cars’, the Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic, hiding place in the Perigord region of France where Bruno Courèges is the local chief of police. When a local researcher turns up dead on Bruno’s patch, and French intelligence starts investigating the use of classic car sales to launder money for funding Islamic terrorism, Bruno finds himself once more caught up in a case that reaches far beyond his small town and its people.

The Dry by Jane Harper ($33, PB) Luke Hadler turns a gun on his wife & child, then himself. The farming community of Kiewarra is facing life & death choices daily. If one of their own broke under the strain, well... Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals. He is loath to confront the people who rejected him 20 years earlier, but when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt the murder-suicide charge. And as he probes deeper into the killings, old wounds are reopened. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret A secret which Luke’s death brings to the surface.

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming ($29.99, PB) Former MI6 officer, Thomas Kell, devoted his life to the Service, but it has left him with nothing but grief & a simmering anger against the Kremlin. Then Kell is offered an unexpected chance at revenge, & he embarks on a mission to recruit a top Russian spy who is in possession of a terrifying secret. As Kell tracks his man from Moscow to London, he finds himself in a high stakes game of cat & mouse in which it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is playing whom. The threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack looms over Britain, and Kell is faced with an impossible choice. Loyalty to MI6—or to his own conscience?

The Final Word by Liza Marklund ($32.99, PB)

As a journalist, Annika Bengtzon has always been at the front line of criminal reporting, alongside the investigating officers. And now a court case that she’s been reporting on—the savage murder of a homeless man—has begun to attract a lot of attention. With the stakes rising by the day, Annika is once again flung to the heart of a complex case. But nagging at the back of her mind is her sister’s mysterious absence. After a series of anxious text messages, she’s not heard another word. In the midst of a tense public situation, Annika’s own complicated past looks set to rear its head.

The Malice Of Waves by Mark Douglas-Home ($33, PB)

5 years ago, 14 year-old Max Wheeler disappeared from Priest’s Island, an isolated township on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. None of the police or private investigations since have shed any light on what happened the night he went missing. ‘Sea Detective’ Cal McGill is an oceanographer and uniquely gifted investigator who uses his knowledge of the waves, winds & currents to solve mysteries no-one else can.

However, Cal is an unwanted stranger who must navigate the tensions between Max’s inconsolable father, the broken family he has neglected, and the embittered locals, resentful after years of suspicion. Worse still, a severe storm is coming, threatening to completely cut off the island, with a possible murderer at large.

The Passenger by Lisa Lutz ($17, PB)

48 hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time. She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes & offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, can Debra outrun her past?

Dodgers by Bill Beverly ($27, PB)

When East, a low-level lookout for a Los Angeles drug organisation, loses his watch house in a police raid, his boss recruits him for a very different job: a road trip—straight down the middle of white, rural America—to assassinate a judge in Wisconsin. Having no choice, East and a crew of untested boys—including his trigger-happy younger brother, Ty—leave the only home they’ve ever known in a nondescript blue van, with a roll of cash, a map and a gun they shouldn’t have. Along the way, the country surprises East, and he reaches places where only he can decide which way to go—or which person to become

Murder On The Champ De Mars by Cara Black

Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no? ($33, PB)

Burn Patterns by Ron Elliot ($29.99, PB) To her clients and colleagues, Iris is a therapist in a city psychology practice. But to the police and fire services, she is the Fire Lady—a profiler of arsonists. After a troubled young man burns down her office, Iris just wants a quiet life. But her peace is shattered when a bomb goes off at a local school. Called in to help, Iris meets James, delusional and dangerous, and Chuck, a lone investigator tracking a serial arsonist he calls Zorro. As public attacks become more orchestrated and brazen, Iris is soon embroiled in the investigation—as a profiler and as a suspect, and in serious doubt about her own sanity.

Speakers of the Dead by Aaron J. Sanders ($26.99, PB) 1843, New York City. Aurora reporter Walt Whitman arrives at the Tombs prison yard where his friend Lena Stowe is scheduled to hang for the murder of her husband, Abraham. Walt intends to present evidence on Lena’s behalf, but Sheriff Harris turns him away. Lena drops to her death, and Walt vows to posthumously exonerate her. Walt’s estranged boyfriend, Henry Saunders, returns to NY, and the two men uncover a link between body-snatching and Abraham’s murder & they descend into a dangerous underworld where men steal the bodies of the recently deceased to sell to medical colleges. Abraham’s involvement legislation that would put these ‘resurrection men’ out of business— seems to have led to his and Lena’s deaths.

June’s To-Read List

Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity.

Dr Kooshyar Karimi, tells his gripping personal story of surviving prison in Iran and life as a refugee before finding success in Australia.

This beautiful novel explores the big themes of betrayal and the struggle for happiness, and a childhood friendship as it is tested over a lifetime.

Political commentator and activist Noam Chomsky offers insights into the workings of imperial power in our increasingly chaotic planet.

Devoid of rain, the earth has shrunk to dust and salt, hemmed by a swollen sea. Survivors gather to re-establish order but it’s nothing like before.

Unlock your hidden superpower and give yourself the tools to make a mark - in your own quiet way.

This is the story of Summer. It involves a tragedy, an unlikely friend and a very special guitar.

The remarkable true story of a young French orphan who won the hearts of an Australian Air Force squadron in WWI and became their mascot.

End of Watch by Stephen King ($32.99, PB) Retired Detective Bill Hodges now runs a 2-person firm called Finders Keepers with his partner Holly Gibney. They met in the wake of the ‘Mercedes Massacre’ when a queue of people were run down by the diabolical killer Brady Hartsfield. Brady is now confined to Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, in an unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: the evidence suggests that Brady is somehow awake, & in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.

Both a stand-alone novel of heart-pounding suspense & the terrifying final episode in the Hodges trilogy.

In the Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekback

Stockholm 1856. Magnus is a geologist. When the Minister sends him to survey the distant but strategically vital Lapland region around Blackasen Mountain, it is a perfect cover for another mission: Magnus must investigate why one of the nomadic Sami people, native to the region, has apparently slaughtered in cold blood a priest, a law officer and a settler in their rectory. Is there some bigger threat afoot? ($32.99, PB)

A Hero in France by Alan Furst ($32.99, PB) Spring, 1941. Britain is losing the war. Paris is occupied by the Nazis, dark & silent at night. But when moonlight floods the city, a Resistance leader called Mathieu steps out to begin his work. These courageous Resistance fighters, men and women—young & old, aristocrats & nightclub owners, teachers & students—help downed British airmen reach the border with Spain. In farmhouses & rural churches, in secret hotels, and on the streets, they risk everything to open Europe’s sealed doors & lead Allied fighters to freedom. But as the military police heightens surveillance, Mathieu & his team face a new threat, dispatched from the Reich to destroy them all.

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Frightfully English Execution by Shamini Flint ($20, PB)

Inspector Singh is irate. He’s been instructed to attend a Commonwealth conference on policing in London: a job for paper pushers, not real cops, as far as he is concerned. And as if that isn’t bad enough, his wife is determined to come along to shop for souvenirs & visit previously unknown relatives. But it isn’t long before the cold case that lands on Singh’s ample lap turns into a hot potato & he has to outwit Scotland Yard, his wife & London’s finest criminals to prevent more frightful executions from occurring on his watch—or indeed, from being added to their number.

No Echo by Anne Holt ($30, PB) When celebrity chef Brede Ziegler is discovered stabbed to death on the steps of the Oslo police headquarters it sends a shock wave through the city’s in-crowd. Ziegler had lots of famous friends, is there a culprit among them—or was this a random act of violence? Police investigator Billy T. takes on the case, but is met with conflicting information about what kind of man Ziegler was. It seems nobody really knew the dead man—including his glamorous wife, the restaurant co-owner and the editor of his memoir.

Bust by Ken Bruen & Jason Starr ($14, PB) Max Fisher, aging CEO of NetWorld, is not a happy man. But if he can somehow figure out a way to get rid of his nagging wife, he’ll be able to carry on with his wildly self-indulgent, Viagra-fuelled existence of drunken business meetings, excursions to seedy strip joints, and, most important, his ongoing affair with his executive assistant—an IrishAmerican bombshell named Angela. Fisher hires a hit man, a former IRA thug nicknamed Popeye, to kill the ‘redundant’ wife; but what the balding chief executive doesn’t realize is that Popeye is secretly Angela’s boyfriend—and the murder they’re planning is another one altogether.

Now in B Format Before it Breaks by Dave Warner, $24.99 Falling in Love by Donna Leon, $20 Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid, $20

7

Biography

The Auctioneer: A memoir of great art, legendary collectors and record-breaking auctions

by Simon de Pury & William Stadiem ($30, PB)

Simon de Pury is the art world’s ultimate insider. His roles have included curator of the world-famous Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, and founder and owner of Sotheby’s rival Phillips de Pury. His exuberant style, showmanship and iconoclasm in a highly conservative profession saw him described as ‘the Mick Jagger of auctions’. His memoir of a life lived within the world’s greatest collections and auction houses is a truly eyeopening insight into the highest reaches of art, where movie stars, musicians and athletes compete with hedge funders and billionaires to fuel record-breaking prices.

Throughout this compelling and revealing journey into a world discretely hidden to all but a few insiders, Simon’s passion for art in all its forms, and his extraordinary depth of knowledge shine through.

What Language Do I Dream in?

by Elena Lappin ($33, PB)

My life could be described as ‘five languages in search of an author’. I was born into Russian; transposed into Czech, then German; introduced to Hebrew; and finally adopted by English. Elena Lappin was born in Russia. Her parents speak Russian to one another, and to their children. Elena speaks Czech to her brother, but he writes in German and she writes in English.

What does it mean to be brought up in family that speaks several different languages, and where all members are writers?

Elena Lappin explores what it is to be a writer, what language is, and it’s also writes about her life of moving from country to country looking for a language to think in.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson ($20, PB)

This is a genre-bending memoir, a work of ‘autotheory’ offering fresh, fierce and timely thinking about desire, identity and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its centre is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family making. Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson’s insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.

8

Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human

by George Michelsen Foy ($37, HB)

Navigation is the key human skill. It’s something we do everywhere, whether feeling our way through a bedroom in the dark, or charting a ship’s course. But how does navigation affect our brains, our memory, ourselves? In 1844, Foy’s great-great grandfather, captain of a Norwegian cargo ship, perished at sea after getting lost in a snowstorm. Foy decides to unravel the mystery by re-creating his ancestor’s trip using only period instruments. At the heart of Foy’s story is the fact that navigation and the brain’s memory centres are inextricably linked. As Foy unravels the secret behind Halvor’s death, he also discovers why forsaking our navigation skills in favour of GPS may lead not only to Alzheimers and other diseases of memory, but to losing a key part of what makes us human.

Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth

by Paula Byrne ($29.99, HB)

Nicknamed ‘Kick’ because of her irrepressible nature, Kick was Joe Kennedy’s favourite child & Jack’s favourite sister. She sailed to Britain in 1938 after her father had been appointed US Ambassador in London & was described as ‘the best thing America ever sent us’—everyone was drawn to her refreshing lack of stuffiness, even the anti-American Evelyn Waugh was bewitched. During WW2 (when she worked for the Red Cross) she grew more independent from her family & the Catholic Church, and against her mother’s wishes she married William Cavendish, heir to the Duke of Devonshire & the Chatsworth estate. Paula Byrne uses recently released documents to tell for the first time this cinematic story of the meeting of American and British aristocracy—the Kennedys, the Devonshires, their friends such as the Churchills, Astors and Mitfords. Her life cut short at 28 in a plane crash, Kathleen Agnes Kennedy was a rebel to the end.

Love from Boy: Roald Dahl’s Letters to his Mother (ed) Donald Sturrock ($33, PB)

For much of his life, Dahl wrote weekly letters to his mother. These letters—littered with jokes and madcap observations, sometimes serious, sometimes tender, and frequently outrageous—shine fresh light onto Dahl’s complex personality. They tell of the delights of childhood, the dramas of boarding school friendship and betrayal, the excitements of flying as a World War II fighter pilot, and the thrill of meeting presidents and movie stars during his time as a diplomat in Washington. Marking the 100th anniversary of Dahl’s birth, these letters capture the beginnings of the fantastical imagination that created some of the world’s best-loved children’s fiction. With exclusive access to the Roald Dahl Estate’s archives, Dahl’s official biographer Donald Sturrock reveals the man as few before have seen him: in his own words.

Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith East West Street On the Origins of Genocide and by Sheridan Palmer ($40, PB) Crimes Against Humanity by Philippe Sands Bernard Smith began life as a ward of the State; he would go

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, it set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law & the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials. Two Nuremberg prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, discover at the end of the trials that the man they are prosecuting may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The defendant is Hans Frank—Hitler’s personal lawyer and Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland. The lives of these three men lead Sands to a more personal story. He traces the events that overwhelmed his mother’s family in Lviv and Vienna during WW2, and finds unexpected answers to questions about his family, in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime and guilt leave scars across generations, and the haunting gaps left by the secrets of others. ($33, PB)

There’s a Fax from Bruce: Correspondence between Bruce Beresford & Sue Milliken 1989–1996

In the 1980s, director Bruce Beresford and producer Sue Milliken were mid-career in a world that welcomed film makers. They worked together on a number of projects, some of which never made it to the first day of filming, and stayed in touch by fax machine. As well as taking care of professional business, the faxes are chock full of industry gossip and news, ruminations on books they had read or films that they had seen. It’s a fun, fascinating, informative and ultimately charming read. ‘In touch with each other by fax while they flew all over the world, two brilliant Australians left a sparkling record of how they lived and worked as the film business turned into the international country we know today.’ Clive James. ($29.99, PB)

I Am Here: Stories From a Cancer Ward

by Johannes Klabbers ($29.99, PB)

Looking for more meaning in his work, Johannes Klabbers gave up a tenured academic position to spend his days caring for the sick and dying. He trained as a secular pastoral carer in a cancer hospital, and from the patients there he learned how simply talking and listening can provide comfort: from chatting about the football to discussing life’s meaning and how one prepares for death. I Am Here is a frank, moving, and sometimes funny record of his encounters. It gives an unforgettable insight into the variety of ways people cope with suffering, and suggests how we can support them — through caring, through conversation, and by facing life’s questions together.

Travel Writing

Rio de Janeiro by Luiz Eduardo Soares ($30, PB)

A book as rich and sprawling as the seductive metropolis it evokes, Rio de Janeiro builds a kaleidoscopic portrait of this city of extremes, and its history of conflict and corruption. Award-winning novelist, ex-government minister and sociologist, Luiz Eduardo Soares tells the story of Rio through the everyday lives of its people: gangsters and police, activists, politicians and struggling migrant workers, each with their own version of the city. Taking us on a journey into Rio’s intricate world of favelas, beaches and corridors of power, Soares reveals one of the most extraordinary cities in the world in all its seething, agonistic beauty.

Mount Sinai: A History of Travellers and Pilgrims

by George Manginis ($49.95, HB)

A mountain peak above the Monastery of St Catherine in Egypt, Mount Sinai is best known as the site where Moses received the Ten Commandments in the biblical Book of Exodus. As an important site for multiple religions, it has become a major destination for hundreds of visitors per day. George Manginis delves into the natural environment of Mount Sinai, its importance in the Muslim tradition, the cult of Saint Catherine, the medieval pilgrimage phenomenon, and modern-day tourism. This deft blend of historical analysis, art history & archaeological interpretation features notes, a bibliography & illustrations from 19th century travellers’ books.

Memories—From Moscow To The Black Sea

by Teffi ($35, HB)

Teffi was a phenomenally popular writer in pre-revolutionary Russia —a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II & Vladimir Lenin alike. 1918. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Teffi is invited on a reading tour. She elegantly navigates the bureaucratic waters for her visa, and spends the winter travelling from Moscow to Kiev, and from there to Odessa & on to Novorossisk, first by train & then by ship. On the shores of the Black Sea she is advised to go abroad for a time, until things have settled down in Russia. She reluctantly agrees, not fully realising that this would be the beginning of her permanent exile from her beloved country. Her descriptions of her journey across 2000 miles of Russia, during which she encounters illness, hardship and sorrow in the company of a multitude of refugees, are almost unbearably moving at times—but also irresistibly vivid, and utterly unforgettable.

on to become the father of Australian art history. In 2008 Smith invited writer and art historian Dr Sheridan Palmer to write his biography. Through years of interviews and exclusive access to Smith’s papers and library, Palmer reveals the unique character of an exceptional man. ‘An elegant and powerful study, finely crafted—fully worthy of its subject.’ Peter Beilharz, Curtin University, Perth.

Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane by Elspeth Muir ($29.99, PB)

In 2009 Elspeth Muir’s youngest brother finished his last university exam and went out with some mates to get drunk. Later that night he wandered to the Story Bridge. He put his phone, wallet, T-shirt and thongs on the walkway, climbed over the railing, and jumped thirty metres into the Brisbane River below. Three days passed before police divers pulled his body out of the water. When Alexander had drowned, his blood-alcohol reading was almost 0.3. In trying to make sense of her muchloved brother’s death Muir traces her own history with the bottle, mixing memoir with reportage to illuminate the sorrows, and the joys, of drinking.

Young Digger by Antony Hill ($29.99, PB)

A small boy, an orphan of the First World War, wanders into the Australian airmen’s mess in Germany, on Christmas Day in 1918. He became a mascot for the air squadron and was affectionately named ‘Young Digger’. This solitary boy was smuggled back to Australia by air mechanic Tim Tovell, a man who cared for the boy so much that he was determined, however risky, to provide Young Digger with a new family and a new life in a new country, far from home. This is an extraordinary story not only about the horrors of war, but of high adventure and fatherhood.

Available: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Hookups, Love and Brunch by Perry Matteson ($30, PB)

Matteson Perry is a Nice Guy. He remembers birthdays, politely averts his eyes on the subway, and enjoys backgammon. He’s a serial monogamist, and he’s never asked a stranger out. But when the girl he plans on marrying dumps him, he decides to turn his life around and throws himself into the modern world of courtship and digital dating—charting the highs and lows of single life and the lessons he learned along the way. Candid, relatable, and devastatingly funny.

Elephant Dawn: The Inspirational Story of 13 Years Living With Elephants in the African Wilderness by Sharon Pincott ($32.99, PB)

In 2001, Sharon Pincott traded her privileged life as a high-flying corporate executive to start a new one with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe. She was unpaid, untrained, self-funded & arrived with the starry-eyed idealism of most foreigners during early encounters with Africa. For thirteen years—the worst in Zimbabwe’s volatile history—this intrepid Australian woman lived in the Hwange bush fighting for the lives of these elephants, forming an extraordinary & life-changing bond with them.

The Wonder Trail: True Stories from Los Angeles to the End of the World by Steve Hely ($32.99, PB)

Steve Hely, writer for 30 Rock, The Office and American Dad!, and recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, presents a travel book about his journey through Central and South America. Part travel book, part pop history, part comic memoir, this riotous journey trails through Mexico City, ancient Mayan ruins, the jungles & coffee plantations and remote beaches of Central America, across the Panama Canal, by sea to Colombia, to the Amazon rainforest, to the Galápagos Islands, the Atacama Desert of Chile, and down to the jagged and wind-worn land of Patagonia at the very end of the Western Hemisphere, Hely encounters the colourful, the wild and the downright absurd. The Wonder Trail is a gallivant SteveHely style—razor-sharp, hilarious and fascinating.

Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within Paul Dobraczyk et al ($44.99, PB)

As the world rapidly urbanizes, its cities sink themselves into the ground in sprawling tendons of tunnels—conduits for transport, utility, communication, shelter & storage. The excavation of these spaces, at ever-increasing depths & speed, has changed our lives in ways that we tend to take for granted. This book charts the global reach of urban underground spaces, bringing together a collection of 80 stories of subterranean sites around the world.

It draws out the extraordinary range of meanings suggested by urban underground spaces, whether their power as places of hope, fear, memory, labour & resistance, or their capacity to evoke both long histories& futures in the making. Illustrated with breathtaking photographs, Global Undergrounds creates a new sense of the richness & global diversity of urban underground spaces.

9

books for kids to young adults

compiled by Lynndy Bennett, our children's correspondent

P i c t ure B ooks

Secret Tree Fort by Brianne Farley ($25, HB)

Working in Gleebooks means we see an unusually high amount of new books.

Many of them are good, some are fabulous, and occasionally some are SENSATIONAL. This picture book by a young American illustrator, Brianne Farley, rings every bell for me, proving there are some original, imaginative young illustrators out there who like to draw for children, not just assemble images and textures. After being sent outside to play by their mother, a younger sister is trying to persuade her older sibling to stop reading a book, and come and play with her.

She tries to entice her sister with the promise of a secret tree fort, it gets bigger and better by the moment, culminating in the most fabulous castle in the air, there are pirates and a secret tunnel, and the whole fort is made of sweets. This is a book about so much more than an imaginary fort – it’s a testament to imagination and play, childhood relationships, and ultimately about the bond between siblings.

The drawings are perfect to carry the story, detailed and amusing, drawn with a deft but light hand. I love this book! Louise

The Story of Snowflake and Inkdrop

by Pierdomenico Baccalario, Alessandro Gatti (ill) Simona Mulazzani ($30, HB)

What a beautiful book this is! Two stories in one, that meet in the middle – a snowflake’s journey to meet an inkdrop, and vice versa. Painterly, colourful illustrations, some with overlaid pages of die-cuts of snowflakes, create a most sensory reading experience, and with a gentle poetic text that is a pleasure to read aloud. This book really needs to be looked at and handled, it’s hard to capture its unique qualities in written words. Not a book for the very young (because of the die cuts), this would make a very special gift. Louise

The House on Hummingbird Island by Sam Angus

teen / ya fiction

So far I’ve read only other people’s reviews, but as all laud the sensory richness and cultural contrasts in an intriguingly foreign landscape I’m looking forward to snaffling a copy when it arrives. From Booklist, ALA: ‘A 1970s Alaskan fishing town is the setting for this tale of four teenagers struggling with hardship over the course of a year, during which their stories occasionally collide and intertwine. Ruth, who lives with her tough grandmother after her father’s death and mother’s breakdown, thought she was in love; now, she’s pregnant at 16 and sent to live in a convent until the baby comes. Everyone knows Dora’s father is abusive, and even though she gets him sent to jail she feels she’ll never be free from him. Talented dancer Alyce, whose parents are divorced, knows a dance scholarship is her ticket out, but she’d be abandoning her father. And Hank and his two brothers have run away from their mother and her horrible boyfriend, but it quickly becomes apparent that Hank can’t keep his brothers as safe as he would like. Less a narrative and more a series of portraits, this is an exquisitely drawn, deeply heartfelt look at a time and place not often addressed. Hitchcock’s measured prose casts a gorgeous, almost otherworldly feel over the text, resulting in a quietly lovely look at the various sides of human nature and growing up in a difficult world.’

Lynndy

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Louise and I are smitten anew each time another book by Teckentrup arrives, with her distinctive rich palette and textured art enhancing every story. In this latest treasure I defer to a more experienced reviewer from Kirkus: “A child dreams of sailing across the sky and sea, accompanied by a favourite stuffed lion. Together they venture into the night in a bed carried along in a hot air balloon basket suspended from a yellow moon. In full and partial double-page spreads, the companions float on the seas in a simple sailboat with a triangular sail. The dreamy, sparse text is frequently set opposite the illustrations, surrounded by white space. The story conveys both a sense of adventure and the comfort of a protective companion. Mottled, textured collage and mixed media in a gentle, subdued palette propel the story from the dark of night until dawn, the journey echoed in the endpapers. The lovely illustrations on matte paper are an evocative match to the simple prose, drawing readers into the child’s dream.”What a gorgeous way to lull your family to sleep! Lynndy

Fiction

Delivered, parcel-like, into the care of her cousins when Idie Grace was just a baby, she grew up enmeshed in secrets and mystery, with clues to her background gleaned from overheard drifts of conversation. Torn from her only known home at the age of 12 and installed as mistress of the West Indian plantation she’d inherited, Idie slowly overcomes her misery and resentment, coming to revel in her independence and the beauty of the island. Even better, she acquires new friends and an increasing menagerie: a horse, toucans, a mongoose, a monkey, a fawn, a turtle and a sulphur crested cockatoo, all of which live inside the house. From unwelcome island gossip she discovers not only perfidy within her household, but also more about her parents, however the greatest revelations come only after the ugliness of WW2 and the toll it wreaks upon those she loves most. Shades of Pippi Longstocking, with Daphne du Maurier twists, this is utterly compelling. Lynndy ($15, PB)

The Smell of Other People’s Houses

by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock ($17, PB)

Before I Wake Up…

by Britta Teckentrup ($27, HB)

The Other Christy by Oliver Phommavanh ($17, PB)

For the last two years, Christy Ung has been in the same class as the loud-mouthed Christie Owens—and now it’s third time unlucky in 6C. Christie Owens is the popular one so everybody calls Christy Ung, the Other Christy. She moved from Cambodia in Year 4 and is still a loner at school. Christy’s one solace is baking with her Auntie who suggests they bake a cake for Christy to share with her class on her birthday. Maybe a sweet treat can win them over and Christy might find a friend. She just didn’t expect it to be Christie. When Christie is ditched by her besties, the two girls who share a name strike an unlikely friendship. Christy lets down her guard, revealing secrets about her weird upbringing with her clean-obsessed Grandpa. But Christy soon realises that she and her new friend are worlds apart. Can she ever shake off her Grandpa’s strange habits? And will the two girls ever have more in common than just their name? Lynndy

Non fiction

Historium Activity Book

by Jo Nelson & Katie Daynes (ill) Richard Wilkinson ($19.95, PB)

Based on Historium, this is as engrossing as its companions in the outstanding Welcome to the Museum series: Animalium, Maps, and Story of Life. Bursting with fascinating facts and puzzles, this book is beautiful, inspiring and educational, with the myriad activities challenging the reader’s imagination and engaging them with the art and history of ancient worlds. Lynndy

.... breaking news

Fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society will be as thrilled as I am that Trenton Lee Stewart has another book in the series coming.

Beverly Cleary, author of a slew of beloved novels including the Ramona books, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle, was duly feted recently when she turned 100 years old.

Among forthcoming movies based on children’s books are The BFG (based on Roald Dahl’s classic); A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness); Alice Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll); Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter companion book), and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (based on Ransom Riggs’ trilogy, so very aptly directed by Tim Burton)

Food, Health & Garden

Winter Express by The AWW ($30, PB)

These Express recipes will save you time by cooking and freezing food for later, by slow-cooking food while the cook is doing other things, or by simply being organised & preparing & cooking food quickly. The recipes are hearty and filling to please everyone in the cooler winter months.

Slow Cooker The Complete Collection

by The Australian Women’s Weekly ($45, HB)

This book is a collection of all our slow cooker recipes produced over the last four years. We have everything from curries and bolognaise to sweet treats. Plus, hints on how to freeze any leftovers.

All the recipes in this book are designed for use in a slow cooker.

The Pursuit of Happiness: And Why It’s Making Us Anxious by Ruth Whippman ($35, PB)

As your average cynical Brit, when Ruth Whippman moves to California, it seems to her that the American obsession with finding happiness is driving everyone crazy. But soon she starts to get sucked in. She meditates and tries ‘mindful dishwashing’. She attends a self-help course that promises total transformation (and learns that all her problems are her own fault). She visits a strange Nevada happiness dystopia (with one of the highest suicide rates in America), delves into the darker truths behind the influential ‘science of happiness’, and even ventures to Utah, where she learns God’s personal secret to eternal bliss. Ultimately she stumbles upon a more effective, less self-involved, less anxiety-inducing way to find contentment.

We’re All Going to Die by Leah Kaminsky ($28, PB) The one certainty about life is that everybody is going to die. Yet somehow as a society we have come to deny this central fact—we ignore it, hoping it will go away. Ours is an aging society, where we are all living longer, healthier lives, yet we find ourselves less & less prepared for our inevitable end. GP Leah Kaminsky is confronted by death and mortality on a daily basis. She shares, and challenges, our fears of death & dying. But she also takes joy in people whose response to their imminent death is to choose, instead, to consciously embrace life. Like 90 year old Julia, a great-great-grandmother who wants to compete in the Senior Olympics. Or a dying friend, who throws himself a ‘pre-funeral’ gig, to say goodbye to everyone he loves. As Kaminsky says, ‘If we truly open ourselves up to the experiences of those directly confronted with their own mortality, maybe we will overcome our own tunnel vision & decide to live our lives more fully.’

Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life by Richard Louv ($29,99, PB)

Vitamin N is Richard Louv’s comprehensive practical companion to both Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle—a complete prescription for enjoying the natural world right now, with 500 activities, scores of informational websites and an abundance of downto-earth advice. Unlike other guidebooks, Vitamin N addresses the whole family and the wider community, with tips for calming infants through nature, building a nature vocabulary with toddlers, and measuring weather with school children, as well as helping tweens become citizen scientists and exploring geocaching with teens.

The Florilegium: The Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney—Celebrating 200 Years ($65, PB)

This is a major collection of contemporary botanical illustration.

Forty-one Australian and twenty-three overseas artists have contributed by invitation one or more works of significant plants in the three Sydney botanic gardens. This collection is published to celebrate the bicentenary this year of the gardens.

Capability Brown: And His Landscape Gardens

by Sarah Rutherford ($40, HB)

One of the most remarkable men of the 18th century, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was known to many as ‘The Omnipotent Magician’ who could transform unpromising countryside into beautiful parks that seemed to be only the work of nature. Although his fame has dimmed, we still enjoy many of his works today at National Trust properties such as Croome Park, Petworth, Berrington, Stowe, Wimpole, Blenheim Palace, Highclere Castle (location of the ITV series Downton Abbey) and many more. Garden historian Sarah Rutherford uncovers his aims and reveals why he was so successful.

Illustrated throughout with colour photographs of contemporary sites, historical paintings and garden plans, this is an accessible book for anyone who wants to know more about the man who changed the face of the nation and created a landscape style which for many of us defines the English countryside.

New this month Lucky Peach Issue 19: The Pho Issue (eds) David Chang, Peter Meehan & Chris Ying, $23

The Italian Baker by Melissa Forti ($40, HB)

Melissa Forti is the Italian Baker. In her tea room in an idyllic medieval town near Tuscany, she bakes beautiful cakes that combine Italian traditions with her own modern twists. This book is a collection of Melissa’s favourite tarts, celebration cakes, loaves, biscuits and coffee-time treats borne out of her unique style of baking. Every recipe is a treat, taking in deliciously popular Italian ingredients like olive oil, mascarpone, almonds and stunning fresh fruit.

The Cardamom Trail by Chetna Makan ($40, HB)

Chetna Makan is known for her unique recipes, which introduce colourful spices, aromatic herbs and other Indian ingredients into traditional Western baked favourites. Try a sponge cake with a cardamom and coffee filling; puff pastry bites filled with fenugreek paneer; a swirly bread rolled with citrusy coriander, mint and green mango chutney; or a steamed strawberry pudding flavoured with cinnamon. Delve into the history of Indian herbs and spices and learn how to match foods and flavours.

K-Food: Korean Home Cooking and Street Food by Da-Hae & Gareth West ($40, HB)

From a run-down on the basics of Korean cooking, including now readily available sauces, pastes and other ingredients, through chapters on kimchi and the etiquette of the famous Korean BBQ, to recipes for everything from the irresistible Bulgogi Burger and spicy, sticky spare ribs to Panjeon (seafood pancakes) and corn on the cob with kimchi butter, this book is packed with inventive, delicious recipes that will open your eyes to how great modern Korean food is.

Mr Todiwala’s Spice Box: 120 recipes with just 10 spices by Cyrus Todiwala ($45, HB)

Cyrus Todiwala takes just 10 of his favourite spices and bases 120 recipes around them. Using his special spice box and a selection of fresh ingredients, he conjures up an astonishing range of dishes that will spice up any mealtime, such as Prawn Masala Omelette, Venison Burgers, Spiced Roast Chicken with Rum, Pork Belly in Chilli, or Ginger, Garlic & Saffron Crème Brûlée.

Wholefood from the Ground Up: Nourishing Wisdom - Know How - Recipes by Jude Blereau

This book distills Jude Blereau’s wealth of knowledge into one incredible guide. In addition to more than 120 nourishing recipes there is clear information about what constitutes ‘good’ food, where to source it and how to use it to its best effect. There is also a guide to building a wholefood pantry from scratch as well as practical tips for planning and preparing food ahead. Eat well, even on the busiest days. ($39.99, PB)

100 Desserts to Die For by Trish Deseine

Sweet and creamy desserts are one of life’s little pleasures and here are 100 glamorous, decadent, utterly delicious recipes to tempt you. The recipes are packed with tips, shortcuts and good advice and are guaranteed to impress your guests. There is a sweet treat for every occasion in this stunning collection of inventive, uncomplicated desserts that are perfect for sharing with family and friends. ($40, HB)

Good Good Food by Sarah Raven ($51, HB) Theses 250 sumptuous and colourful recipes include Coconut sugar marmalade, Spiced aubergine salad with pomegranate raita, Lemon chicken & summer herb salad, Cashew hummus, Black bean burritos, Blood orange sorbet and Basil yoghurt ice cream. Woven through the book are 100 mini ‘superfood’ biographies, where Raven draws on her expertise & experience to explain the science behind good-for-you ingredients such as kale, broccoli, salmon, red wine, blueberries, apples & seeds.

Savage Salads: Fierce flavours, Filling power-ups

by Kristina Gustafsson, Davide Del Gatto

Kristina (from Sweden) and Davide (from Italy) understand how to create punchy flavours and satisfying textures, all topped with meat, chicken and fish. Nourishing, delicious and packed with protein, the 50 recipes in this cookbook are healthy and flavourful dishes for anyone interested in good food. ($35, HB)

Korean Food Made Simple by Judy Joo ($45, HB) Judy Joo turns exotic dishes into over 100 accessible & delicious recipes, ranging from popular dishes such as kimchi, sweet potato noodles (japchae), beef and vegetable rice bowl (bibimbap), and Korean Fried Chicken, to more creative, less traditional recipes like Spicy Pork Belly Cheese Steak, Krazy Korean Burgers, and Fried Fish with Kimchi Mayo and Sesame Mushy Peas. In addition, there are chapters devoted to sauces, desserts, and drinks as well as a detailed list for stocking a Korean pantry.

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events

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Event—6 for 6.30

Lee J. Mavin

The Intergalactic Custody Battle Ziggy has been taken from away from Earth, stolen away to complete his training on another planet. Little does he know that his Alien father has grand plans for him to take the royal throne and lead the Empire!

This is the first of a trilogy that crosses the universe. Get ready for a wild ride across the galaxy!

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Event— Shakira

Offshore: Behind the wire on Manus and Nauru In conv. with Margo O’Neill This essential book provides a comprehensive and uncompromising overview of the first three years of Australia’s offshore processing since it recommenced in 2012.

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Event—6 for 6.30

Event— Robbi Ne

We’re All Going to Die Leah Kaminsky is an award-winning writer and GP, who is confronted by death and mortality on a daily basis. She share, and challenges, our fears of death and dying—offering a joyful book about the necessity of celebrating life in the face of death.

After Bef At the end of 2008 her family travelle of mainland Aust Aboriginal comm stories of life from nal community th and simple life, t

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Hugh Mackay

Beyond Belief Written with all the insight and compassion we have come to expect of our leading chronicler of Australian life, Beyond Belief is an engrossing exploration of the ways Australians find spiritual fulfilment in an avowedly secular age.

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Prayers of A Secular World A conversation between Donna Ward and Phillip Adams With poetry readings by Judith Beveridge, Andy Kissane and Mark Tredinnick.

This exquisite blue book finished with gold foil is a collection of poems that are prayers for our time.

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Bruce Be and Sue M

From Victims Muslim Wom Shakira Hussein of women negotiat the post-9/11 terr Afghan refugee cam weddings to Aus and campaigns to

Leah Kaminsky

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Launch—

There’s a Fax Launcher: Bar ‘In touch with ea while they flew al two brilliant Austr kling record of ho worked as the film into the internati know today.’

Madeline Gleeson

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WEDNE

All events listed are $12/$9 concession. Book Launches are free.

Gleeclub members free entry to events at 49 Glebe Pt Rd

June 2016

Events are held upstairs at #49 Glebe Point Road unless otherwise noted.

Bookings—Phone: (02) 9660 2333, Email: events@gleebooks.com.au, Online: www.gleebooks.com.au/events

ESDAY

—6 for 6.30 eresford Milliken

x from Bruce rry Humphries ach other by fax ll over the world, ralians left a sparow they lived and m business turned ional country we ’ Clive James

—6 for 6.30 Hussein

s to Suspects: men Since 9/11 explores the lives ting the hazards of rain, from volatile mps and Pakistani stralian suburbia o ‘ban the burqa’.

—6 for 6.30 eal -Talk

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Launch—6 for 6.30 Peter Morgan

Text, Translation, Transnationalism: World Literature in 21st Century Australia In this collection literary scholars from a broad array of languages and cultures explore the relationships between the nation and the world, world literature and transnational methodology, the individual literary voice and its global reception.

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Sam Crosby

The Trust Deficit Julia Gillard’s pledge that there wouldn’t be a carbon tax & Tony Abbott’s promise of no cuts to health or education saw a collapse in their governments’ levels of support.

Drawing on political stories & examples, Sam Crosby shows us how faith in our politicians has been eroded & how it can be rebuilt.

fore Time 8, Robbi Neal and ed to the other end tralia to a remote munity—these are m a remote Aborigihat sing with vivid truth and power.

Ann McGrath

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Illicit Love: Interracial Sex & Marriage in the United States & Australia A tour de force of settler colonial history, Ann McGrath’s study demonstrates vividly how interracial relationships between Indigenous & colonizing peoples were more frequent & threatening to nation-states in the Atlantic & Pacific worlds than previously acknowledged.

James Brown

Quarterly Essay 62: On Going to War What is it like to go to war? How do we decide to go to war? Where might we go to war in the future?

Will we get that decision right? Former Australian Army officer, James Brown looks to history, strategy & his own experience to explore these questions.

Remember!

Join the Gleeclu b and get free entry to events he ld at our shops, 10%credit accrued with every purchase, and the Gle aner delivered to your door every m onth.

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Granny’s Good Reads with Sonia Lee

The Romanovs 1613—1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a rattling good read. It begins in Ekaterinburg, a thousand miles east of Moscow, where we meet two hapless, ailing teenagers who bookend the story, Mikhael (1618) and Alexei (1917), the first a stop-gap emperor, the second an emperor-to-be who would never succeed.

These are the last three centuries of tsarist Russia, told through the lives and foibles of its rulers—with copious details not only of weddings, coronations, banquets and palaces, but also of murders, intrigues, debacles, banishments, repressions, rebellions, pogroms, knoutings, impalings and dwarf-tossings. To which add the vicious and punitive censorship of Pushkin and Gogol, and the mock execution of Dostoevsky and his comrades—the last of these sadistically scripted by Nicholas I himself. All of which left Granny feeling that she, like Macbeth, had supped full with horrors.

Over time, fortunately, the customs of the court improved. Royal consorts were no longer chosen at Brideshows, where the contestants had to endure being nobbled or poisoned by those wanting to rule them out of contest for the dubious honour of being chosen as tsarina. By the middle of the 18th century such undignified scrimmaging had given way to alliances with the royal houses of the West, especially those of Germany and Scandinavia. As in the West, even some of the more outwardly pious princes seem to have been diligent erotomaniacs, to which, for example, the archived letters of Alexander II and his feisty mistress Katya Dolgorukaya (p. 411 on) bear eloquent and eye-popping witness.

In the end, the Romanovs’ Russia could only have survived by doing the impossible and becoming a viable modern state like Britain or Germany, with representative government and up-to-date technology. Railways were indeed built and secondary industries developed, but too slowly, and Alexander II’s grand gesture of emancipating the serfs only alienated the aristocracy while doing little for the serfs. The defeat of Nicholas II’s army and navy in the Russo-Japanese war was a wake-up call which went largely unheeded, and the massive loss of men and materiel in World War I led directly to revolution.

This is a handsomely produced book with stunning photographs. Two vivid memories I take from it are of Nicholas II reading War and Peace to his family at the ill-fated Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, and of Aunt Ella, who in widowhood became a nun, being bludgeoned and thrown into a mine shaft where she kept singing the old hymn Lord Save Your People until silenced by a Bolshevik hand grenade. Such things are as much part of the story as the tsars’ capricious cruelty. As the author says, it is ‘a chronicle of fathers and sons, megalomaniacs, monsters and saints’.

My other good read this month is David Dyer’s The Midnight Watch. Dyer was himself a ship’s officer before practising law and, more recently, teaching English in Sydney. This is a novelistic account of how the SS Californian failed to go to the aid of the doomed Titanic on April 14, 1912. As Dyer tells the story, Second Officer Herbert Stone, on the midnight watch on Californian, sees in the sky the flare of rockets being sent up a few miles away. He wakes Captain Stanley Lord, who is asleep in the chartroom below, but Lord does not come to the bridge. Eight rockets are fired and all are ignored—a serious matter, since such rockets are conventional distress signals. The next morning Titanic is at the bottom of the Atlantic and 1,500 people are dead. Dyer tells the story through the eyes of Steadman, a Boston journalist who ferrets out the parts played by Lord, Stone and other Californian crew members, including Evans the Marconi operator. The Titanic’s dead are poignantly represented by Mrs Sage and her nine children, who travelled third-class.

Steadman is fictional, but the other characters are drawn from life. Dyer’s book is based on years of research in Liverpool, London, New York and Boston. Highly recommended. Sonia

Gay and Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian Stories from a Social Revolution ($29.99, PB)

by Robert Reynolds & Shirleene Robinson

Through the intimate life stories of thirteen gay and lesbian Australians ranging in age from twenty to eighty, this book reveals the remarkable shifts from one generation to the next. From the underground beats of 1950s Brisbane and illicit relationships in the armed services, to Grindr, foster parenting and weddings in the twenty-first century, Robert Reynolds and Shirleene Robinson trace the intimate personal impact of this quiet revolution in social attitudes. The book reveals the legacies of homophobia, the personal struggles and triumphs involved in coming out, the inconsistent state of social progress, and the many different ways of being gay or lesbian in Australia—then and now.

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Australian Studies

QE 62: James Brown on Going to War

Going to war may be the gravest decision a nation and its leaders make. At the moment, Australia is at war with ISIS. We also live in a region that has become much more volatile, as China asserts itself and America seeks to hold the line. James Brown looks to history, strategy and his own experience to explore these questions.

He examines the wars we have chosen to fight in the past—from Gallipoli and Timor, to Afghanistan and Iraq—and asks: did we get the decision right? What is it like to go to war? How do we decide to go to war? Where might we go to war in the future? Will we get that decision right? Brown considers how we plug into the US war machine, and the American troops based in Darwin. He also sheds fascinating light on the changing technology and terrain of war—the cyber realm, the oceans and space. This is an essay that examines our independence as a nation, and the choices that may confront us. ($22.99, PB)

Underground Australia by Michael McKernan

What lurks beneath the surface? In the bowels of a Sydney pub, the publican poses with his hand in chains: a reminder of the time when the underground store was a convict cell. A family, thrown out of home during the Great Depression, set up house in a cave. Women sort mushrooms in a disused railway tunnel in 1950s; a jazz band rehearses beneath the Royal George Hotel. As people go about their busy lives, beneath their feet members of the Cave Clan clamber through shadowy stormwater tunnels. Underground Australia is illustrated with photographs from the National Library of Australia. With images by some of the country’s best-known photographers, including Jeff Carter, Wolfgang Sievers and Frank Hurley, historian Michael McKernan takes a journey to an amazing underground world. ($19.99, PB)

What Happened to the Car Industry?

by Ian Porter ($25, PB)

The Australian car industry is almost 120 years old. In 1949 the federal government encouraged the industry to invest here so the country could make weapons of defence. Carmakers would not otherwise have made the investment because the market was too small, and it still is. But with protection in the early years & co-investment more recently, the industry thrived, and dragged Australia out of the farm era and into the ranks of industrialised countries. In jobs, in technology diffusion, and in social cohesion the industry has provided a great return on the taxpayer investment. But the Abbott government decided to bully the carmakers into leaving so the government could save a few budgetary dollars and redirect a small proportion of the money to Warren Truss’s farming constituents. Accompanied by cartoons from Mark Knight & John Spooner, Ian Porter’s tale is an indictment of political folly and industrial vandalism.

Trouble: On Trial in Central Australia

by Kieran Finnane ($29.95, PB)

Kieran Finnane goes into the ordered environment of the courtroom to lay out in detail some of the dark disorder in Central Australia’s recent history. Men kill their wives, kill one another in seeming senseless acts of revenge, families feud, women join the violence, children watch and learn from the sidelines. Most of the action is relayed from town and roadside drinking camps, places that are out of sight and mind until gatherings awash with alcohol erupt in trouble that cannot be ignored. Drawing on 25 years as a journalist in central Australia, as well as experience of its everyday life, Finnane contemplates local prejudices and sensitivities, political and administrative divisions and reforms, and reveals the connections and aspirations of individuals in the wider community who offer a unique insight into this place and its people.

The Summit of Her Ambition: The Spirited Life of Marie Byles by Anne McLeod ($39.95, PB)

As the first woman to practise law in NSW, Marie Byles triumphed over the chauvinistic legal profession & a society that viewed women as second-class. Committed to women’s equal rights she acted as legal advisor for women’s organisations in the 1930s in the struggle to change discriminatory legislation in marriage & divorce—most cruelly, in the guardianship of children. She also devoted herself to the conservation of the Australian environment A dedicated bushwalker, she was a zealous advocate for wilderness & worked to reserve vast areas for national parks. An avid explorer, she travelled the world & led an international expedition to southern China in 1938. And on a spiritual quest to find the meaning of life beyond success & failure she wrote books on Buddha’s life & teachings.

Notes on an Exodus by Richard Flanagan

Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and the damned flowing through Europe is my family. In January 2016 Richard Flanagan and Ben Quilty travelled to Lebanon, Greece, and Serbia to follow the river that is the exodus of our age: that of refugees from Syria. Flanagan’s ‘notes’ and Quilty’s sketches bear witness to the remarkable people they met on that journey and their stories. These individual portraits from the Man Booker Prize–winning author and Archibald Prize–winning artist combine to form a powerful testament to human dignity and courage in the face of war, death, and suffering. ($9.99, PB)

History

The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History by Peter H. Wilson ($75, HB)

A great, sprawling, ancient & unique entity, the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later, formed the heart of Europe. It was a great engine for inventions & ideas, it was the origin of many modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, its relations with Italy, France & Poland dictated the course of countless wars—indeed European history as a whole makes no sense without it. In this ambitious book, Peter H. Wilson explains how the Empire worked. It is not a chronological history, but an attempt to convey to readers the Empire’s unique nature, why it was so important and how it changed over its existence.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich ($35, PB)

Zionism: The Birth & Transformation of an Ideal

by Milton Viorst ($39.99, HB)

Beginning with the shattering of the traditional Jewish society during the Enlightenment, Middle East correspondent, Milton Viorst covers the recent history of the Jews, from the spread of Jewish Emancipation during the French Revolution Era to the rise of the exclusionary anti-Semitism that overwhelmed Europe in the late 19th century. Viorst examines how Zionism was born and follows its development through the lives & ideas of its dominant leaders, who all held only one tenet in common: that Jews, for the first time in two millennia, must determine their own destiny to save themselves. But, in regards to creating a Jewish state with a military that dominates the region, Viorst argues that Israel has squandered the goodwill it enjoyed at its founding, and thus the country has put its own future on very uncertain footing.

The Trial of Charles I (ed) K. J. Kesselring

From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Second-Hand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of Communism.

Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals.

In January of 1649, after years of civil war, King Charles I stood trial in a specially convened English court on charges of treason, murder, and other high crimes against his people. Not only did the revolutionary tribunal find him guilty and order his death, but its masters then abolished monarchy itself and embarked on a bold (though short-lived) republican experiment. The event was a landmark in legal history. The trial and execution of King Charles marked a watershed in English politics and political theory, and thus also affected subsequent developments in those parts of the world colonised by the British. This book presents a selection of contemporaries’ accounts of the king’s trial and their reactions to it, as well as a report of the trial of the king’s own judges once the wheel of fortune turned and monarchy was restored. It uses the words of people directly involved to offer insight into the causes and consequences of these momentous events. ($34.95, PB)

In May 1945, with victory in Europe established, the war was all but over. But on the other side of the world, the Allies were still engaged in a bitter struggle to control the Pacific. And it was then that the Japanese unleashed a terrible new form of warfare: the suicide pilots, or Kamikaze. Drawing on meticulous research and unique personal access to the remaining survivors, Will Iredale follows a group of young men from the moment they joined up through their initial training to the terrifying reality of fighting against pilots who, in the cruel last summer of the war, chose death rather than risk their country’s dishonourable defeat and deliberately flew their planes into Allied aircraft carriers.

Now in paperback & B Format The Utopia Of Rules by David Graeber, $33 Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped by Garry Kasparov, $24 Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble by Antony Beevor, $35 Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor, $27 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard, $24.99

The Kamikaze Hunters: Fighting for the Pacific, 1945 by Oliver Walker and Will Iredale ($20, PB)

Politics

Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky ($35, PB)

‘As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.’ In the post-9/11 era, America’s policy-makers have increasingly prioritised the pursuit of power, both military and economic, above all else—human rights, democracy, even security.

Drawing on examples ranging from expanding drone assassination programs to civil war in Syria to the continued violence in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, philosopher, political commentator and prolific activist Noam Chomsky offers unexpected & nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power in our increasingly chaotic planet.

Building Dignified Worlds: Geographies of Collective Action by Gerda Roelvink ($38, PB)

Contemporary collectives differ markedly from previous groups associated with revolutionary politics. Instead of assembling large groups of workers around labor issues, these new collectives creatively arrange diverse peoples, animals, natural environments, and technologies around economic concerns. Like older forms of leftist organizing, these collectives seek to bring about change. However, rather than working to overthrow and replace an underlying capitalist system with an equally totalizing alternative like socialism, they experiment with new forms of economic life. This book explores how socially and politically concerned groups actually establish alternative economies.

Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece & the Future of Europe James K. Galbraith ($45.95, HB)

The economic crisis in Greece is a potential international disaster and one of the most extraordinary monetary & political dramas of our time. ‘Solutions’ proposed by Europe’s combined leadership have sparked a war of prideful words & stubborn one-upmanship, & they are certain to fail, according to James K. Galbraith, because they are designed for failure. It is this hypocrisy that prompted former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, when Galbraith arrived in Athens as an adviser, to greet him with the words ‘Welcome to the poisoned chalice’. This collection of essays—which includes letters & private memos to both American & Greek officials, as well as other previously unpublished material—examines the crisis, its causes, its course, and its meaning, as well as the viability of the austerity program imposed on the Greek citizenry.

Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

by Francesca Borri ($32.99, PB)

August 21, 2013: a chemical weapons attack on the suburbs of Damascus left 200,000 estimated victims, and more than half of a population of 22 million people dispersed or refugeed in nearby countries: the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII according to the UN. Hundreds of journalists rushed to the frontier only to leave disappointed when Obama decides not to bomb. 30 year old Francesca Borri stays. For months she covers the battle of Aleppo as a freelance reporter. And she quickly realizes that to report a war is to hide with dozens of women & children, or to scavenge for anything to burn for some warmth. It is also to meet with officials more worried about the stain of snow on their Clarks than the people they are supposed to help. It is to explain what is happening in Aleppo to journalists who have only been there once, on vacation, and bought a carpet. And it is also about remembering impossible little things, the particular light on that day in that café at the beach when you were a kid, the eyes of people you love, all the minuscule simple joys that can be lost in a moment.

The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism by Daniel J. Goldhagen

Antisemitism never went away, but since the turn of the century it has multiplied beyond what anyone would have predicted. It is openly spread by intellectuals, politicians and religious leaders in Europe, Asia, the Arab world, America and Africa and supported by hundreds of millions more. Indeed, today antisemitism is stronger than any time since the Holocaust. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen reveals the unprecedented, global form of this age-old hatred; its strategic use by states; its powerful appeal to individuals and groups; and how technology has fuelled the flames that had been smouldering prior to the millennium. ($39.99, PB)

Sufficiency Thinking: Thailand’s Gift to an Unsustainable World (eds) Avery & Bergsteiner

The Thai model of sufficiency thinking aims to transform the mindset of a whole population to achieve the seemingly impossible: enriching everyone’s lives in a truly sustainable way. Innovative management practices developed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand have been applied across Thailand in agriculture, education, business, government and community organisations for over two decades. In this book, chapters written by eminent Thai scholars explain sufficiency thinking and review its implementation in different sectors including community development, business, agriculture, health care, schools, and even in prisons. ($35, PB)

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Science & Nature

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee ($35, PB)

The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a ‘unit of heredity’.

It intersects with Darwin’s theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganizes our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds – from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes. But woven through this history is also the intimate history of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness—concerns that reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to ‘read’ and ‘write’ the human genome, unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.

The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything

by Adrian Bejan ($38, HB)

T

his gonzo guide is a lesson in the practicalities of

writing: how to be productive, professional and maybe one day even pay the rent. Topics covered include ‘How to slay writer’s block’, ‘What the hell is workflow?’, ‘How to write 10,000 words in a day’ and ‘The best apps for writers’. How to Be a Writer is a kick-arse writing guide with a toughlove approach, written for the

internet generation. John Birmingham is lauded as a prolific writer working across multiple genres. Here he shares his secrets. And some hard-core, real-world practical advice. And a few excellent descriptions of explosions.

W

hen English naturalist Joseph Banks

accompanied Captain Cook on his historic mission into the Pacific, he took with him a team of collectors and illustrators who returned with unprecedented collections of artefacts, specimens and drawings, opening up a whole world of knowledge as yet undiscovered by Europeans.

This book, edited by Neil Chambers features original voyage specimens together with illustrations and descriptions of them, showing a rich diversity of newly discovered species. It also shows how Banks organised this material, planning but ultimately failing to publish it.

w w w. n ews o u t h p u b l i s h i n g .co m

Now in B Format The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

by Andrea Wulf, $23

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The Physics of Life illuminates the meaning of evolution in its broadest scientific sense and empowers the reader with a new view of the intertwined movement of all life—evolution is more than biological.

The same physical effect is present in all patterns and flows—from life span and population growth, to air traffic, to government expansion, to the urge for better ideas, to sustainability. Evolution is everywhere, and the same elegant principles of physics apply to all things.

Think Like An Engineer: Inside the Minds that are Changing our Lives by Guru Madhavan ($19.99, PB)

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa—the world’s tallest building—looks nothing like Microsoft’s Office Suite, & digital surround sound doesn’t work like a citywide telecommunication grid. Yet these engineering feats have much in common: they are the result of a unique thinking process combining abstract & structured thinking, common sense & great imagination. They are born of the engineering mindset. Biomedical engineer, Guru Madhavan, reveals the extraordinary influence of engineering on society, not just today but throughout history. Full of case studies & practical insights spanning the history of engineering, Madhavan’s book is in equal parts personal, practical & profound—revealing how key engineering concepts can help you make better decisions & create innovative solutions in a complex world.

Restless Creatures: The Story of Life in Ten Movements by Matt Wilkinson ($40, HB)

This book tells the incredible story of locomotion in human and animal evolution. Evolutionary biologist Matt Wilkinson shows why our ancestors became two-legged, why we have opposable thumbs, why the backbone appeared, how fish fins became limbs, how even trees are locomotion-obsessed, and how movement has shaped our minds as well as our bodies. He explains why there are no flying monkeys or biological wheels, how dinosaurs took to the air, how Mexican waves began in the animal kingdom, and why moving can make us feel good. Restless Creatures opens up an astonishing new perspective—that nothing in life makes sense except in the light of movement.

Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey

With plans to launch hotels into orbit and experiments in suspending and reanimating life for ultra-long-distance travel, private companies and entrepreneurs have outpaced NASA as the leaders in the new space race. With accessible prose and relentless curiosity, Chris Impey reports on China’s plan to launch its own space station by 2020, proves that humans could survive on Mars and unveils cutting-edge innovations such as the space elevators poised to replace rockets at a fraction of the cost. Setting mankind’s urge towards exploration in the context of all human history and space travel thus far, he shows that the present-day scientists mapping billions of Earth-like exo-planets are the descendants of the first humans to venture out of Africa. We must forge ahead, argues Beyond, because exploration is in our DNA. ($23.95, PB)

Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe by Roger Penrose ($65, HB)

Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. He argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy may be leading today’s researchers astray in three of the field’s most important areas. String theory has veered away from physical reality by positing six extra hidden dimensions—Penrose cautions that the fashionable nature of a theory can cloud our judgments of its plausibility. In the case of quantum mechanics, its stunning success in explaining the atomic universe has led to an uncritical faith that it must also apply to reasonably massive objects, and Penrose responds by suggesting possible changes in quantum theory. Turning to cosmology, he argues that most of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them. Finally, Penrose describes how fashion, faith, and fantasy have ironically also shaped his own work, from twistor theory, a possible alternative to string theory that is beginning to acquire a fashionable status, to ‘conformal cyclic cosmology’, an idea so fantastic that it could be called ‘conformal crazy cosmology’.

Philosophy & Religon

What’s the Use of Truth?

by Richard Rorty & Pascal Engel ($34.95, PB)

What is truth? What value should we see in or attribute to it? The war over the meaning & utility of truth is at the centre of contemporary philosophical debate, and its arguments have rocked the foundations of philosophical practice. In this book, the American pragmatist Richard Rorty and the French analytic philosopher Pascal Engel present their radically different perspectives on truth & its correspondence to reality. Rorty doubts that the notion of truth can be of any practical use & points to the preconceptions that lie behind truth in both the intellectual and social spheres. Engel prefers a realist conception, defending the relevance and value of truth as a norm of belief and inquiry in both science & the public domain. Rorty finds more danger in using the notion of truth than in getting rid of it. Engel thinks it is important to hold on to the idea that truth is an accurate representation of reality. This conversation is a rare opportunity to experience each side of this impassioned debate clearly and concisely.

Teachings of the Buddha: The Wisdom of the Dharma, from the Pali Canon to the Sutras

by Desmond Biddulph & Darcy Flynn ($25, HB)

This book reflects the rich diversity of Buddhist traditions, while concentrating in particular on the Pali canon, which contains the Dhammapada. Also included are extracts from the later Mahayana sutras, traditional Buddhist tales and fascinating koans (riddles) from Zen masters, with introductory passages of commentary illuminating key meanings. The book’s ten chapters mirror stages of the Buddha’s healing role, from diagnosis (starting with the chain of causation) to cure (ending with enlightenment).

Derrida’s Breakfast by David Brooks ($24.95, PB)

This book contains four essays, three on the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose writings have so influenced our time (one on his breakfast, one on his cat, one on his relationship with a snake, and one (on the killing of doves) on the great early 20th century poet Rilke. Each essay examines key failures and challenges in the relationship of poetry, philosophy and ‘the animal’—each entertaining, absorbing, and thought-provoking well beyond its given subject. David Brooks (recently described in SMH as recently described as ‘one of the most skilful, unusual and versatile of Australian writers’) crosses with ease the boundaries of philosophy, literary criticism (there are passages on Coleridge, on D.H. Lawrence, on Henry Lawson) and human-animal relations.

Bird on an Ethics Wire: Battles About Values in the Culture Warsby Margaret Somerville ($60, HB)

Our physical ecosystem is not indestructible & we have obligations to hold it in trust for future generations. The same is true of our metaphysical ecosystem—the values, principles, attitudes, beliefs, and shared stories on which we have founded our society. In this book, Margaret Somerville explores the values needed to maintain a world that reasonable people would want to live in and pass on to their descendants. Somerville addresses the conflicts between people who espouse ‘progressive’ values and those who uphold ‘traditional’ ones by casting her attention on the debates surrounding ‘birth’ (abortion and reproductive technologies) and ‘death’ (euthanasia) and shows how words are often used as weapons. She proposes that we should seek to experience amazement, wonder, and awe to enrich our lives and help us to find meaning.

How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life by Marcus Tullius Cicero ($31, HB)

Filled with timeless wisdom and practical guidance, Cicero’s brief, charming classic—written in 44 BC—addresses the greatest fears of growing older, eloquently describing how you can make the second half of life the best part of all—and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was. Montaigne said Cicero’s book ‘gives one an appetite for growing old’. This lively new translation comes with an informative new introduction and the original Latin on facing pages.

The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ by Brant Pitre ($41, HB)

For well over a hundred years, many scholars have questioned the historical truth of the Gospels, claiming that they were originally anonymous. Others have even argued that Jesus of Nazareth did not think he was God and never claimed to be divine. Brant Pitre goes back to the sources—both biblical and historical—in order to answer several key questions, including: Were the four Gospels really anonymous? Are the Gospels folklore? Or are they biographies? Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable? Did Jesus claim to be God? Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah? Why was Jesus crucified?

What is the evidence for the Resurrection? Recent discoveries in New Testament scholarship, as well as neglected evidence from ancient manuscripts and the early church fathers, together have the potential to pull the rug out from under a century of skepticism toward the traditional Gospels. Above all, Pitre shows how the divine claims of Jesus of Nazareth can only be understood by putting them in their ancient Jewish context.

Psychology Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts by Susan Cain ($30, PB)

Susan Cain sparked a worldwide conversation with Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. Now she takes the Quiet Revolution to a younger audience. Childhood, adolescence and your early twenties are times wrought with insecurity and self-doubt. Your search for your place in the world can seem daunting. Focusing on the strengths and challenges of being introverted, Quiet Power is full of examples from school, family life and friendship, applying the breakthrough discoveries of Quiet to readers that so badly need them.

Melancholy by Laszlo F. Földenyi ($51.95, HB) Laszlo Földenyi’s book is part history of the term melancholy and part analysis of the melancholic disposition, exploring many centuries to explore melancholy’s ambiguities—along the way he discovers the unrecognised role melancholy may play as a source of energy and creativity in a well-examined life. Beginning with a tour of the history of the word melancholy, from ancient Greece to the medieval era, the Renaissance, and modern times, Földnyi finds the meaning of melancholy has always been ambiguous, even paradoxical. In our own times it may be regarded either as a psychic illness or a mood familiar to everyone. The author analyses the complexities of melancholy and concludes that its dual nature reflects the inherent tension of birth and mortality.

To understand the melancholic disposition is to find entry to some of the deepest questions one’s life. ‘Laszlo Földenyi is one of the most brilliant essayists of our time’.—Alberto Manguel The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves

by Charles Fernyhough ($34.99, PB)

Close your eyes and have a thought. Profound or mundane, hold the thought; savour it. Replay it in your mind. Now ask yourself a question: what was it like to think that thought?

What we usually call ‘thinking’ is often a kind of speaking by, and a listening to, the multiple voices of our consciousness.

Psychologist Charles Fernyhough interviews young children & the elderly, novelists, practitioners of meditation, visual artists and, in particular, people who hear voices & reveals how it seems that the ‘inner voice’ of introspection is real, and that it plays a vital part in our thinking. Psychologists are demonstrating that inner speech could have an importance far beyond our previous thinking, helping us to regulate our own behaviour, motivate ourselves for action & even become conscious of our own selves.

Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray

by Helen E. Fisher ($38.95, HB)

Lust, romance, attachment...Antatomy of Love explores such questions as whether monogamy is natural, why we choose certain partners and why we might cheat on them. In this completely revised edition, anthropologist Helen Fisher adds a host of new data on the brain in love and on courtship in our digital age. She casts an original (and optimistic) lens on modern love, proposing that we are returning to patterns of romance that evolved in our primordial past.

Paranoid: Exploring Suspicion from the Dubious to the Delusional by David J. Laporte

From the pathological killer who gunned down the innocents at Virginia Tech to the average citizen who suspects the government is monitoring phone calls, the signs of suspiciousness and paranoia are all around us. In this comprehensive overview of an increasingly serious problem, an experienced psychologist & researcher describes what paranoia is, how and why it manifests itself, and the many forms it takes, including stalking, pathological jealousy, as a reaction to post-traumatic stress disorder & even militia movements. Using striking vignettes from the present and the past, each chapter illustrates specific manifestations of paranoia while also describing in layperson’s terms the clinical analysis of the condition. ($35, PB)

Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering by David A. Kessler ($50, HB)

‘Capture’ is the process by which our attention is hijacked and our brains commandeered by forces outside our control.

David Kessler considers some of the most profound questions we face as human beings: What are the origins of mental afflictions, from everyday unhappiness to addiction and depression & how are they connected? Where does healing & transcendence fit into this realm of emotional experience?

Analyzing insights from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, literature, philosophy & theology, Kessler deconstructs centuries of thinking, examining the central role of capture in mental illness & questioning traditional labels that have obscured our understanding of it.

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More from Granny Claire Harman’s Charlotte Brontë: A Life marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth. The outlines of the story are well enough known: windswept Yorkshire moors, the loss of her mother when she was five, the slow deaths of her siblings, and the appalling school at Lowan Bridge—all of which Harman recounts with empathy. Harman begins, though, with an incident that Charlotte would later fictionalise in Villette. In September 1843, Charlotte, aged 27, was alone in Brussels during the summer vacation of the school where she was an unpaid pupil-teacher. Tormented by an unrequited obsession with M. Constantin Heger, the school’s charismatic principal, she went into a confessional box at the cathedral and tried to unburden herself to a bemused Catholic priest. When she told Elizabeth Gaskell, her first biographer, of this disgraceful lapse from low-church Anglican principles, Gaskell asked whether she had been on opium at the time. Harman’s overall assessment is that Charlotte was consumed by a deep resentment at being poor, plain and unattractive, at having to earn her living by being a lowly governess, and at being all too aware that society preferred women like her to keep their formidable talents under wraps. Charlotte did, of course, engage the reading public spectacularly with Jane Eyre, the story of a plain, mousy governess winning the heart of Mr Rochester, a dashing Byronic hero—M. Heger on steroids, as it were—but even then Charlotte thought it necessary to publish under the pseudonym ‘Currer Bell’. Harman notes that Jane Eyre was the first English novel to be told from the point of view of a child. Dickens later wrote David Copperfield from the same perspective—but refused to read Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë was always more comfortable writing letters than conversing in polite society and I note from the May Gleaner that Juliet Barker has just published a volume titled The Brontës: A Life in Letters. Charlotte died in pregnancy not long after marrying her father’s curate, possibly, says Harman, from complications of the type of prolonged morning sickness suffered by Agatha Christie and more recently by Princess Kate. A very readable and well balanced biography.

Redeemable: A Memoir of Darkness and Hope by Erwin James will surely become a classic of its genre.

James loses his mother at age seven and his father turns into a violently abusive drunk. With one-year-old Alison the pair move from place to place, often sleeping rough.

Like his father he becomes violent under the influence of alcohol and goes on a downward spiral at the bottom of which he robs and murders two unnamed people. He evades the law and joins the Foreign Legion, finding in it the discipline and comradeship that he craves, but after two years turns himself in to the British authorities. Sentenced to life in prison, he serves twenty years in a series of grim establishments, including Wakefield, where he has the good luck to meet Joan, a prison psychologist, who helps him to confront his past and, best of all, to get an education. While behind bars he studies history and journalism and writes articles on prison life for the Guardian. After his release he becomes a member of the Prison Reform Trust and patron of a number of offender rehabilitation charities. James has, in effect, spent his postprison years making up for his crimes. My heart broke as I read of his blighted childhood, but in the end I found this book gloriously uplifting.

Not to be missed.

With letters now an endangered species, Ian Buruma has given us Their Promised Land—a selection of the letters written by his maternal grandparents, Bernard Schlesinger and Winifred Regensburg. The pair met in Hampstead as teenagers and corresponded regularly when apart. Bernard served as a stretcher-bearer in World War 1, then qualified as a doctor in Cambridge, serving as a medical officer in India in World War 2.

Married for more than sixty years, they had five children and wrote daily when Bernard was stationed in India. Win struggled with holding the family together while he was away, overseeing their education and caring for the twelve Jewish refugee children whom they had adopted. Eldest son John hated school, causing Win to confide in a letter that he was a ‘bit of a pansy’ and had spent the holidays ‘putting on the Kintbury Follies for the village’. However, when John later became a film director with Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday to his credit, they supported him wholeheartedly.

These letters are a unique record of an assimilated Jewish family living in England during very dark days. Buruma links the letters with his informative commentary. A charming and eminently readable work. Sonia

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Cultural Studies & Criticism Speaking Out: A 21st-Century Handbook for Women and Girls by Tara Moss ($22.99, PB)

Worldwide, less than one out of every four people we hear from or about in the media is female, and men outnumber women in parliament by more than three to one. If half of humanity’s experiences, perspectives and possible solutions to world problems are under-represented, or entirely unheard, all of us lose out. Tara Moss has spent 20 years in the public sphere and has had to face down nerves, critics and backlash to emerge as a leader in speaking out. In this handbook she offers advice on preparation, speaking out and negotiating public spaces. With a special focus on public speaking, writing, social media and online safety, she offers tips on how to research, form arguments, find support and handle criticism. This is a guide for women young and old that not only helps them find their voice, but argues passionately for why it matters.

Keep it Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life

by Eric G. Wilson ($28, PB)

We invent identities on Facebook, pay thousands for plastic surgeries, and tune in to news that simply verifies our opinions—reality bites, after all, faith-based initiatives trump reality-based ones, and becoming disillusioned is a downer. In Keep It Fake Eric G. Wilson investigates this phenomenon. He draws on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, art, film, literature, and his own life to explore the possibility that there’s no such thing as unwavering reality. Whether our left brains are shaping the raw data of our right into fabulous stories or we’re so saturated by society’s conventions that we’re always acting out prefab scripts, we can’t help but be phony. But are some fakes more real than others? Are certain lies true?

Erudite, witty & wide-ranging Wilson answers these questions, uncovering bracing truths about what it means to be human and helping us turn our necessary lying into artful living.

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

by Neil Gaiman ($29.99, PB)

This book draws together Neil Gaiman’s non-fiction writing. From Make Good Art, the speech that went viral, to pieces on artists and legends including Terry Pratchett and Lou Reed, the collection offers a glimpse into the head and heart of one of the most acclaimed writers of our time. ‘Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation’ Welcome to the conversation. Neil Gaiman fled the land of journalism to find truths through storytelling and sanctuary in not needing to get all the facts right. Of course, the real world continued to make up its own stories around him, and he has responded over the years with a wealth of ideas and introductions, dreams and speeches. Here ‘we can meet the writer full on’ (Stephen Fry) as he opens our minds to the people he admires and the things he believes might just mean something—and makes room for us to join the conversation too.

Reading Rilke by William H. Gass ($27, PB)

After nearly a lifetime of reading Rilke in English translation, William H. Gass undertook the task of translating Rilke’s writing himself, in order to see if he could, in that way, get closer to the work he so deeply admired. Gass examines the genesis of the ideas that inform the Elegies and discusses previous translations, while writing, in his inimitable style, about Rilke the man: his character, his relationships, his life. Finally, Gass’ own extraordinary translation of the Duino Elegies offers us the experience of reading Rilke with a new and fuller understanding.

Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World by Baz Dreisinger ($45, HB)

Baz Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them in this first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. From serving as a restorative justice facilitator in a notorious South African prison and working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, to launching a creative writing class in an overcrowded Ugandan prison and coordinating a drama workshop for women prisoners in Thailand, Dreisinger examines the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect. She journeys to Jamaica to visit a prison music program, to Singapore to learn about approaches to prisoner reentry, to Australia to grapple with the bottom line of private prisons, to a federal supermax in Brazil to confront the horrors of solitary confinement, and finally to the socalled model prisons of Norway.

Bullies: A Friendship by Alex Abramovich ($47, HB) Alex Abramovich and Trevor Latham were mortal enemies—miniature outlaws in a Long Island elementary school, perpetually at each other’s throats. Decades later, when they met again, Abramovich was a writer & Latham had become President of the East Bay Rats, a motorcycle club in Oakland. In 2010, Abramovich moved to California to immerse himself in Latham’s world—one of fight clubs, booze-filled nights & beat-downs on the city’s streets. But dangerous, dysfunctional Oakland was also becoming one of America’s most rapidly gentrifying cities. As Trevor, the Rats, and the city they live in careen between crises & moments of renaissance, Abramovich explores issues of friendship, family, history & destiny—and looks at what happens when those things fail.

‘One of the greatest American writers’ Independent From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.

s d d w n n a o 2 H R FOLIO SOCIETY FAVOURITES

‘Founded in London in 1947, The Folio Society publishes carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature. We believe that great books deserve to be presented in a form worthy of their contents. For nearly 70 years we have celebrated the unique joy to be derived from owning, holding and reading a beautiful printed edition.’—From the Introduction to the Folio Society.

I see an increasing number of Folio Society volumes being offered for sale these days. From serious ‘downsizing’ of a large library or a deceased estate being disposed of. Proof that some fine books are kept—literally—a lifetime.

An accessible and practical handbook for women on speaking out safely and confidently.

This month, here are a trilogy of Folio Society volumes: The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787–1868 by Robert Hughes (1938–2012) London 1998. Hard Cover. First printing. 643 pp. Orange illustrated cover in a black slipcase. Near Fine condition. Price $70.00.

The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin (1819–1900) Edited & Introduced by Jan Morris.

London. 2002. First printing. Hardcover. 350pp, 14 colour & 16 b/w plates.

Ornately decorated in gilt and black architectural designs in a black slipcase.

Near Fine copy. $40.00.

A joyful book about the necessity of celebrating life in the face of death.

The Twelve Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (70-c.–130 AD) Translated by Robert Graves. Wood-engravings by Raymond Hawthorn.

London. 1997 Reprint. Hardcover. 318pp, maps. In a red slipcase. Small spot stain on the free front end paper and title page. Some very light spotting on front edge. Very Good condition. $35.00.

Stephen Reid

Now in B Format Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

by John Berger, $19.99 Women, War and Islamic Radicalisation in Maryam Mahboob’s Afghanistan by Faridullah Bezhan

Afghanistan is regarded as a ‘classical patriarchal’ society, where old social tradition, religious doctrine & socio-economic & cultural backwardness have made women second-class citizens. But how have women—on different levels—lived in Afghanistan? How have they treated been treated, both in the private sphere and in public? And how did they resist mistreatment during the war inside Afghanistan, in refugee camps or in diaspora? Who are the sponsors & perpetrators of human rights violations against Afghanistani women? What are the connections between Islam, local customs, the mistreatment of women, and women’s connectedness to revolution & jihad? This book provides answers to these questions through a study of the life & short stories of one of the country’s leading female writers, Maryam Mahboob. If offers a completely different image of both the suffering & resistance of Afghanistani women than that we in the ‘West’ have come to know. ($39.95, PB)

Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China

by Alec Ash ($32.99, PB)

The youth are the generation that will change China. There are over 320 million in their teens & twenties, more than the population of the USA. Born after Mao, natives of a nation on the rise, they are destined to have an unprecedented influence on global affairs. Dahai is a military child and a rebel; ‘Fred’ is a daughter of the Party. Lucifer is an aspiring superstar; Snail a country migrant addicted to online gaming.

Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north; and Mia a skinhead fashionista from Xinjiang in the far west. These millennials, offspring of the only child policy, face fierce competition and pressure to succeed. Dislocated from their country’s tumultuous past, they are caught between tradition and modernity.

Alec Ash, a writer in Beijing of the same generation, has given us a vivid, gripping account of young China as it comes of age.

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

This book collects dozens of double Hugo Award-winning essayist and fantasy novelist Kameron Hurley’s essays on feminism, geek culture, and her experiences and insights as a genre writer, including We Have Always Fought, which won the 2013 Hugo for Best Related Work.

The Geek Feminist Revolution also features several entirely new essays written specifically for this volume. Unapologetically outspoken, Hurley has contributed essays to The Atlantic, Locus, Tor.com, and others on the rise of women in genre, her passion for SF/F, and the diversification of publishing. ($26, PB)

Language & Writing

How to Be a Writer by John Birmingham

‘Beauty is good, but coin is better. You can’t eat artistic integrity. It tastes like sawdust.’ This gonzo guide is a lesson in the practicalities of writing: how to be productive, professional and maybe one day even pay the rent. Topics covered include ‘How to slay writer’s block’, ‘What the hell is workflow?’, ‘How to write 10,000 words in a day’ and ‘The best apps for writers’. John Birmingham is lauded as a prolific writer working across multiple genres. Here he shares his secrets. And some hard-core, real-world practical advice.

And a few excellent descriptions of explosions. ($24.99, PB)

Master of the Cinematic Universe: The Secret Code to Writing in the New World of Media

by John Bucher & Jeremy Casper This is a guide to the future of trans-media storytelling.

Content creators of every flavour are constantly needing to expand the mediums they can work in. This volume serves as a resource for using the timeless truths of story structure to craft established as well as up and coming short-form media formats. ($17.99, PB)

Spellbound: Rethinking the Alphabet

by Craig McDaniel & Jean Robertson

Asserting that written language is on the verge of its greatest change since the advent of the printing press, visual artist Craig McDaniel and art historian Jean Robertson bring us Spellbound —a collection of heavily illustrated essays that interrogate assumptions about language & typography. Rethinking the alphabet, they argue, means rethinking human communication. Looking beyond traditional typography, the authors conceive of new languages in which encoded pictorial images offer an unparalleled fusion of art & language. In a world of constant technological innovation offered by e-books, tablets, cell phones, and the Internet, McDaniel & Robertson demonstrate provocatively what it would mean to move beyond the alphabet we know to a wholly new system of written communication. ($80, PB)

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As I write (in early April) the 2016 US Presidential Campaign is shaping up as a contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. So in our age of instantaneous social media and a never-ending news cycle, here are a quartet of books examining some earlier campaigns for what poet Walt Whitman called ‘the Presidentiad’.

The Making of the President by Theodore H. White—1960. (PB, $31) The idea was to follow the campaign from beginning to end. It would be written as a novel is written, with anticipated surprises, as one by one, early candidate vanish until only two final jousters struggle for the prize in November. Moreover, it should be written as the story of the leader under the pressures of circumstances.

Theodore White’s book revolutionised American political reportage. Campaign reportage at the time had rarely ventured beyond candidates public events and official statements. White wished to show readers how the political system really worked.

Based on his ‘overkill’ research and more than 300 interviews he intended his work to be both a civics lesson as well as a political thriller. The book set out, in a series of vivid, detailed scenes, how the candidates formed their strategies, shaped their image and how in particular they dealt with the press.

White also described a press corps thoroughly besotted with John F. Kennedy, the charismatic 43 year old Democratic candidate, and equally despising of his Republican opponent, former Vice-President Richard Nixon. The devotees unashamedly included White himself—drawn to what he saw as Kennedy’s style, wit, appreciation of and sense of history. Thus, ironically, while he demystified parts of the political process, White’s literary style now presented an utterly romantic view of great leaders.

The Selling of the President by Joe McGinniss—1968. ($29, PB) In 1967 Roger Ailes, a young TV producer (and later the founder of FOX News), had a spirited discussion with Republican Richard Nixon, who was planning a second presidential bid. Ailes disagreed with Nixon who thought television use in presidential campaigns was merely ‘a gimmick’. Ailes argued his case so persuasively that Nixon asked him to serve as his Executive Producer for Television in the 1968 campaign. Ailes task was to render the hugely unlikable Nixon more appealing to a TV audience of voters. He had no illusions: ‘Let’s face it, a lot of people think Nixon is dull. Think he’s a bore...They look at him as the kind of kid who always carried a book bag. Who was 42 years old the day he was born.’

Just one small detail from McGinnis’s perceptive, iconoclastic analysis of ‘what seemed a striking, new phenomenon—the marketing of political candidates as if they were consumer products.’

In mid-1968, Joe McGinniss, a 25 year old journalist, approached the campaign organisers of Democrat Herbert Humphrey for permission to join their team, follow the candidate around for several months in order to write a book on the role of media advertising in the presidential campaign.

Humphrey’s people said no. Nixon’s said yes. Dressed in a sober suit and tie, McGinniss sat quietly in numerous television studios and recorded all he witnessed, in a series sharp, descriptive vignettes. Chapter One is a recounting, in hilariously excruciating detail, of candidate Nixon’s struggles to pre-record a law and order advertisement to deal with a perceived crime wave in Buffalo, NY. This book chronicles and foreshadows the impact of a form of media presentation that would both transform and consume all future presidential campaigns.

Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson ($31, PB) GONZO .Adjective. Informal. 1.relating to or denoting journalism of an exaggerated, subjective, and fictionalised style. 2. bizarre or crazy. I wish I could recall H.S.T back from the dead. A decade after his passing, we could use his unique, legendary ‘King of Gonzo’ reportage to help us make sense of this current Presidential campaign in its all-encompassing weirdness. Instead, we will all have to read (or re-read) his masterpiece.

Originally written as a series of fortnightly dispatches between Dec 1971 to Jan 1973 for Rolling Stone magazine (back when it mattered), the author recounts its genesis: ‘...written in airport bars, all nite-coffee shops, dreary hotel rooms all over the country—there is hardly a paragraph in this jangled saga that wasn’t produced in a last minute teeth- grinding frenzy’. It doesn’t show. Some books define an era. This is one of them.

An account, from a truly unique perspective, of the 1972 campaign that ended with Republican Richard Nixon’s landslide win over the hapless Democrat—‘he lacked a dark, kinky streak of Mick Jagger in his soul’—George McGovern. H.S.T.’s introductory ‘Author’s Note’ describing his drug and alcohol fuelled marathon writing/taping session, holed up in San Francisco’s Seal Rock Inn, struggling to complete the book mere hours before the publishing deadline—accompanied by two hundred seals barking outside all day (and night)—is worth the price of it alone.

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THE PRESIDENTIAD THE THE PRESIDENTIAD PRESIDENTIAD What It Takes: The Way to the White House

by Richard Ben Cramer (1992) ($45, PB) An astonishing, compelling 1,047 page chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign between Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republican George H. W. Bush. Ironically, one regarded—then and now—as the most boring of modern times.

To call it a chronicle is actually a misnomer, it is in fact a contemporaneous biography of the six candidates vying for the White House. Republicans—Bob Dole and Bush; Democrats—Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Richard Gephardt and Dukakis. Through detailed descriptions and well-crafted interior monologues, Cramer examines their upbringing, what formed them, what motivated them to enter politics. The campaign is seen through their eyes.

Cramer regarded his book as the literary equivalent of a pointillist painting: ‘each fact a tiny dot is a detail and when all completed, stand back and survey the grand canvas’. It works wonderfully.

The accounts of Bob Dole’s lengthy recovery from war wounds in 1945 and Joe Biden’s 1972 family tragedy—when his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident and his two young sons injured—are some of the most moving writing I have read. Years later, Cramer’s good friend Joe Biden (Cramer always called him ‘Joey’), now Vice-President of the United States, attended his funeral.

A commercial failure when it was released in 1992, What It Takes is now regarded by many as the greatest and most ambitious work in American political journalism ever written. Yet as TIME magazine journalist Joe Klein perceptively noted—in a tribute to Cramer—this book is truly sui generis: It would be impossible to write such a book today: We just don’t do that kind of journalism anymore. We can’t. We don’t have the time, we don’t have the budgets. Politicians are a lot more wary of the press. The default setting for too much political writing today is cynicism.

Stephen Reid

Poetry

A Woman of Property by Robyn Schiff

Located in a menacing, gothic landscape, this is a theatrical book of dilapidated houses and overgrown gardens, of passageways and thresholds, edges, prosceniums, unearthings, and root systems. The unstable property lines here rove from heaven to hell, troubling proportion and upsetting propriety in the name of unfathomable propagation. Are all the gates in this book folly? Are the walls too easily scaled to hold anything back or impose self-confinement? What won’t a poem do to get to the other side? ($39, PB)

Shaler’s Fish: Poems by Helen Macdonald

By author of H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald, Shaler’s Fish roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet’s universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her. These are poems that probe and question, within whose nimble ecosystems we are as likely to encounter Schubert as we are ‘a hand of violets’,” Isaac Newton as a ‘winged quail on turf’. ($40, HB) Pearl by Simon Armitage ($32.99, HB) Simon Armitage’s new work is an entrancing allegorical tale of grief and lost love, as the narrator is led on a Dantean journey through sorrow to redemption by his vanished beloved, Pearl. Retaining all the alliterative music of the original, a Medieval English poem thought to be by the same anonymous author responsible for Gawain, Pearl is here brought to vivid and intricate life in care of one of the finest poets writing today.

Map by Wislawa Szymborska ($31, PB) One of Europe’s greatest recent poets is also its wisest, wittiest, and most accessible. Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humour.

Her elegant, precise poems pose questions we never thought to ask. Map is the first English publication of Szymborska’s work since the acclaimed Here, and it offers her devoted readers a welcome return to her ‘ironic elegance’. Of the approximately two hundred and fifty poems included here, nearly 40 are newly translated; 13 represent the entirety of the poet’s last Polish collection, Enough, never before published in English.

So Much Synth by Brenda Shaughnessy

So Much Synth is a brave and ferocious collection composed of equal parts femininity, pain, pleasure, and synthesizer.

While Shaughnessy tenderly winces at her youthful excesses, we humbly catch glimpses of our own. Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy. Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of three books of poetry, including “Human Dark with Sugar,” winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. ($40, HB)

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Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957–1973 (ed) Clinton Heylin, PB

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What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Cat (ed) Steven D. Hales, PB

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The Adventurous Decade : Comic Strips in the Thirties Ron Goulart, PB

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How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World Steven Johnson, HB

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Album of the Damned: Snapshots from the Third Reich Paul Garson, HB

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A Child’s Introduction to Greek Mythology, HB

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The Beatles and Philosophy (ed) Michael Baur, PB

Amen to That!: The Amazing Way the Bible Influences Our Everyday Language Ferdie Addis, PB

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The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe, 1940–1945 Richard J. Overy HB

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Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire Calder Walton, HB

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Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, HB

The Fugitive Philosopher Timothy Leary, PB

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Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place Annie Proulx, PB

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The Busiest Man in England: The Life of Joseph Paxton, Gardener, Architect, and Victorian Visionary Kate Colquhoun, HB

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Bark: Stories Lorrie Moore, HB

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The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology Thich Nhat Hanh, PB

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Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection & the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965 Michael Burleigh, HB

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Bob Dylan and Philosophy (ed) Cathy Porter, PB

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Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer Alexander Maitland, HB

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Rufus Butler Seder, HB

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The Arts

The Visitors’ Book: In Francis Bacon’s Shadow: The Lives of Richard Chopping and Denis WirthMiller by Jon Lys-Turner ($50, HB)

Denis Wirth-Miller & Dicky Chopping were a couple at the heart of the mid-20th century art world—the visitors’ book of the Essex townhouse they shared from 1945 until 2008 paints them as Zeligs of British society. The names recorded inside are a stellar supporting cast—from Francis Bacon to Lucian Freud to Randolph Churchill to John Minton. After Denis’s death in 2010, Jon Lys-Turner came into possession of an extraordinary archive of letters, works of art & symbolically loaded ephemera the two had collected since they met in the 1930s. This archive represents a missing link in British art history—the wealth of new biographical information disclosed about Francis Bacon is truly staggering. The Visitors’ Book is both an extraordinary insight into the minutiae of Dicky & Denis’ life together and what it meant to be gay in pre-Wolfenden Britain, as well as a pocket social history of the era & a unique perspective into mid-20th century art.

Playing To The Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art In Its Struggle To Be Understood by Perry Grayson

Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, and he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he’s called this book Playing to the Gallery & not ‘Sucking up to an Academic Elite’). Based on his hugely popular Reith Lectures and full of pictures, this funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask. ($22.99, PB)

This is a Portrait If I Say So: Identity in American Art, 1912 to Today by A. C. Goodyear et al This book traces the history of portraiture as a site of radical artistic experimentation, as it shifted from a genre based on mimesis to one stressing instead conceptual and symbolic associations between artist and subject. Featuring over 100 colour illustrations of works by artists from Charles Demuth, Marcel Duchamp, Marsden Hartley & Georgia O’Keeffe to Janine Antoni, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Jasper Johns, and Glenn Ligon, this book probes the ways we think about and picture the self and others. ($89, HB)

Ed Ruscha and the Great American West

by Karin Breuer ($93, HB)

Ed Ruscha was born in Nebraska, grew up in Oklahoma, & has lived & worked in Southern California since the late 1950s. The everyday landscapes of the West, especially as experienced from the automobile—gas stations, billboards, building facades, parking lots & long stretches of roadway—are the primary motifs of his often deadpan paintings & works on paper, as well as his influential artist books such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations and All the Buildings on the Sunset Strip. Featuring essays by Karin Breuer and D. J. Waldie plus a fascinating interview with the artist conducted by Kerry Brougher, this book offers the first full exploration of the painter’s lifelong fascination with the romantic concept & modern reality of the evolving American West.

Codices Illustres. The World’s Most Beautiful Manuscripts ($65, HB)

This is the lush, fascinating world of medieval miniature painting and illumination. From The Book of Kells to Boccaccio’s Decameron and from the Vienna Genesis to Dante’s Divine Comedy (plus examples to illustrate the refinement and intricacy of manuscript illumination from non-European cultures—Mexican, Persian, Indian, Ottoman)—this lavishly illustrated book presents 167 of the most beautiful and important medieval scripts from the 4th century to 1600 in chronological order and described in full. Each sample of script is headed by highly informative synopses which serves to orient the reader at a glance. A 36-page appendix contains biographies of the artists as well as an extensive bibliography, an index and, most importantly, a glossary in which the technical terms

DVDs With Scott Donovan Trapped: Season 1 $69.95 Region 2

As a deadly storm approaches the coast of Iceland a headless torso is hauled aboard a small fishing boat. Local police suspect it has been dumped from a ferry just arrived from Denmark and keep the passengers and crew on board for questioning. Below, on the car deck, a ruthless sex-trafficker is holding two African girls captive, while on land corrupt local officials plot to sell off their town to a shadowy Chinese consortium. Are these events related and will the killer strike again in the town now cut off by the storm from the outside world? This 10 part television series is Nordic Noir at its nail-biting best!

Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict $32.95

A colourful character who was not only ahead of her time but helped to define it, Peggy Guggenheim was an American heiress who became a central figure in the modern art movement. As she moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th Century, she collected not only art, but artists. Her personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Alexander Calder and Marcel Duchamp, and was instrumental in advancing the careers of several modern artists including Jackson Pollock and Max Ernst. While fighting personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo.

Mavis! $26.95

This is the first documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, Mavis! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey.

At 75, she’s making the most vital music of her career, winning Grammy awards, and reaching a new generation of fans. Her message of love and equality is needed now 22 more than ever.

Painting Norway: Nikolai Astrup 1880-1928

Paper Crafts

A pioneering painter & printmaker, Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928) spent his life capturing the landscapes of his home in Western Norway, imbuing his work with mysticism & an enigmatic symbolic content. The first UK exhibition of his work will run at the Dulwich Picture Gallery from Feb to May 2016. Over 90 oil paintings & prints explore the breadth & depth of Astrup’s unique artistic practice, shining a spotlight on of one of Norway’s most renowned artists of the 20th century. ($63, PB)

Gift Shop

Fold ants, dragonflies, tarantulas or cranes, swans and macaws—designed by origami artist Michael G. LaFosse. For $16.99 you get 2 fullcolour 32-page booklets, Clear stepby-step instructions, Easy-to-follow diagrams, 20 simple origami bird or bug projects, 98 sheets of durable origami folding paper.

Stock up on origami paper for when you don’t get it right the first time—$9 for 96 sheets

If following those supposedly easy origami folds sends you spare, try these pre-cut, scored & perforated Paper Cats—punch out & fold with easy-to-follow instructions, no glue, tape or tools needed.

And they come with punch & fold cat habitats.

Perfect for the cat fancier with allergy issues. $24.99

99 Homes: Dir. Ramin Bahrani $32.95

Hard-working single father Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) and his mother (Laura Dern) are cruelly evicted from their home. Desperate to get his house back, Nash goes to work for the wealthy and ruthless businessman Rick Carver (Michael Shannon)—the very man who repossessed Nash’s home. It is a deal-with-the-devil that comes with an increasingly high cost—on Carver’s orders, Nash must evict families from their homes; in return, Nash is promised a lifestyle of wealth and glamour. As Nash falls deeper into Carver’s web, he finds his situation grows more brutal and dangerous than he ever imagined.

Shetland: Complete Series 1–3 $69.95 Region 2

Created from one of Janice (Wilder Aisles) favourite crime series written by Ann Cleeves—Shetland follows Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall) and his team as they investigate crime within an isolated close knit island community. Set against a hauntingly beautiful landscape, Shetland series 1 and 2 the books Red Bones, Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightning. In the third series of Shetland, in a single original story, Perez tackles a case that extends from the beautiful Shetland Islands back to the Scottish mainland; one that will exact a terrible personal toll on both him, and his team.

Fargo: Year 2 $49.95

Fargo returns for a critically acclaimed second season. Set in 1979, this all-new ‘true crime’ saga kicks off with violent foul play at a South Dakota Waffle Hut. In a flash, the case ensnares a smalltown beautician (Kirsten Dunst), a Minnesota state trooper (Patrick Wilson) and a local sheriff (Ted Danson)—all set against the backdrop of an explosive Midwestern mob war. Is Fargo Year Two chock full of riveting suspense, brilliant performances and darkly hilarious humour? You betcha.

Winton's Paw Prints

I file half-way through my book of the month. Pulitzer Prize-winner, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s, new book, The Gene is not a book to be rushed. He is a pleasure to read, but while the story of the quest ‘to decipher the mastercode that makes and defines humans’ is a compelling narrative that races along at times like a page-turning crime novel, the actual science takes a bit of sitting with. It’s not Mukherjee’s fault—his explanations are extremely accessible—but I don’t think it’s likely I’m going to be able to hold forth on the adenine thymine and guanine cytosine structure of DNA any time soon.

The book begins with Mukherjee visiting his cousin Moni who has been confined to an institution for the mentally ill in Calcutta, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mental illness runs through the family—two of his father’s brothers (but not Moni’s father) ‘suffered from various unravellings of the mind’. One, Rajesh, died at 22 in the throes of an acute manic phase of bipolar disease. The other, Jagu, although diagnosed with schizophrenia, lived at home hidden away in Mukherjee’s grandmother’s room. Both Mukherjee’s father and grandmother believed that these illnesses had been precipitated, even caused, by the ‘apocalypse of Partition—Partition splitting apart not just nations, but also minds’. In the ‘nature’ vs ‘nurture’ argument, this ‘nurture’ explanation stood until non-Partition child, Moni, started to exhibit Jagu’s trajectory of visions and voices in his adolescence. When Mukherjee ‘flirted’ with teenage angst involving the usual bad behaviour, his father took him to the doctor who had diagnosed Jagu—‘It was hard not to imagine that a hereditary component lurked behind this family history. Had Moni inherited a gene, or a set of genes, that had made him susceptible—the same genes that had affected our uncles? My father had had at least two psychotic fugues in his life—both precipitated by the consumption of bhang. Were these related to the same taint of history? ... My attempt to answer these questions launched this book. What is the nature of heredity? How did we imagine heredity in the past, and what do we know about it today?

Can we alter heredity? If such technologies were available, who would control them, and who would ensure their safety? Who would be the masters, and who the victims of this technology? How would the acquisition and control of this knowledge—and its inevitable invasion of our private and public lives—alter the way we imagine our societies, our children, and ourselves?’

Mukherjee then enters Gregor Mendel’s pea-flower garden where through his meticulous breeding of peas he discovered (although didn’t name it) a unit of heredity that finished off theories of heredity that harked back to Pythagoras and Aristotle. Mendel, unacknowledged in his lifetime—his discoveries largely ignored, is the first of the many fascinating portraits of scientists alone in their laboratories ‘producing that single illuminating experiment after one thousand non-illuminating experiments have to be sent into the trash’—I have a list a mile long of biographies I want to seek out.

The dark side of genetics, charlatan science in the form of eugenics—forced sterilisation, Nazi experimentation and genocide for racial purity—have, of course, been in lockstep with advancements in the understanding of heredity to catastrophic effect, and Mukherjee weaves this through his history—I look forward to his thoughts on our brave new genome world. Winton

Porcelain by Moby ($29.99, PB)

There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the NY club scene of the late 1980s. This was the NY of Palladium, of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo, an era when dance music was still a largely underground phenomenon, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans & Latinos. And then there was Moby-not just a poor, skinny white kid from deepest Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler, in a scene that was known for its unchecked drug-fueled hedonism.

This is Moby’s tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty& alienation to a life of beauty, squalor & unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late 1980s & 90s.

Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by Anna Beer ($33, PB)

This book reveals the hidden stories of 8 remarkable composers— Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Marianna Martines, Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn), Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger—Elizabeth Maconchy—taking the reader on a journey from 17th-century Medici Florence to London in the Blitz. Revealing not just the lives & works of these 8 exceptional artists, historian Anna Beer also asks tough questions about the silencing of their legacy, which continues to this day. Why do we still not hear masterpieces such as Hensel’s piano work The Year, Caccini’s arias & Boulanger’s setting of Psalm 130?

Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams & Drugs with the Grateful Dead by Bill Kreutzmann

The Grateful Dead are perhaps the most legendary American rock band of all time. For thirty years, beginning in the hippie scene of San Francisco in 1965, they were a musical institution, the original jam band that broke new ground in so many ways. Bill Kreutzmann, one of their founding members and drummer for every one of their over 2,300 concerts, has written an unflinching and wild account of playing in the greatest improvisational band of all time.

Everything a rock music fan would expect is here, but what sets this apart is Bill’s incredible life of adventure that was at the heart of the Grateful Dead experience. ($28, PB)

what we're reading

Jack: The Violet Hour by Katie Roiphe Death is enjoying a resurgence. The Violet Hour traces the lives of five writers who became immortal—then died: ‘I wouldn’t want that moment to pass unnoticed’, observes one immortal. This book is a fine tribute to noticing, and highly recommended for mortals. I also recommend The Unspeakable and Other Subjects of Discussion—Meghan Daum’s latest collection of personal essays. Go straight to page 149 and encounter ‘The Joni Mitchell Problem’.

Think about it. And wonder why you haven’t before.

Scott V: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss—Not many people know about Thomas Alexandre Dumas, father of the author Alexandre Dumas. After reading Tom Reiss’ account of his extraordinary life, I was astounded at the oversight.

Thomas was born into slavery in the French Caribbean and rose to become a General in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies. It was all made possible by revolutionary ideas of equality (male), which were briefly in fashion.

Thomas’ swashbuckling exploits would become an inspiration for The Count of Monte Christo and The Three Musketeers. A wonderful, adventurous read about an extraordinary human being.

Jonathon: Florence Gordon by Brian Morton. ‘Meet Florence Gordon, a blunt, brilliant feminist. At seventy-five, Florence wants to be left alone to write her memoir and shape her legacy. But when her son and his family come to visit, they embroil Florence in their dramas, threatening her coveted solitude’. This is a non-standard family drama. Themes around feminism and the new left are threaded through, with cameos from real-life activists. The crisp, economic writing drew me in.

Viki: I’ve just finished a new ‘scandi noir’ I’m Travelling Alone—a Norwegian outing by Samuel Björk—the pen name of novelist, playwright and singer/songwriter Frode Sander Iien. The body of a young girl is found hanging from a tree with an airline tag around her neck which reads ‘I’m travelling alone’. There’s a number 1 carved on her fingernail, implying there are more dead girls to come. In steps on the spectrum policeman Holger Munch and his hastily reassembled special homicide unit—including savant and suicidal investigator Mia Krüger. The race to stop the killer unearths the paedophile leader of an evangelist church who is fleecing old people of their money along the way. One can’t help wondering about the proliferation of extremely well-funded genius psychopaths in Scandinavian fiction—but as always, once started, impossible to put down until the last page is turned.

The Preforming Arts

Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power by Neal Gabler ($43.95, HB)

Barbra Streisand scaled the heights of entertainment—from a popular vocalist to a first-rank Broadway star in Funny Girl to an Oscar-winning actress to a producer and director. But she has also become a cultural icon who has transcended show business. To achieve her success, Brooklyn-born Streisand had to overcome tremendous odds, not the least of which was her Jewishness. Dismissed, insulted, even reviled when she embarked on a show business career for acting too Jewish and looking too Jewish, she brilliantly converted her Jewishness into a metaphor for outsiderness that would eventually make her the avenger for anyone who felt marginalised & powerless.

Bowie by Steve Schapiro ($65, HB)

At the very apex of David Bowie’s spectacular rise to rock n’ roll fame and glory, photographer Steve Schapiro seized a rare invitation from Bowie’s manager for a private photo session with the pop star in Los Angeles in 1974. The first photo session started at four in the afternoon and went through the night till dawn. Bowie went through countless costume changes, each more incredible than the last and each seemed to turn him into a totally different person. These mostly never-before-published images in Schapiro’s rare collection represent Bowie at his most creative and inspired self.

1971: Never a Dull Moment

by David Hepworth ($39.99, PB)

The 60s ended a year late on New Year’s Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to wind up The Beatles. 1971 saw the release of more monumental albums than any year before or since—Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, the solo Beatles and more. By December rock had exploded into the mainstream. How did it happen? This is the story of 1971, rock’s golden year.

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and another thing.....

And why shouldn’t it be ‘riters’? Google ‘lucille ball ough words’ for an hilarious lampooning of English spelling ‘rules’ when poor Ricky Ricardo reads a children’s book riddled with ‘through’, ‘though’, ‘cough’ and ‘bough’ aloud.

This month, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve had to squeeze my reading in between episodes of Master Chef, and My Kitchen Rules—I have become a victim of the new ‘foodie’ culture (although I vow I will never ‘sous vide’). Reality TV really leaves me cold—what on earth is a ‘factual programme’—but I do like eating, and as a TV addict, it’s impossible not to accidentally channel surf into a reality food show, stay long enough to get hooked by a cougar/cub cooking catastrophe or a blast chiller drama—and before you know it you’re watching MC or MKR every night. Which brings me to a couple of cook books I’ve been trialling, and would like to recommend. Co-presenter of MKR and Ken Doll impersonator, Pete Evans’ new book One Pot Favourites is fast becoming my favourite. I do love a one pot cook—chop, stir, simmer, less to wash up. Evans’ book has great pictures, easy to follow recipes, and very few hard to source ingredients (so many cookbooks on the shelves these days do), plus most of the recipes have instructions for slow cookers and pressure cookers. The chicken rogan josh & the creamy cauliflower curry—yum! My 60s four lollies for a cent sweet tooth was immediately drawn to Milkbar Memories by Jane Lawson. Again, easy to follow recipes with entertaining biographical notes and good photos—making honeycomb was like conducting a (delicious) science experiment. However, I’ve been thwarted in my quest for home-made musk sticks, as musk essence seems not to be a supermarket staple. My ‘food dream’—you have to have one on Master Chef—is to make all the sweets, pies, burgers and iced confections in this book and not suffer a myocardial infarction. As a balance to all this sugar, you can’t go past Hetty McKinnon’s book of salads, Community. Viki

For more June new releases go to:

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