Each speech in this collection has been conceptualised, contextualised and crafted by Paul Keating. The speeches reveal the breadth and depth of the former prime minister’s interests – be they cultural, policy-focused or historical – dealing with subjects as broad as international relations, economic policy and politics. Individual chapters range from a discussion of Jørn Utzon’s design for the Opera House to the history of native title, and the challenge of Asia to the shape of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. For those interested in matters that go to the future of Australia and the world, After Words presents a panoply of issues and opinion.

The head of research at the Australian War Memorial presents a wealth of information as he retraces the WWI battles fought by Australian and New Zealand troops on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. Presented as a travel guide to the Western Front Anzac battlefields, the painstakingly researched text helps visitors to visualise each battlefield, recognise its principal landmarks and try to make sense of the advances and retreats of warfare when in situ. In-depth narratives present each battle in the broader context of the war, while period photographs evoke the horrific conditions the Anzacs faced. The series of walks and drives are illustrated with colour maps, ‘then and now’ photographs of the area, personal accounts and local information on places of interest.

When Great Britain declared war on Germany, Prime Minister Robert Menzies told the Australian people that ‘we are therefore, as a great family of nations, involved in a struggle which we must at all costs win, and which we believe in our hearts we will win’. But behind the scenes, Menzies was still advocating the policy of appeasement that he’d staunchly supported since the rise of Hitler in 1933 – he still wasn’t convinced Hitler wanted to rule the world. In Australia and Appeasement: Imperial Foreign Policy and the Origins of World War II, historian Christopher Waters looks at the six years of appeasement from the perspective of the five leading figures in the Australian governments of the 1930s (Menzies, Joe Lyons, Stanley Bruce, Billy Hughes and Richard Casey), all of whom were intimately involved in the decisions taken by successive governments in London.

The Best Australian Essays 2011 offers up bliss and illumination in equal measure – from the pleasures of the flesh to the events that convulsed the world in a year of change. Paul Kelly meditates on Frank Sinatra, and Robert Manne excavates the past and thoughts of Julian Assange. Inga Clendinnen dreams on cricket memories, and Anna Krien delves into the saga of the St Kilda schoolgirl. There is Peter Robb on Italian food, Anthony Lane on News of the World, Gail Bell on rats and Richard Flanagan on photography. This is a collection with something for everyone that never wavers in its quality.

See what Australia’s wittiest and most perceptive political cartoonists made of 2011 in Scribe’s annual and essential alternative guide to Canberra’s political year. The 9th edition of this bestselling series features the work of Dean Alston, Warren Brown, Matt Davidson, Andrew Dyson, Firstdogonthemoon, Matt Golding, Fiona Katauskas, Mark Knight, Jon Kudelka, Sean Leahy, Bill Leak, Michael Leunig, Alan Moir, Peter Nicholson, Vince O’Farrell, Bruce Petty, David Pope, David Rowe, John Spooner, Ron Tandberg, Andrew Weldon, Cathy Wilcox, Paul Zanetti and many more.

The culmination of a decade of research, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia is a testament to the systematic and scientific fashion in which Aboriginal people managed the land before the arrival of Europeans. Aboriginal Australians had a highly complex system of land management involving the use of fire, the natural flow of water, and an understanding of the native flora and fauna. Gammage argues that when Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend the land in their own way, it became vulnerable to the damaging bushfires we see today. He concludes: ‘If we are to survive, let alone feel at home, we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day we might become Australian.’

Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Australian expat Geraldine Brooks tackles the topic ‘The Idea of Home’ in this year’s Boyer Lectures. Drawing on personal experience, the former foreign correspondent reflects on what it means to be both a global citizen and a novelist at home in an increasingly fractured world. All four lectures – ‘Our Only Home’, ‘A Home on Bland Street’, ‘A Writer at Home’ and ‘At Home in the World’ – are included.

The 1860–61 expedition led by Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills to cross Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north is remembered for the tragedy that befell the expedition. Seven people died, including both Burke and Wills, and only one man, John King, completed the return journey. While the expedition had been instigated in the main as a scientific exploration, the research collected was never published – until now. This book provides a revealing historical account of the expedition and its team of scientists, who were given detailed instructions to carry out geological, meteorological, botanical and zoological studies during their travels. The outcomes of this research are analysed, and the book is illustrated throughout with detailed botanical and zoological paintings, diary entries, drawings and notebooks from the expedition.

Nasar’s dramatic account of the economic geniuses who have shaped the world’s economies begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing about the condition of the poor majority in mid-19th-century London, the richest city in the world. This was a new pursuit. She then goes on to describe the efforts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Alfred Marshall, Beatrice and Sidney Webb and others to put those insights into action – with revolutionary consequences. From the great John Maynard Keynes to Joseph Schumpeter, Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen, she shows how the insights of these activist thinkers have turned back Malthus and led to triumph over mankind’s hitherto age-old destiny of misery and early death.

These buildings aren’t just places to stay – they have stories to tell about Australia. Barry Stone has selected a broad range of hotels from cities, suburbs and rural areas across the nation. Aside from being grand and beautiful old buildings, they all have engrossing histories that reveal vivid details of Australia’s development. Melbourne’s Hotel Windsor began as the Grand Hotel during the 19th century boom; vineyards sprung up around South Australia’s Padthaway Homestead, built in 1847; and the Ashes cricket tradition began on Christmas Eve 1882 in Sunbury’s lavish Rupertswood, an Italianate mansion that is now a magnificent boutique hotel. Stone has written more than just a guide to our best hotels: he’s collected some great yarns along the way.

Eminent historian Henry Reynolds has written extensively about the treatment of Indigenous Australians at the hands of the European settlers. In A History of Tasmania, he returns to his native soil where, as you’d expect, part of the territory covered doesn’t make for pleasant reading. From white settlement to the black war, and the tragic events that led to the extinction of the Indigenous Tasmanians, Reynolds charts the first encounters and subsequent conflicts that took place. He also traces the development of the state’s convict system and its influence on modern-day Tasmania.

Just the Arguments is a greatest hits of 100 of the most important arguments in Western philosophy, shrink-wrapped to fit into a well-crafted and easily accessible reference guide. The editors have divided their topics into six chapters covering the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, and science and language. Each argument is clearly stated, including quotations to clarify, and both premises and conclusions are listed. Whether you're a student of philosophy, or just interested in the big philosophical questions that have occupied the minds of Western philosophers through the ages, you'll find that this book offers plenty of opportunities to exercise the grey matter

It’s impossible to understand the global financial crisis without looking at two of the 20th century’s most influential figures: Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Austrian professor Hayek built his career on the argument that governments should avoid economic intervention and regulation, in direct opposition to Cambridge economist Keynes’s popular theories that sustained the West during the Depression era. Keynes’s camp won the battle, but later it seemed that Hayek and his followers had won the war as governments stripped back their regulatory functions. Then came the GFC, reigniting this intense debate. Nicholas Wapshott’s book is timely, insightful and bold: ‘Who was right, Keynes or Hayek? This book is an attempt to answer the question that has divided economists and politicians for 80 years.’

Philosopher and Open University lecturer Nigel Warburton has penned several very successful introductions to philosophy and also runs a popular course on art and philosophy at the Tate Modern in London. While A Little History of Philosophy is aimed at a younger audience as an easy introduction to Western philosophy, it’s a fun read that should also appeal to anyone interested in dipping a toe into philosophical thought. Based on E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, the 40 entertainingly short chapters trace the history of Western philosophy from Socrates through to Peter Singer, accompanied by lively anecdotes and observations. With his easy to follow and informative style, Warburton brings complicated philosophical theory to a wide audience, making him one of the most read contemporary philosophers writing today.

On a mild night in April 1932, a young couple is attacked by a gun-wielding masked man. By the next morning their battered corpses are lying in shallow graves. Their killer, William Cyril Moxley, will become the first person in eight years to be hanged by the neck until dead in New South Wales. What drove this army deserter and petty crim to commit these brutal murders? Popular crime novelist Peter Corris leaves no stone unturned, examining documents – including crime-scene photos, letters and trial transcripts – and analysing Moxley’s life and psychological state, all while placing the crime in its historical context. Set in the shadow of the Great Depression, this is a gripping and disturbing read.

The author of Anticancer: A New Way of Life (Scribe. PB. $35) writes about coming to terms with the news of his reappearing brain cancer and continuing to live every day fully and with hope.

Nineteen years after his original diagnosis, David Servan-Schreiber submits to an emergency MRI that confirms his greatest fear: his brain cancer has returned. Here, he shares his coming to terms with the news and, with courage and candor, examines his life from the point of view of one who understands that his illness is terminal, yet nevertheless lives every day fully and with hope. As the author of and spokesman for the Anticancer program, which has given hope to millions of readers around the world, Dr Servan-Schreiber frankly acknowledges the ways in which he departed from his own advice. Reaffirming the principles of the program — from nutrition and exercise to rest and meditation — he also weaves in the stories of a number of clinical cases, and offers a rebalanced approach, emphasising certain elements that he himself tended to ignore. The story he tells here raises many of the most complex and personal questions about how we choose to live and how we prepare for death, striking a delicate balance between the limits of medicine and the hope that sustains us as we confront them. It is powerful, honest, and truly inspiring.

Australians see themselves as a relaxed and tolerant bunch. But scratch the surface and you’ll uncover an extraordinary level of panic – about politics, art, sexuality, drugs, boat people, protest, religion and terror. This collection of writings by David Marr, a journalist known for questioning the hubris, ignorance and deception that lie behind the frenzies whipped up by politicians, shock jocks, church leaders and others, cuts through the fear-mongering to show the real, often hidden agendas at work. Marr says about the essays included: ‘Some chart panic on the rise and others pick through the wreckage left behind, but all grew out of my wish to honour the victims of these ugly episodes: the people damaged and a damaged country.’

The fight to save Lake Pedder in Tasmania’s southwest ultimately failed in 1972, when the lake was flooded to create a dam for the Hydro-Electric Commission. However, the struggle brought national and international attention to the environmental campaign taking place in the southwest Tasmanian wilderness. At the forefront of the campaign was photographer Olegas Truchanas, who spent years trying to stop the damming and whose photographs captured the rugged beauty of Tasmania’s wilderness landscape. Pedder Dreaming is a celebration of Truchanas’ life and work, highlighting the influence he was to have on a small group of Tasmanian landscape painters called the Sunday Group. Told through the recollections of those who knew him, the book is lavishly illustrated with evocative and personal photographs, as well as artworks by the Sunday Group.

A staff photographer for The New Yorker and regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Steve Pyke is known for his stunning portraits of prominent authors, artists, actors and intellectuals. Twenty-five years in the making, this long-awaited sequel to Pyke’s original collection, published in 1993, showcases 100 black-and-white portraits of contemporary philosophers, photographed in his distinctive style. The effect of his technique can be startling but always revealing, showing insight into personality while shedding new light on the philosophical temperament. The subjects comprise a who’s who of philosophy, and include Anthony Appiah, David Chalmers, Umberto Eco, Ruth Marcus, Richard Rorty, Roger Scruton and Peter Singer. The facing page of each portrait contains a brief piece written by the subject on the nature of philosophy and their place in it.

From 2007 to 2009, BBC Radio 4 cleverly gave Clive James the opportunity to speak his mind on air. His 10-minute segments were part of an ongoing series called A Point of View, and his wit and wisdom made him one of the broadcaster’s most popular presenters. Here the eminent author’s 60 pieces have been brought together in book form, with postscripts added to the end of each. James deals with the weighty issues of our time – including Chinese (non-)elections, climate change and the torture of terrorists – but he also muses on pop culture, from his J. K. Rowling jealousy to his melancholy thoughts on Amy Winehouse. His words are sometimes dry, sometimes quirky, sometimes controversial – and always insightful and intellectually stimulating.

Award-winning journalist and Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher puts the magnifying glass over the Australian economic model that has helped us successfully navigate a global financial crisis that has brought other countries to their knees. His lively and eminently readable book traces our political and economic development from settlement through to the present day in an attempt to explain just how we have ended up in the enviable position of rating top of the world for living conditions. While astute political and economic policy-making on both sides of the political fence have helped us reach the point we’re at today, it’s the current politics of populism and the lack of leadership from either party that Hartcher fears might see us throw it all away.

In 2002, American investigative journalist Kim Barker was sent to Afghanistan to report for the Chicago Tribune. Aged 30, she had limited experience of travelling and working overseas and this was one of her first international assignments. By 2004 she had become that newspaper’s South Asia Bureau Chief and lived her life between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In The Taliban Shuffle, she details the intrigue and boredom of her life up until 2009. With hindsight and insight she draws the extreme and everyday existence that is the world of a foreign correspondent. Between the issues of translators, fixers, boyfriends and the who/what/where of the bomb attacks driving the news cycle, the book is appalling, revealing, funny and brave.

In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War) sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking and submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites. Joe’s essays soon gained a wide following for his forceful style, his sense of humour and his willingness to discuss the American white underclass – a taboo topic for the mainstream media. Bageant died in March 2011, having published 89 essays online. The 25 essays presented in Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball have been selected by Ken Smith, who managed Joe’s website and disseminated his work to the wider media and to Joe’s dedicated fans and followers.

As a foreign correspondent for the BBC, Nick Bryant has reported from the wilds of Afghanistan, Pakistan, London, Washington and, for the past five years, Australia. Adventures in Correspondentland - his account of these experiences - is part memoir, part travelogue and part polemic. More than anything, however, it is the inside story of the dangers and delights of seeing the world through this unique, sometimes privileged and often strange perspective. How did Bill Clinton react when, in front of a ballroom of over 2000 people, he had to present the award for 'Journalist of the Year' to the reporter who had discovered the existence of Monica Lewinsky's little blue dress? Why did the media report on the night that Princess Diana was killed in a Paris underpass that she was alive when correspondents knew she was dead? How did Bono help save the Northern Ireland peace process? What were international journalists really saying about Prime Minister Rudd?

A wide-ranging, freewheeling collection of short pieces of nonfiction by the popular Tasmanian-based writer.

'And what do you do, Mr Faulkner?' asked Clark Gable after being introduced to William Faulkner at a party. 'I write,' replied Faulkner. 'And what do you do, Mr Gable?' Collected here for the first time are the very best of Richard Flanagan's wide-ranging, free-wheeling writings on everything from directing film and writing novels to a near fatal kayak trip; from baking bread to bushfires to art to war; from Kosovar refugees on the run to Jorge Luis Borges to his celebrated essay on the rape of Tasmania's forests, credited as a key to halting Gunns' two billion dollar pulp mill. Sparkling, moving and always surprising, this is exhilarating reading from one of Australia's best writers.

This volume of essays spans a remarkable four decades of writing. From early articles in the New Statesman where he worked alongside writers such as Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, through to his pieces for Salon, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, these articles display his rare genius, indomitable wit and singular command of language. World figures from Clinton to Mother Teresa, Kissinger to Benazir Bhutto go under his unforgiving microscope. Issues from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan to Iran and literary musings on the leading writers of the last fifty years form the richest tapestry a reader could ask. 'Don't mince words' is the title of one of these pieces. Nor does he, nor has he over the course of a dozen books of which the most recent are the best selling God is not Great and Hitch-22, and hundreds of articles of which the cream of the crop is here.

In this companion volume of Thomas Keneally's widely acclaimed history of the Australian people, the vast range of characters who have formed our national story are brought vividly to life. Immigrants and Aboriginal resistance figures, bushrangers and pastoralists, working men and pioneering women, artists and hard-nosed radicals, politicians and soldiers all populate this richly drawn portrait of a vibrant land on the cusp of nationhood and social maturity.

From the 1860s to the great rifts wrought by World War I, an era commenced in which Australian pursued glimmering visions: of equity in a promised land. It was a time of social experiment and reform, of industrial radicalism and women's rights. We were a society the world had much to learn from, or so we believed. But as much as we espoused we were a special people and celebrated a larrikin anti-authoritarianism, we retained provincial objectives that saw ultimate respect for society's structures. There was no Australian revolution.

With a rich assortment of contradictory, inspiring and surprising characters, Tom Keneally brings to life the people of a young and cocky nation. This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, and whose own humanity permeates every page.

For millennia, people have used the Bible as a touchstone on important social and political questions, and rightly so. But many use the Bible simply as a weapon to wield against opponents in a variety of debates--without knowing what the Bible actually says about the issue in question.

In The Bible Now, two respected biblical scholars, Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky, tell us carefully what the Hebrew Bible says or does not say about a wide range of issues--including homosexuality, abortion, women's status, capital punishment, and the environment. In fascinating passages that shed new light on some of today's most passionate disputes, the authors reveal how the Bible is frequently misunderstood, misquoted, mistranslated, and misused. For instance, those who quote the Bible in condemning homosexuality often cite the story of Sodom, and those who favor homosexuality point to David's lament over the death of Jonathan. But as the authors show, neither passage is clearly about homosexuality, and these texts do not offer solid footing on which to make an argument. Readers learn that female homosexuality is not prohibited--only male homosexuality. And on the subject of abortion, the Bible is practically silent, with one extraordinary exception.

The Bible has inspired people to do great good but has also been used by people to do great harm, so it is vitally important for us to pay attention to it--and to get it right. The Bible Now shows us how we can--and cannot--use this ancient source of wisdom to address our most current and pressing issues.

"In the midst of life we are in death"

The words of the Book of Common Prayer have permeated deep into the English language all over the world. For nearly 500 years, and for countless people, it has provided a background fanfare for a marriage or a funeral march at a burial. Yet this familiarity also hides a violent and controversial history. When it was first produced the Book of Common Prayer provoked riots and rebellion, and it was banned before being translated into a host of global languages and adopted as the basis for worship in the USA and elsewhere to the present day.

This edition presents the work in three different states: the first edition of 1549, which brought the Reformation into people's homes; the Elizabethan prayer book of 1559, familiar to Shakespeare and Milton; and the edition of 1662, which embodies the religious temper of the nation down to modern times. Far from being a book for the religious only, the Book of Common Prayer is one of the seminal texts of human experience and a manual of everyday ritual: a book to live, love, and die to.

"They put the boys into the Anvil mining truck. They came for my dad. I asked them 'where are you taking him?' and they didn't answer." The Australian mining company trucks had come roaring into the African village and disgorged over 100 heavily armed Government soldiers. The rebels, protesting at the way the Australian company was mining the Congolese silver and copper without giving anything back to the local community, had already surrendered. But their looting of food and fuel from the Anvil Mining depot at Kilwa could not go unanswered. The Australians flew in the Government troops, loaded them onto their trucks and then stood back while they rounded up the rebellion's 'sympathisers'. "We started running but the soldiers caught and searched our belongings, they arrested my dad and two other boys," said Albert Kitanika. The soldiers refused to say where they were taking his father. "They took him 50 metres down the road where they shot and stabbed him to death." A United Nations investigation found Mr Kitanika was one of at least 100 people summarily executed in the Government operation in 2004. Afterwards the Australian company issued a press release praising the Government for its rapid response. Asked about its role in transporting the troops, Anvil's chief executive officer Bill Turner said: "So what". Mining is a dirty business. This book reveals that the real dirt lies in the boardrooms of some of Australia's biggest companies.

Fear, faith and hope are just three of the emotions felt by the people of Queensland during the long, wet summer of 2010–2011.

The floods and cyclones of that wet season produced a natural disaster which will continue to influence the lives of people living in this state for years to come. The scale was huge, but out of the wreckage a wonderful story emerged: a story of community spirit and human resilience as friends, neighbours, and total strangers came together to help one another through the worst aspects.

Fear, Faith and Hope tells the story in words and images of the events of that long, wet summer, focussing on the personal anecdotes of those who experienced it. This book is a compilation of what journalists and photographers from The Courier-Mail, and others who witnessed the events unfold, saw and felt. It is a tribute to the people of Queensland and a celebration of their enduring spirit.

Fear, Faith and Hope is attractively designed as a large-format paperback with full-colour photographs throughout to compliment the moving text. Edited by Matthew Condon, editor of Qweekend for The Courier Mail, the royalties from this book will be donated to The Red Cross to help those affected by hardships and disasters across the country.

Fear, Faith and Hope is published by UQP with The Courier-Mail.

Eight years have passed since the publication of Dr Seligman's internationally bestselling Authentic Happiness. As a highly esteemed psychologist, Dr Seligman has been on the cutting edge of psychological research for over two decades, pioneering a science that improves people's lives. And now, with his most life-changing book yet, Flourish, he offers a new theory of individual satisfaction and global purpose. In a fascinating evolution of thought, Flourish, refines what Positive Psychology is all about and offers inspiring stories of Positive Psychology in action- innovative schools that add resilience to their curricula, with a case study of Geelong Grammar in particular: a new theory of success and intelligence; and evidence on how positive physical health can turn medicine on its head. Building on his game-changing work on optimism, motivation, and character, Dr Seligman shows us how to flourish and bring well being into our own lives.

Subtitled ‘The Search for Contentment in the Modern World’, this essay is accompanied by responses from leading commentators including Robert Dessaix and Anne Manne.

In this elegant treatise, David Malouf returns to one of the most fundamental questions and gives it a modern twist: what makes for a happy life? With grace and profundity, Malouf discusses new and old ways to talk about contentment and the self. In considering the happy life – what it is, and what makes it possible – David Malouf returns to the 'highest wisdom' of the classics, looks at how, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's way with words, happiness became a 'right', and examines joy in the flesh as depicted by Rubens and Rembrandt. In a world become ever larger and impersonal, he finds happiness in an unlikely place. The Happy Life is writing to savour and reflect upon by one of Australia's greatest novelists.

On 7 February 2009 Sergeant Roger Wood found himself at the epicentre of the worst bushfire disaster in Australia's history. Black Saturday. Wood, who's a country cop with twenty years experience—and also a raucous, meditating, horse-riding vegan—was the only officer on duty in the small community of Kinglake. As the firestorm approached he was called out to numerous incidents including multi-fatality car accidents. He led a group of fifty people from a store west of Kinglake four kilometres to safety through burning bush. Minutes before it was completely destroyed. Then, as the fire raged around him, he phoned his family ten kilometres away to warn them what was coming. When his wife answered, she screamed that the fire had already hit their property. Then the line went dead. Black Saturday was a many-headed monster in whose wake stories of grief, heroism and desolation erupted all over the state of Victoria. This book is about the monster—and the heroism of those who confronted it.

This is a story about madness. It all starts when journalist Jon Ronson is contacted by a leading neurologist. She and several colleagues have recently received a cryptically puzzling book in the mail, and Jon is challenged to solve the mystery behind it. As he searches for the answer, Jon soon finds himself, unexpectedly, on an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world of madness.

Jon meets a Broadmoor inmate who swears he faked a mental disorder to get a lighter sentence but is now stuck there, with nobody believing he's sane. He meets some of the people who catalogue mental illness, and those who vehemently oppose them. He meets the influential psychologist who developed the industry standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are in fact psychopaths. Jon learns from him how to ferret out these high-flying psychopaths and, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, heads into the corridors of power...

Combining Jon's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges.

In QE44, Andrew Charlton exposes the rift that will shape our future –progress versus planet; rich versus poor. Who, then, will save us? Charlton shows there are two leading candidates: economists and environmentalists. Each says they know what is best for our grandchildren. Yet environmentalists see economists as merchants of greed with a blind faith in markets. And economists see environmentalism as an indulgence for the middle class of richer nations; those who enjoy the lifestyle afforded by economic growth, but take its source for granted. In Australia, this battle has plunged our politics into one of its most tumultuous periods, splitting the business community; driving a wedge between the left and right of the Liberal Party; separating Labor's working-class from its progressive supporters; propelling the rise of the Greens and stirring up their counterweight in rural protest. Across the globe, economists and environmentalists vie over who has the right response to climate change, population or food security issues. In this groundbreaking essay Charlton argues that our descendants will only thank us if we find a way to preserve both the natural world and human progress.

Note: December release.

After spending much of my life dedicated to the serious craft of politics, I have to admit that I am distressed by what it is becoming. Under siege from commercial pressures and technological innovation, the media are retreating into an entertainment frame that has little tolerance for complex social and economic issues. In turn, politicians and parties are adapting their behaviour to suit the new rules of the game — to such an extent that the contest of ideas is being supplanted by the contest for laughs. The two key rules that now govern the practice of Australian politics are: (1) Look like you're doing something; and (2) Don't offend anyone who matters. These imperatives are a direct consequence of the interaction between media coverage and political activity — the aggregated outcome of countless individuals acting rationally in pursuit of their own interests. The sideshow syndrome, the overall result of these actions, is a direct threat to the nation's well-being.

In Too Much Luck, Paul Cleary shows that the resources boom, which seems like a blessing, has the potential to become a curse – unless our governments take urgent action. Today, under-taxed and under-regulated multinational companies make a tidy profit by selling off our non-renewable resources. As the mining boom accelerates, it will drive the dollar sky-high, forcing up the cost of doing business for everybody. Industries such as tourism and education - industries that, unlike mining, involve many jobs - will fade away. But what happens if commodity prices suddenly collapse, as they did with the GFC in 2008; or worse, when the resources run out? Many countries before us have been caught by the resources trap: a heady period of boom and growth, followed by a painful bust. Paul Cleary maps out the pitfalls, considers what has worked overseas, and suggests a better way forward.

Since ancient times, China and India have been separated not only by the towering summits of the Himalayas, but also by a vast expanse of near impenetrable jungle, hostile tribes and remote inland kingdoms, stretching a thousand miles from what is today Calcutta across central Burma to the upper reaches of the Yangtze river. But sometime in the early 21st century, this last great frontier will vanish, the forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies crushed, leaving China and India pressed up against each other as never before. Though virtually unreported in the West, the implications for the world are immense. A basic shift in geography - like the opening of the Suez or Panama canals - may soon create an unprecedented bridge between three billion people of India and the China. Part travelogue, part history, and part investigation of today's fast-moving developments, Where China Meets India is a colourful and compelling exploration of one of the world's least known crossroads, a region that may hold the key to Asia's future.