Biography > Political

With the same directness that defined his career in public service, Rumsfeld's memoir is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also features Rumsfeld's unique and often surprising observations on eight decades of history: his exper... read more

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A memoir by a distinguished Australian former diplomat, with a particular focus on the cars he has loved and driven in Australia and his postings in Asia, the Middle East, North and Central America. This makes for an entertaining look at various cultures (their driving behaviour, traffic conditions and road rules) and his car... read more

Malalai Joya has been described as the bravest woman in the world. As a teenager she worked as a women's rights activist under the Taliban, running underground classes and clinics in her native Afghanistan that would have resulted in her torture and execution if she'd been caught. After the fall of the Taliban, Malalai was el... read more

An in-depth political biography of America's most polarising figure. Based on more than 200 interviews - many of them with Republican colleagues and one-time political allies of Palin's - and more than 40,000 pages of uncovered documents, Dunn chronicles Palin's troubling penchant for duplicity in grim detail, from her dysfun... read more

The life story of Navi Pillay, a trailblazer in Human Rights Law.
Pillay was born in 1941 to an Indian family living in apartheid South Africa. In 1967, she was the first non-white woman in South Africa to set up a law practice which she used to defend many anti-apartheid activists and, in 1973, was able to obtain l... read more

The remarkable untold story of the men and women who sustained Stalin in power in the Soviet Union for nearly 30 yearsThere have been many biographies of Stalin, but the court that surrounded him is untravelled ground. Simon Sebag Montefiore, acclaimed biographer of Catherine the Great's lover, prime minister and general, Pot... read more

In 1999 a young man from suburban Adelaide set out on an overseas trip that would change his life forever. Initially, he was after adventure and the experience of travelling the Silk Road. But events would set him on a different path. He would be deemed a terrorist, one of George W Bush's 'worst of the worst'. He would be inc... read more

The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afg... read more

A fierce critic of Islam and a champion of the West, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born former member of the Dutch parliament and the author of the international bestseller "Infidel", whose courage in the face of Islamist death threats made her an icon for millions of Westerners who believed she was attacked for speaking out on... read more

Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world's longest-serving monarch. This book tells the unexpected story of his life and 60-year rule: how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha; and how a king wid... read more

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James Button spent a year writing speeches for Kevin Rudd. Before that, he reported on politics as a highly regarded journalist for Fairfax. But James also has politics in the blood: his father was the diminutive but larger-than-life Senator John Button, who was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. Growing up, Jam... read more

Punjab, Pakistan, June 2009. The temperature is 45- and Asia has been out picking fruit for several hours. It's exhausting, sweaty work, but Asia and her husband have five children to feed. At midday she goes to the nearest well, picks up a cup and takes a long drink of cool water. She refills the cup, drinks some more and th... read more

You've seen him wearing speedos, kissing babies, driving a mining truck and chatting to his flock. But who is the real Tony Abbott? As the Bible says, by his words you shall know him. He's a concerned parent: 'I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated (against cervical cancer).' A philanthropist: 'We just can't st... read more

Leah Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but, aged seventeen, she moved to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to work as a model. She married and had a son. Then in 1994 she was caught up in the horrific conflict, and escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses. She fled with her son to Uganda, then South Africa wh... read more

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Gough Whitlam, Australia's twenty-first prime minister, swept to power in December 1972, ending twenty-three years of conservative rule. It was an ascendancy bitterly resented by some, never accepted by others, and ended with dismissal by the Governor-General barely three years later an outcome that polarised debate and left ... read more

Shortlisted for the Political Book Awards 2013 Political Book of the Year The first woman President of Ireland, who became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world. Now, for the first time, she reveals what lies behind the vision, strength and determination that has ... read more