NOW IN PAPERBACK. Why is it that Australians are still misled by myths about their convict heritage? Why are so many family historians surprised to find a convict ancestor in their family trees? Why did an entire society collude to cover up its past? Babette Smith traces the stories of hundreds of convicts over the 80 years of convict transportation to Australia. Putting a human face on the convicts' experience, she paints a rich picture of their crimes in Britain and their lives in the colonies. We know about Port Arthur, Norfolk Island, chaingangs and floggings, but this was far from the experience of most. In fact, most convicts became good citizens and the backbone of the new nation. So why did we need to hide them away?

Australians take for granted the presence of their federal government yet it is impossible to overestimate, as this full biography reveals, the role Andrew Fisher played in its development. The book also reveals the skills with which Fisher led the ALP in its early years and his important contributions as wartime Prime Minister and as High Commissioner in London. Andrew Fisher: An Underestimated Man attempts to account for the obscurity of one of Australias greatest reformers.

World-renowned military historian Robin Prior takes us step by step through the campaign that cost the Allies casualties of 390,000, including some 30,000 Australian and New Zealand troops. Evaluating the strategy, the commanders, and the performance of individual soldiers on the ground, Robin Priors conclusions are hard-hitting and painful. The naval campaign was not almost won by the allies, but decisively lost. The land action was not bedevilled by minor misfortunes, but devastated by fatal miscalculation and error. Even if victorious, the campaign would not have shortened the War by a single day; nor was the downfall of Turkey of any relevance to the global objectives of World War One. The Gallipoli campaign was a bad war, misjudged, poorly thought through, and despite their bravery the allied troops died in vain. This devastating critique of the Gallipoli campaign should mark the end of many lingering questions about the event, and shatter the persistent belief in the romance of war.

To newspaper correspondents, he is living in the past; an arrogant toff who needs a drink poured over his head. To some editors, who dont have time for his exploits, he is too opinionated or divisive, while others dont know what to make of it. He is a man of letters, of pedigree, of unimpeachable integrity, of ideas. No issue is beyond his octopus-like intellectual grasp, be it global warming, teenage sex, nut allergies, pole dancing, corporal punishment, the perils of pesto Oscar Brittle is the creation of Glenn Fowler, Christopher Smyth and Gareth Malone. In an eighteen month campaign to wrest control of the debates in the nations newspapers and magazines from the wishy-washies and the weaklings, Oscar Brittle became (arguably) the most significant and powerful contributor to public debate in contemporary Australia. This book is a collection of published letters and their originals, published replies from various correspondents, email exchanges between Oscar and editors, as well as the rejected letters, all interspersed with gorgeous illustrations throughout. This is a book that is not easily forgotten. Once youve read Brittle, you will never read letters pages in the same way again. The authors are still be pinching themselves that the whole ruse came off. It couldnt be funnier.

The Australia Report is part of a set of six country reports that support Why not the best schools? It contains seven case studies of successful schools in Australia and examines the reasons for their success. Through interviews with principals, other school leaders and analysis of school reports, the reports examine how these schools achieved transformation and success by actively developing and building strength in four kinds of capital: intellectual, social, financial and spiritual – and aligning them to their mission through outstanding governance.

In 1859, Queensland formally separated from New South Wales and became an independent colony. Since then, it has grown into a dynamic state with extraordinary, diverse landscapes, a wealth of intellectual and physical resources and a population who are renowned for appreciating their unique lifestyle. Made in Queensland examines the evolution of this great state by considering all aspects of its recent history, from its people and its politics, to its events and its achievements. It charts the social, cultural, political and economic developments that have marked our past and defined our present. From Queensland's early colonial ambitions to the impact in a new century of two World Wars and the arrival of international events such as Expo '88 and the Commonwealth Games to the emergence of a multicultural society and technology-driven economy in the new millennium. Extensively researched and generously illustrated, Made in Queensland captures the defining moments of the state's history and the everyday life of its people.

The early years of Sydney were witnessed by seven expeditions of French exploration between 1788 and 1831. These seven expeditions, with their total of ten ships, spent well over a year in the new town of Sydney meeting most of its leading citizens and visiting its expanding environs. The French explorers, including Freycinet, Lapérouse and Bougainville, were received and entertained by Sydney's dignitaries, including Governors King, Macquarie, Brisbane and Darling and the high-profile Macarthur family. Their revealing accounts presenting intimate details of the everyday lives at all levels of society, from the Governors' parties to 'the sickening spectacle' (as de Bougainville saw it) of convicts on the treadmills in Sydney's penitentiary. The French Explorers and Sydney contains previously unpublished translations of European experiences in the early colonial period. The journals and records of these French explorers and scientists offer surprising cultural insights and an engaging outsiders' perspective on the new colony and its residents.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. 'The most significant colonial history since The Fatal. In re-imagining Australia's past, it invents a new future.' - Richard Flanagan 'The first ecologically based social history of colonial Australia, showing how wallabies led to liberty, and the bush became a true home for desperate men. A brilliant book and a must-read for anyone interested in how land shapes people.'-Tim Flannery. Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen's Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life. In Van Diemen's Land, James Boyce shows how the convicts were changed by the natural world they encountered. Escaping authority, they soon settled away from the towns, dressing in kangaroo-skin and living off the land. Behind the official attempt to create a Little England was another story of adaptation, in which the poor, the exiled and the criminal made a new home in a strange land. This is their story, the story of Van Diemen's Land.

Describes the commercial and political battle between Telstra and everyone else to control Australias broadband infrastructure, a struggle that escalates as the Government prepares to spend $4.7 billion on a new broadband network.

In August 1800, George Bass returned to England after five years in the British colony of New South Wales. Gifted, ambitious and impatient with the limitations of a naval career, he took leave from the navy to purchase a ship of his own and organise a commercial venture to Sydney. He also met Elizabeth Waterhouse, and fell very much in love. They were married on 8 October 1800. On 9 January 1801, George Bass sailed for Australia. For the next two years, and across two oceans, letters were the only link between George and Elizabeth Bass. His were brief, dashed across the page with an impatient hand, embedded with tantalising references to his life at sea or the colony of New South Wales and filled with love for his wife. Hers were many pages of small, neat script with news of her friends and family, her own thoughts and pursuits, and her yearning for a husband who would never return. The separate worlds in which George and Elizabeth lived also come to life in their letters: an England of domestic chatter and streets filled with soldiers awaiting a Napoleonic invasion; the hot humid coastal towns of Brazil, where Bass sought to sell his merchandise and took on board firewood, fresh water and tobacco; Sydney society and the disappointment of the ladies in Elizabeth not having come with her husband to join their small social circle; the exotic and languid Pacific islands where trade was difficult and ship labour hard. Rich in detail and deeply personal, The letters of George and Elizabeth Bass provides a uniquely vivid and intimate portrait of the lives of these two young people and the era in which they lived.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. Probably no person saw more of the Anzacs in battle on Gallipoli than C.E.W. Bean. After sailing with the first convoy, he landed with them on that fateful first morning of 25 April 1915, and remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation, despite being wounded. No other pressman dared to go ashore at the first landings. Even in the fiercest battles, Bean would sit in the frontline trenches taking notes or making sketches. In his dugout at night he would record everything he had seen and done in his diary. Its pages flow with powerful descriptions of battle, touching eulogies to the common soldier, and scathing criticisms of senior officers whose mistakes cost men their lives. Bean's photographs, over 80 of which are reproduced here, flesh out his graphic personal account of Gallipoli.

By analysing original sources and evaluating conceptual frameworks, Nicholas Aroney discusses the idea proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution that Australia is a federal commonwealth. Taking careful account of the influence which the American, Canadian and Swiss Constitutions had upon the framers of the Australian Constitution, the author shows how the framers wrestled with the problem of integrating federal ideas with inherited British traditions and their own experiences of parliamentary government. In so doing, the book explains how the Constitution came into being in the context of the groundswell of federal ideas then sweeping the English-speaking world. In advancing an original argument about the relationship between the formation of the Constitution, the representative institutions, configurations of power and amending formulas contained therein, fresh light is shed on the terms and structure of the Constitution and a range of problems associated with its interpretation and practical operation are addressed.

NOW IN B FORMAT. The Vietnam War was the longest and most divisive war in Australian history. Between 1962 and 1972, 59 000 Australian men and women served there; 520 were killed and over 2 500 wounded. Many of the veterans still bear the scars - physically and mentally - from their time there.This is the story of the Vietnam War - not a chronological military history. It was an asymmetric war and this is an asymmetric story. A patrol on the last day was the same as a patrol on the first day - what hasn t been told so far is what really happened on patrols: how men fought, died and came back damaged in some way.It ranges from a superb and moving account of the Battle of Long Tan to the effect of a war where a man could come off a patrol in the morning -and that evening be back in Australia, discharged from the Army and drunk in the Bourbon and Beefsteak. We hear these men speak and tell of what it was really like.And it tells the story of those who stayed at home - the Army wives who had to cope then and now, veterans scarred emotionally and physically and the wave of political protest at home that was such a part of this turbulent era.

The Best Australian Political Writing 2009 brings together the most incisive and entertaining analysis of the past year in politics. Edited by Crikey Publisher Eric Beecher, this collection includes razor-sharp commentary on Labor's first year in power; the rise and rise of Malcolm Turnbull, the Apology, the controversy over the Henson case, climate change and the economic crisis, among others. Here, some of our leading commentators dissect the names, the events and the ideas that shaped an historic year.

In Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War, Garth Pratten explores, for the first time, the background, role and conduct of the commanding officers of Australian infantry battalions in World War II. Despite their vital role as the lynchpins of the battlefield, uniting the senior officers with the soldiers who fought, the battalion commanders have previously received scant attention in contemporary military history. This book redresses the balance, providing a gripping, meticulously researched and insightful account that charts the development of Australia's infantry commanding officers from part-time, ill-prepared, amateurs to seasoned veterans who, although still not professional soldiers, deserved the title of professional men of war. Drawing on extensive and original archival material, Pratten recreates battle scenes and brings to light many diverse personalities. It is a story of men confronting the timeless challenges of military leadership - mastering their own fear and discomfort - in order to motivate and inspire their troops to endure the maelstrom of war.