Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture by Bruce Pascoe

$19.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

'Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent ... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.' Jud ges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing -- behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.   Bruce's comments on his book compared to Gammage's: " My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn't contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument." ...Show more

Dark Emu in the Classroom: Teacher Resources for High School Geography by Simone Barlow; Ashlee Horyniak

$20.00 AUD

Category: Australian History

Dark Emu in the Classroom: Teacher Resources for High School Geography is a rich resource for teachers to use in the Geography classroom. Based on the concepts in Bruce Pascoe's highly acclaimed book Dark Emu, this resource presents lesson content for the topics: Biomes and Food Security (Vic Year 9)/Su stainable Biomes (NSW Stage 5) Environmental Change and Management (Vic. Year 10/NSW Stage 5) This innovative resource offers both new and experienced teachers a supportive and fresh approach to teaching geography through its well-organised lesson structure and high-interest, inquiry-based activities for students ...Show more

A Brief History of Fightng Ships by David Davies

$15.00 AUD

Category: General | Series: Brief Histories

This introduction to the years of the Napoleonic wars (1793 to 1815) tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the Ship of the Line - the deadly battleships that played such a vital role in the battles. The author describes the ships' construction and armaments, the daily life of the me n who served and the problems faced by commanders of the time in battles that include the Glorious First of June, the Battle of the Nile and Trafalgar. ...Show more

The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History by Michael Walsh

$15.00 AUD

Category: British History

When Charles I was executed, his son Charles II made it his role to search out retribution, producing the biggest manhunt Britain had ever seen, one that would span Europe and America and would last for thirty years. Men who had once been among the most powerful figures in England ended up on the scaffo ld, on the run, or in fear of the assassin's bullet. History has painted the regicides and their supporters as fanatical Puritans, but among them were remarkable men, including John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh bring these remarkable figures and this astonishing story vividly to life an engrossing, bloody tale of plots, spies, betrayal, fear and ambition. ...Show more

Spinning Tops & Gumdrops: A Portrait of Colonial Childhood by Edwin Barnard

$44.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Spinning Tops & Gumdrops captures a time when `imagination, skill, and daring' was the source of children's play. Quoits and jacks, hide and seek, cricket with a kerosene tin for a wicket, dress ups and charades, can all be seen in these appealing images. Children climb trees, run races, and build r afts to sail on the local waterhole, happily absorbed in the play of their own making. This was also a time when school yard disagreements were sorted out with fists and `the loss of a little claret'. A time when children could view public hangings, and premature death was frequent, especially taking the very young and vulnerable though dysentery, whooping cough, or diphtheria. The word `mollycoddled' has its origins in the mid-nineteenth century, but certainly cannot be applied to the colonial children depicted in Spinning Tops & Gumdrops. Children were often required to work - many at adult jobs - to the neglect of their education, and photographs show children taking part in rural life, tending animals, milking, and harvesting crops. In the cities, too, we see factories using cheap child labour to satisfy the increasing demand for mass produced shoes and clothes, to bake bread, and to process food. Many youngsters found themselves `in service' to the growing middle class. One story is told of an innovative girl who earned pocket money by collecting leeches for the local doctor. There were distinctive gender roles in colonial Australia, and associated dress conventions. As a practical solution to ease toilet training, boys generally wore dresses until five or six years of age, seen in the photographs shown here. Only then they were `breeched' that is, put into breeches. Meanwhile, girls' dresses became longer as they approached womanhood, coinciding with a greater emphasis on modest behaviour and a reshaping of their activity and education to gain home-making skills. The lasting impression left by the contemporary accounts, photographs, etchings, and paintings of colonial children in Spinning Tops & Gumdrops is their possession of qualities of resilience, self-sufficiency, and acceptance of their lot. Perhaps it was through lack of choice, or of knowing no other. Nevertheless, these were qualities that put them in good stead for the challenges many faced in their adulthood. Interestingly, these are qualities on which contemporary society still places a high value, but which today seem a little more elusive. ...Show more

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey

$20.00 AUD

Category: General

"Born at a time when Christianity was dying out and the Ottoman Empire was aggressively expanding, Isabella was inspired in her youth by tales of Joan of Arc, a devout young woman who unified her people and led them to victory against foreign invaders. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twe nty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and Le n. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing Moorish invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus's trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World with the help of Rodrigo Borgia, the infamous Pope Alexander VI. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain's reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world, where millions of people in two hemispheres speak Spanish and practice Catholicism. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella's influence, due to hundreds of years of ...Show more

The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler

$34.99 AUD

Category: General

From the acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones, an intimate excavation of life in one of the world's oldest civilizations at a time of convulsive change Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wante d to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter's translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt's homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West's conventional wisdom. Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity--the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time. ...Show more

Kings & Queens of England: From the Saxon Kings by Cawthorne, Nigel

$15.00 AUD

Category: British History

Civil Wars: A History in Ideas by David Armitage

$27.99 AUD

Category: General

A highly original history of the least understood and most intractable form of organised human aggression, from ancient Rome to our present conflict-ridden world We think we know civil war when we see it. Yet ideas of what it is, and isn't, have a long and contested history. Defining the term is acutely political, for ideas about what makes a war "civil" often depend on whether one is ruler or rebel, victor or vanquished, sufferer or outsider; it can also shape a conflict's outcome, determining whether external powers are involved or stand aside. From the American Revolution to the Iraq war, pivotal decisions have hung on such shifts of perspective. The West's age of civil war may be over, but elsewhere it has exploded - from the Balkans to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sri Lanka and, most recently, Syria. And the language of civil war has burgeoned as democratic politics has become more violently fought. This book's unique perspective on the roots, dynamics and shaping force of civil war will be essential to our ongoing struggles with this seemingly interminable problem. ...Show more

A Brief History of Angels and Demons by Sarah Bartlett

$15.00 AUD

Category: General

Throughout history, the human quest for knowledge of the divine has ruffled feathers. This book not only traces the history of angels and demons from their earliest roots to their modern day renaissance, but also reveals their most intimate secrets. Whether through personal stories, literature, myth, re ligion, or art, this book is the story of how belief in angels and demons has cast a powerful spell over the popular imagination. ...Show more

The Lost Tudor Princess: The Life of Lady Margaret Douglas by Alison Weir

$25.00 AUD

Category: British History

'Alison Weir's sound scholarship and storyteller's gift for rich, telling detail constantly engages and enthrals the reader? The TimesThe captivating life of Margaret Douglas - a life of scandal, political intrigue and royal romance that spanned five Tudor reigns.Royal Tudor blood ran in her veins. Some thought Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, should be queen of England. She ranked high at the court of her uncle, Henry VIII, and was lady of honour to five of his wives. Beautiful and tempestuous, she created scandal - twice - by falling in love with unsuitable men. Throughout her life her dynastic ties to two crowns proved hazardous. A born political intriguer, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London three times, once under sentence of death. Her husband and son were brutally murdered, she warred with two queens, and proved instrumental in securing the Stuart succession to the throne of England for her grandson.Alison Weir brings Margaret Douglas's captivating character out of the shadows for the first time. ...Show more

Our Stories History Pack

$20.00 AUD

Category: Australian History

Our Stories: Australian History