Crossfire (James Moloney)

Crossfire

James Moloney

Blurb: When the Deputy Principal opens Luke Aldridge's school locker, he finds a .22 calibre rifle. Fourteen-year-old Luke is in big trouble at school and at home. When he joins his dad on a forbidden hunting trip he thinks all his dreams have come true, but have they? The guns, the killing, even his father, aren't quite as Luke imagined.

Back home, Luke finds an unexpected understanding with his mother. Then his parents' verbal warfare explodes into confrontation, and a shot is fired...

ISBN: 0702223840 (Paperback)

Year: 1992

Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Pages: 151 (Fiction)

Links

1. Author's Official site

2. Publisher's page

3. Wikipedia page for the author

4. Buy from Amazon

5. Page on the author

An Eye For Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Mark McKenna)

An Eye For Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark

Mark McKenna

Blurb: Manning Clark (1915-1991) was a complex, demanding and brilliant man. Mark McKenna's compelling biography of this giant of Australia's cultural landscape is informed by his reading of Clark's extensive private letters, journals and diaries - many that have never been read before.

An Eye for Eternity paints a sweeping portrait of the man who gave Australians the signature account of their own history. It tells of his friendships with Patrick White and Sidney Nolan. It details an urgent and dynamic marriage, ripped apart at times by Clark's constant need for extramarital love. A son who wrote letters to his dead parents. A historian who played narrative ahead of facts. A doubter who flirted with Catholicism. A controversial public figure who marked slights and criticisms with deeply help grudges.

To understand Clark's life is to understand twentieth century Australia. And it raises fundamental questions about the craft of biography. When are letters too personal, comments too hurtful and insights to private to publish? Clark incessantly documented his life - leaving notes to biographers he knew would pursue his story. He had a deep need to be remembered and this book means he will now be understood in an unforgettable way.

ISBN: 9780522856170 (Hardback)

Year: 2011

Publisher: Melbourne University Press

Pages: 793 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Readings

2. Article on the book

3. Story on the book from ABC

4. Review from The West

5. Another review

Inventing a Nation (Gore Vidal, foreword Bob Carr)

Inventing a Nation

Gore Vidal with a Foreword by Bob Carr

Blurb: Inventing a Nation is Gore Vidal's testament to the America he loves and mourns, to its continued promise and troubled future.

Vidal, a master stylist of American literature and one of the most acute observers of American life and history, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the first three presidents of the United States, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

Vidal's splendid and percipient prose animates key moments of decision in the birth of the American nation, and we come to know these men in new ways - their opinions of each other and the wider world, and their concerns about creating viable democracy. Vidal brings America's founding fathers to life and illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they gave, and the institutions of government they fashioned.

As one of Australia's leading politicians, Bob Carr, writes in the introduction to this special Australian edition: 'In these shining pages Gore Vidal answers a question that puzzled George Washington himself: what has gone wrong with America?'

ISBN: 052285138X (Paperback)

Year: 2003

Publisher: Melbourne University Press

Pages: 198 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Article on the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Author's Wikipedia page

4. Google books page

5. Article on the book