Fair Share: Country and City in Australia - Quarterly Essay Issue 42 (Judith Brett)

Fair Share: Country and City in Australia - Quarterly Essay Issue 42

Judith Brett

Blurb: Once the country believed itself to be the true face of Australia: sunburnt men and capable women raising crops and children, enduring isolation and a fickle environment, carrying the nation on their sturdy backs. For almost 200 years after white settlement began, city Australia needed the country: to feed it, to earn its export income, to fill the empty land, to provide it with distinctive images of the nation being built in the great south land. But Australia no longer rides on the sheep's back, and since the 1980s, when 'economic rationalism' became the new creed, the country has felt abandoned, its contribution to the nation dismissed, its historic purpose forgotten. 

In Fair Share, Judith Brett argues that our federation was built on the idea of a big country and a fair share, no matter where one lived. We also looked to the bush for our legends and we still look to it for our food. In late 2010, with the country independents deciding who would form federal government, it seemed that rural and regional Australia's time had come again. But, as Murray-Darling water reforms shows, the politics of dependence are complicated. The question remains: what will be the fate of the country in an era of user-pays, water cutbacks, climate change, droughts and flooding rains? What are the prospects for a new compact between country and city in Australia in the twenty-first century?

ISBN: 9781863955263 (Paperback)

Year: 2011

Publisher: Black Inc.

Pages: 91 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Official site for the issue

2. Buy from Readings

3. Buy from Penguin Books

4. Review of the essay

5. Blog on the essay

Melbourne 2006 - XVIII Commonwealth Games - Pocket Guide (Various)

Melbourne 2006 - XVIII Commonwealth Games - Pocket Guide

Various

Blurb: The must-have guide to the Commonwealth Games.

Packed full of interesting facts and figures, and colour photographs of everyone's favourite athletes and events, this pocket guide includes information on all of the Commonwealth sports, results tables to fill in the 2006 Games winners and keep, fold-outs of Commonwealth Games highlights and much, much more.

This special guidebook has everything you need to know about the Games, just in time for the XVIII Commonwealth Games! 15-26 March.

ISBN: 1741171350 (Hardback)

Year: 2005

Publisher: Explore Australia

Pages: 64 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Page on the 2006 Games

2. Wikipedia page for the Games

3. PDF Government Documents on the games

4. Page on the book

5. Order the book from McLeods Booksellers in NZ

A New Tomorrow - The Silverchair Story (Jeff Apter)

A New Tomorrow - The Silverchair Story

Jeff Apter

Blurb: Andrew Denton: 'I think you're enjoying life now. Would I be right?'

Daniel Johns: 'Yeah, definitely, I love life, it's the best thing in the world.' - Enough Rope, 2004.

It's taken Daniel Johns a long time to be able to make such a simple statement. Having spent more than ten years as the frontman for Silverchair, Australia's biggest rock band of the past decade, he's endured teen stardom, depression, anorexia, crippling reactive arthritis and the slings and arrows of the music industry, only to emerge tattooed and renewed. And now, the Newcastle-born band have just completed their fifth album in the famed Laurel Canyon studios.

A New Tomorrow tells the complete and unexpurgated story of Silverchair. Jeff Apter documents how Johns and his two schoolmates, drummer Ben Gillies and bassman Chris Joannou, graduated from The Loft above the Gillies family's garage to centre stage at Madison Square Garden - all within the time it typically takes most bands to record their first single. When the dust settled and they discovered their debut album, Frogstomp, had sold almost three million copies, Silverchair were faced with an even bigger challenge as they attempted to prove they were much more than 'Nirvana in Pyjamas'.

With the release of their 2002 masterpiece, Diorama, Silverchair firmly established their own musical identity, while Johns has developed into a songwriter with few peers in modern music.

Featuring exclusive interviews with the band and all of those who have worked with Silverchair over their rollercoaster ride of a career, A New Tomorrow covers all of the band members' solo work, the Daniel Johns-Natalie Imbruglia nuptials, the band's 'rebirth' at the WaveAid fundraiser and a sneak preview of their new studio album.

ISBN: 1741664837 (Paperback)

Year: 2006

Publisher: Random House Australia

Pages: 360 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Publisher's page

3. Author's official site

4. Goodreads page

5. Band's official site

Learning from Legends - AFL (Bruce McAvaney)

Learning from Legends - AFL

Interviews by Bruce McAvaney

Blurb: Following the success of Learning from Legends Sport, Business and Australian Cricket, the fourth in the series, Learning from Legends AFL, shifts its leadership focus to the country's biggest professional sport, Australian football, and delivers further insight into the thoughts, experiences and opinions of AFL Legends both past and present. 

Based on extensive interviews conducted by pre-eminent sports commentator Bruce McAvaney, Learning from Legends AFL explores leadership with nearly 50 of the game's greatest ambassadors. The Legends tell McAvaney about their earliest influences, the most inspiring leaders they have played for and with, their key leadership lessons and much more.

The leadership insights presented in Learning from Legends AFL will inspire, motivate and inform all who read it. Although the names are familiar, the insights are unique, and each Legend has contributed in the hope that others may learn from their experiences and triumphs. 

ISBN: 9781921486128 (Hardback)

Year: 2009

Publisher: Fairfax Books

Pages: 255 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from QBD

2. Buy from Angus and Robertson

3. Wikipedia page for the author

4. An interview with the author

5. Learn more about the AFL

Rocket Science - The Biography of Rodney Eade (Kevin Hillier)

Rocket Science - The Biography of Rodney Eade

Kevin Hillier

Blurb: 'He's a lunatic.'

'He's got some stupidity about him.'

'He's a great tactician and strategist.'

'He's a saint.'

'He's very sharp.'

'He grabs his crutch too much.'

Political leader? Stand-up comic? Corporate heavyweight?

None of the above. He is Rodney Eade - AFL player and coach, and a man with a story to tell.

Rodney 'Rocket' Eade is an interesting character. One minute he is on national television screaming irrationally at one of his players, the next he is sitting with supporters before a game calmly having a chat.

He has ridden an incredible football rollercoaster and the ride was not for the faint-hearted. From Premiership success in his first season as a player, to the rumour and innuendo regarding his premature exit from Sydney to a new beginning at the Western Bulldogs. The boy from Glenorchy came to the Hawks in 1976 with littler expectation but has become one of football's most colourful characters. He might have played in the shadows of Dunstall, Dermie and Dipper but he has emerged as a genuine innovator of the game, a deep thinker and a revered figure in football.

Rocket Science uncovers the real Rodney Eade, what his friends and foes say about him, plus his thoughts on the game - past, present and future. The success and failure, the characters, the politics behind the game and the best players he has played with or coached in a career spanning more than three decades.

Football legends Parkin, Kelly, Schwab, Brereton, Jeans, Dunstall, Judge, DiPierdomenico and Johnson - to name a few - talk about the man, the player, and the coach they know as Rocket.

ISBN: 9781405038669 (Paperback)

Year: 2008

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Pages: 184 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Google books page

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Page on the author

4. Buy from QBD Books

5. Interview about the book

Remember June (Damien Leith)

Remember June

Damien Leith

Blurb: Mattie Finch is a kid living with his aunt in Ireland in 1990.

He often talks to his mother, but he hasn't seen his father Dave for six months.

Dave's been trying to face his family, but there are just too many demons. He can't forget how he and his brother Stephen escaped the troubles of Northern Ireland ten years earlier. He is haunted by what happened when they met June and her sister Susan, and the irreversible changes the town of Stonebridge brought to their lives.

A shattering and redemptive story of fathers and sons, and the power of memory.

ISBN: 9780732286828 (Paperback)

Year: 2010

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 304 (Fiction)

Links

1. Publisher's page for the book

2. Author's Wikipedia page

3. Blog on the book

4. Author's official site

5. Author's Myspace