History > Political

In this gorgeously illustrated book, join Betty Churcher on a personal tour of her most beloved works, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Velazquez, Courbet, Vermeer and Cezanne. A trained artist, Betty's sketches reveal the secrets within the artworks and the processes of their creation. With the gift for making art accessible that characterised her popular television series, she gently leads your eye to these paintings' intimate details, describing their kinship with other masterpieces and their place in the histor... read more

Looks at the values and instincts that drive the Liberal Party and proposes policy that the party should adopt. Abbott draws lessons from the daying days of the Howard Government and gives his views on his contemporaries, including Rudd, Costello, Gillard and Turnbull.

In recent years, the Australian media have come under fire for their reporting of politics and election campaigns. Political reporting is said to be too influenced by commercial concerns, too obsessed with gossip and scandal, and too focused on trivia and 'sound bites' at the expense of serious issues. There are accusations of bias, sensationalism, 'lazy' journalism and 'horse-race' reporting that is obsessed with opinion polls. How Australia Decides is the first book to put these allegations to the test. Based on a four-year empir... read more

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing - and recovering - their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different" - claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, "This Tim... read more

It's not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation. The evidence is all around us: Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow's... read more

The keenly anticipated follow-up to Interventions, by one of the world’s most vital and respected political commentators. In Making the Future, Noam Chomsky takes on a wide range of hot-button issues including the ongoing financial crisis, Obama’s presidency, the limits of the two-party system, nuclear Iran, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, corporate power, and the future of American politics. Laced throughout his critiques are expressions of commitment to democracy and the power of popular struggles. ‘Progressive l... read more

The author of "The French", "Happiness" and "A History of French Passions" writes about the history of human feelings, habits, emotions and perceptions across time. From Vikings and Aztecs to contemporary hypochondriacs, from ancient Arab writings to American theories of business management, Zeldin looks at the dilemmas of ordinary life, exploring what makes us most human - the intimate experience of men and women through the ages.

When the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia struck an uncharted reef off the new continent of Australia on her maiden voyage in 1629, 332 men, women and children were on board. While some headed off in a lifeboat to seek help, 250 of the survivors ended up on a tiny coral island less than half a mile long. A band of mutineers, whose motives were almost beyond comprehension, then started on a cold-blooded killing spree, leaving fewer than 80 people alive when the rescue boat arrived three months later. BATAVIA'S GRAVEYARD tells this strang... read more

Human rights is a concept that only came to the forefront during the eighteenth century. When the American Declaration of Independence declared "all men are created equal" and the French proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they were bringing a new guarantee into the world. Professor Lynn Hunt questions why it happened then and how such a revelation came to pass. In this extraordinary work of cultural and intellectual history, she grounds the creation of human rights in the changes that authors brought to literature, th... read more

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On 2 August 1944, Winston Churchill mocked Adolf Hitler in the House of Commons by the rank he had reached in the First World War. 'Russian success has been somewhat aided by the strategy of Herr Hitler, of Corporal Hitler', Churchill jibed. 'Even military idiots find it difficult not to see some faults in his actions'. Andrew Roberts' previous book "Masters and Commanders" studied the creation of Allied grand strategy; "The Storm of War" now analyzes how Axis strategy evolved. Examining the Second World War on every front, Roberts... read more

Written by former minister and Labor historian Rodney Cavalier, Power Crisis is an explosive account of the self-destruction of the New South Wales Labor government, which has seen a turnover of four premiers in five years, and is heading for rejection and even humiliation by voters at the next state election. While the catalyst was the thwarted attempt to privatise electricity, Cavalier reveals that the real issue is the takeover of Labor by a professional political class without connection to the broader community or the party's ... read more

Australia was stunned to witness Labor suddenly call time on Kevin Rudd's Prime MInistership and replace him with Julia Gillard. Such political turbulence couldn't remain unexamined by a restless observer of our times. The diary of an extraordinary period in Australian political history, combining Ellis's insider understanding with caustic wit.

This book uses previously unexamined archival records and oral histories to show how Lang's government made policy, engaged with the bureaucracy and pushed the conventions of parliamentary democracy to the limit.

The crisis in New South Wales Labor is so deep and has such significant ramifications that we need a massive dose of unadulterated, no-holds-barred honesty. The man who can deliver this honesty is Frank Sartor. An independent outsider who became a Labor minister in 2003, Sartor impressed and irritated insiders and the commentariat in equal measure. As minister for a number of important portfolios in successive Labor Governments Sartor was perfectly positioned to see the way the Labor machine operated - the factionalism, the deals, ... read more

As an EHM in the '60s and '70s, covertly recruited by the US National Security Agency, John Perkins helped further American imperial interests in countries such as Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. He tried to write this book four times but was threatened or bribed each time to halt. The events of 9/11 - a direct result of the activities of EHMs in the 1970s - finally forced him to confront the role he played himself, and to reveal the truth to the rest of the world. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" has become a word... read more

It was a David and Goliath-style battle: Australian investigators up against a global organised crime empire.

In this controversial new book, a prominent Israeli historian at Haifa University revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord during the War of Independence, he offers archival evidence to demonstrate that a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. This book is a passionate plea to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 as the root cause of the ongoing Palestin... read more

Takes us on a road-trip through the strange landscape of the American Right, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, makes sense of a topsy-turvy world and shows how instead of complying with the new speed limit, conservative America has stamped hard on the accelerator.