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Black Inc. January to June 2010
Black Inc. January to June 2010
Black Inc. January to June 2010
Contents
January to June 2010
j a n u a r y
Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell 4
The Breakthrough Company Keith R. McFarland 6
f e b r u a r y
Stripping Bare the Body Mark Danner 8
Mother of Rock Robert Milliken 10
The Great Depression Ahead Harry S. Dent 12
m a r c h
The Next 100 Years George Friedman 14
Quarterly Essay 37 Waleed Aly 16
Trouble Kate Jennings 18
a p r i l
The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast Baba Schwartz 20
Living Memory Andor Schwartz 22
Goodbye to All That? ed. Robert Manne & David McKnight 24
Taller When Prone Les Murray 26
m ay
Eaarth Bill McKibben 28
Secrets of the Grown-Up Brain Barbara Strauch 30
Imperfect Creation Marcelo Gleiser 32
j u n e
Quarterly Essay 38 David Marr 34
The Family Law Benjamin Law 36
God Is Not One Stephen Prothero 38
With Stendhal Simon Leys 40
Contents
Essential Backlist
Growing Up Asian in Australia ed. Alice Pung 44
Unpolished Gem Alice Pung 45
I am Melba Ann Blainey 46
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow A.J. Mackinnon 47
Well May We Say ed. Sally Warhaft 48
Van Diemen’s Land James Boyce 49
Collected Poems Les Murray 50
Selected Poems Les Murray 50
The Biplane Houses Les Murray 51
Freedom on the Fatal Shore John Hirst 52
Sense and Nonsense in Australian History John Hirst 52
The Australians John Hirst 53
Blue Covenant Maude Barlow 54
Female Chauvinist Pigs Ariel Levy 55
Free to a Good Home Catherine Deveny 56
Say When Catherine Deveny 56
It’s Not My Fault They Print Them Catherine Deveny 57
Callgirl Jeanette Angell 58
Candy Girl Diablo Cody 59
Contact details 60
4
Journeys to the Interior
Nicol a s Rothwell
Australia’s centre and north are a world apart from its big coastal cities. Here one finds unique natural wonders, visionary art, original thinkers and, sometimes, distilled despair and death. In Journeys to the Interior, Nicolas Rothwell travels deep into the northern realm, combining the storytelling flair and persistence of a journalist with the imagination of an artist.
Following on from the acclaimed Another Country, this book contains haunting and perceptive portraits of, among others, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Ian Fairweather, Noel Pearson and Galarrwuy Yunupingu. There are explorations of the natural world – of pythons, desert oaks and magpie geese. And there are wonderful introductions to the art and artists that bring the northern landscape to life and transform it, whether through painting, dance or photography.
5January 2010
Nicolas Rothwell is the author of the award-winning books The Red Highway, Wings of the Kite-Hawk, Heaven and Earth and Another Country. After spells reporting the Iraq war, and before that the fall of com-munism, he is currently northern corres-pondent for The Australian newspaper.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-462-4Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $32.00Page Extent: 320ppRelease date: January 2010
“Few writers can capture the inland as lucidly as Rothwell or with his depth of understanding”—The Australian
“Nicolas Rothwell makes us see the world anew”—Pico Iyer
6
The Breakthrough CompanyHow Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers
Keith R. McFarl and
In The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland pinpoints how everyday companies become extraordinary, showing that luck is a negligible factor.
Rather, breakthrough success turns out to be associated with a clearly identifiable set of strategies and skills that anyone in any business can emulate – from small startup to industry paragon.
Encouraged by experts such as business legend Peter Drucker and Good to Great author Jim Collins to identify the drivers that enable a company to push past the entrepreneurial phase, McFarland spent five years building and analysing the world’s largest growthcompany performance database and interviewing more than 1,500 growthcompany executives on four continents.
7
Keith R. McFarland was named asso-ciate dean of a major US business school at the age of twenty-six. He went on to serve as CEO of two top technology firms before establishing McFarland Strategy Partners, where he has advised hundreds of growth companies as well as industry leaders such as Microsoft, Motorola and Morgan Stanley. Currently, McFarland is a columnist for Busi-ness-Week.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-463-1Imprint: SchwartzFormat: PBBook dimensions: 198 x 128mmAus RRP: $24.95Page extent: 288ppRelease date: January 2010
His goal was simple: to identify the secrets of breakthrough. This book is the result. Winnowing a study pool of more than 7,000 companies down to nine that have made the transition to majorplayer status, McFarland highlights realworld tools and mythbusting insights that can be used by anyone wanting his or her business to join this exclusive circle.
January 2010
“The Breakthrough Com-pany is one of the most provocative, inspiring, and instructive business books you’ll ever read”
—Australian Institute of Company Directors
“This book has the makings of a classic”
—Steve Forbes, President & CEO, Editor-in-Chief, Forbes
8
Stripping Bare the BodyPolitics, Violence, War
Mark Danner
Drawing on rich narratives of politics and violence and war from around the world, Stripping Bare the Body is a moral history of American power during the last quartercentury, as told by one of the world’s leading writers.
Stripping Bare the Body shows at close hand how terrorism works and how war looks and smells and feels. As a newly installed Haitian president told Mark Danner in riottorn PortauPrince,
“Violence strips bare a society’s body, the better to place the stethoscope and track the life beneath the skin.” This stark truth came to haunt Danner, especially after the president was overthrown in a bloody coup d’état.
“Stripping Bare the Body is an unmitigated masterpiece of reporting and analysis”
—Dave Eggers
9
Mark Danner has reported and written on foreign affairs, politics and war for twenty-five years. He was for many years a staff writer at the New Yorker and contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His books include The Secret Way to War, Torture and Truth, The Road to Illegitimacy and The Massacre at El Mozote, which was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. Danner’s work has been honoured with a US National Maga-zine Award, three Overseas Press Awards and an Emmy.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-432-7Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $39.95Page extent: 656ppRelease date: February 2010
“No other writer combines brilliant and courageous reporting with brilliant and courageous political and moral thinking as Danner does. He is also, first and last, a breathtakingly good writer.”—Michael Pollan
Stripping Bare the Body moves from mass murder on election day in PortauPrince, to massacre by mortar bomb on the streets of Sarajevo, to suicide bombings in the suburbs of Baghdad, to torture in the secret
“black site” prisons of Thailand and Afghanistan, to political dealmaking, personal rivalries and bureaucratic infighting in Washington and New York and Langley. Here is the vivid, unforgettable history of what Mark Danner calls a “grim age, still infused with the remnant perfume of imperial dreams.”
February 2010
10
Mother of RockThe Lillian Roxon Story
Robert Milliken
From the pubs of the Sydney Push to New York’s legendary nightclubs, Lillian Roxon set the pace for an era that changed the world.
Audacious, independent and fiercely intelligent, by eighteen she was cutting her writing teeth in the colourful world of Sydney tabloid journalism. She moved to New York in 1959, just in time for a cultural revolution that celebrated youth, sexual freedom, women’s liberation – and rock and roll.
Roxon quickly became the centre of a circle that included Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison and David Bowie. Linda Eastman confided in her about her first dates with Paul McCartney. Germaine Greer dedicated The Female Eunuch to her.
“Remarkable”—The Australian
“Brilliantly evocative”
—The Canberra Times
11
“She was the unchallenged queen of the New York rock scene … Dorothy Parker of Max’s Kansas City”—Rolling Stone
Robert Milliken is a journalist and author who has written for newspapers and magazines in Australia, the United States and Britain. He lives in Sydney.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-464-8Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 210 x 135mmAus RRP: $27.95Page extent: 368ppRelease date: February 2010
Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia, published in 1969, was the first book of its kind and established her as a leading chronicler of rock and youth culture. When she died suddenly in 1973, she left behind a collection of work full of the energy, irreverence and idealism of her times.
Drawing on Roxon’s personal papers and extensive interviews with those who knew her, Mother of Rock is a riveting portrait of an Australian trailblazer. It also contains a generous selection of Roxon’s own writing, including extracts from her Rock Encyclo-pedia, which revolutionised the way rock music was perceived.
February 2010
12
The Great Depression AheadHow to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010–2012
Harry S. Dent
Here’s the book that predicted the current economic crisis and explains the best way to survive it – and profit from it. Bestselling author and economic forecaster Harry S. Dent has predicted changes in the world market with uncanny accuracy for over a decade. He foresaw the recession of 1990–1991, the expansion of the mid1990s and the boom of 1998–2000. Now, in The Great Depression Ahead, he explains the forces behind the current economic crisis. He gives stepbystep financial advice for families, individuals, businesses and investors to take today in order to protect themselves from these changing conditions and to benefit from what will be “the greatest fire sale on financial assets since the early 1930s”. With practical applications at all levels, Harry S. Dent’s is a voice that no serious investor can afford to ignore.
An Australian
bestseller by the
author of The Great
Boom Ahead, The
Roaring 2000s, and
The Next Great
Bubble Boom
13
“Nobody called the nineties boom and bubble like Harry Dent”
—David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire
“The world’s leading dem o graphic economist and author”
—The Sunday Telegraph
Harry S. Dent is a Harvard MBA, Fortune 500 consultant, new venture investor and noted speaker. He is the author of The Great Boom Ahead, The Roaring 2000s, and The Next Great Bubble Boom.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-465-5Imprint: SchwartzFormat: PBBook dimensions: 198 x 128mmAus RRP: $24.95Page extent: 288ppRelease date: February 2010
February 2010
14
“Predictions have made George Friedman a hot property these days”
—The Wall Street Journal
“The Next 100 Years can provide history students with valuable debate …help the average reader interpret current affairs
… and provoke lively discussion at dinner parties”
—The Courier Mail
The Next 100 YearsA Forecast for the 21st Century
George Friedm an
In The Next 100 Years, George Friedman offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twentyfirst century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.
Drawing on history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years, Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era – with changes in store, including:
• The US–Jihadist war will conclude – replaced by a second fullblown cold war with Russia.
• China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
15March 2010
• A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.
• Technology will focus on space – both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.
George Friedman is an internationally recognised expert in security and intelli-gence issues. He is founder and chief intel-ligence officer of STRATFOR, which analyses and forecasts trends in world affairs. He is also the author of several books, including The Future of War.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-468-6Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 198 x 128mmAus RRP: $24.95Page extent: 272ppRelease date: March 2010
16
QE37: What’s Right?The Future of Conservatism in Australia
Waleed Aly
What did George W. Bush and John Howard do to conservatism? In their wake, the conservative parties in the US and Australia seem to have lost their way
– they no longer have a vision of the future. Their neoconservative foreign policies and neoliberal economics have been discredited, and they are split on climate change and much else. How did the Right in Australia end up in this place? How might it renew itself?
In this groundbreaking essay, Waleed Aly begins by unravelling the terms Right and Left, arguing that they have become meaningless – they only foster a political conversation that becomes more about
“teams” than ideas. He discusses neoliberal economics and its corrosive effect on the social fabric, and how, in response, Howardstyle conservatism was all too ready to dictate social values, even to the point of prescribing who or what is Australian.
“Our political discourse is drenched in Left and Right because it is so deeply impoverished. These terms are the hallmark of a political conversation that is obsessed with teams and uninterested in ideas.”
—Waleed Aly, What’s Right?
17
Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University. He is a regular commen-tator for the Guardian, the Australian, the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, as well as ABC Melbourne radio and SBS’s Salam Café. His first book was People Like Us: How Arrogance Is Dividing Islam and the West.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-466-2Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 234 x 167mmAus RRP: $19.95Page extent: 132ppRelease date: March 2010
Aly discusses what a better conservatism might look like. He argues that the political issues of the day, such as climate change and the financial crisis, mean a reactionary brand of politics is unlikely to work because public opinion is swiftly leaving it behind. He draws on the work of conservative think ers such as John Gray, Owen Harries and even P.J. O’Rourke to sketch the kind of conservatism that seems scarce in Australia, but which would be a welcome presence.
March 2010
Quarterly Essay presents significant contri bu tions to the general debate. Each issue contains a single essay written at a length of about 25,000 words. It aims to present the widest range of poli tical, intellectual and cultural opinion.
www.quarterlyessay.com
18
TroubleEvolution of a Radical: Selected Writings 1970-2010
K ate Jennings
In 1970 Kate Jennings, twentyone, stunned a Sydney antiwar rally with a pullnopunches speech that put “women’s lib” on the map. Brave, impassioned and searing, the speech set the tone for the idiosyncratic career that was to follow. A few years later, she was on her way to New York, where she would make her name as a writer and enjoy a ringside seat at some of the most confronting events of our time.
Trouble collects Jennings’s best work from the last four decades. With a polemical anger tempered by a keen sense of the absurd and a fiercely independent streak, she writes incisively about politics, morality, finance, feminism and the writing life. She describes America with the keen eye of an outsider and looks back at Australia with an expatriate’s frankness.
“Sharp, piercing, intellectually rigorous and scrupulously honest, noholdsbarred writing has been Kate Jennings’s trademark style”
—Elliot Perlman
“An extraordinary writer” —Shirley Hazzard
19
K ate Jennings is a poet, essayist, short-story writer and novelist. Both her novels, Snake and Moral Hazard, were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has won the ALS Gold Medal, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Adelaide Festival Fiction Prize. Born in rural New South Wales, she has lived in New York since 1979. Her most recent books are Stanley and Sophie and Quarterly Essay 32: American Revolution.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-467-9Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $32.95Page extent: 320ppRelease date: March 2010
Trouble is both an unconventional autobiography and a record of remarkable times. From the protest movements of the 1970s, via Wall Street’s heyday and dramatic collapse, to the historic election of Barack Obama, Jennings captures the shifts – seismic and subtle, personal and political – that brought us to where we are now. After four decades, Kate Jennings’ work is as exhilarating and impossible to categorise – shocking with the shock of recognition – as the day it was written.
March 2010
20
The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast
Baba Schwartz
Baking with yeast is becoming a lost art. Many cooks would love to utilise the incredible properties of yeast, but lack a guide to inform and inspire them. The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast shows how simple baking with yeast can be, and how irresistible the results. The book includes recipes for cakes, slices, pastries, buns … and Baba’s famous golden dumpling cake. Baba Schwartz introduces the principles of yeast baking and gives handy hints for kneading and proving dough to perfection.
These recipes, with their distinctive Hungarian flavour, will delight your family and friends. If you love baking, you will love discovering these recipes, some unique and some classic.
“A delightful book … you can almost smell a warm, yeasty kitchen aroma wafting from the pages”
—The Age
21
Baba Schwartz , a Hungarian-born baker renowned for her superb cakes and pastries, lives in Melbourne. This book is the culmina-tion of a life-time of baking.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-259-0Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 230 x 187mmAus RRP: $29.95Page extent: 112ppRelease date: April 2010
“Lovely … a great book that rises to the occasion for those who already love baking with yeast, and those who would like to learn”
—Australian Gourmet Traveller
April 2010
22
Living Memory
Andor Schwartz
They have no graves, no markers of ever having existed. The millions of people murdered by the Nazis live on only in the memories of the survivors. In his seventyninth year, Andor Schwartz was driven to record the lives of his family and friends who perished.
Writing with the instincts of a born storyteller, Andor takes us back to the world of his childhood in rural Hungary in the years leading up to World War II. His love of nature and country life, his friendships, the harvests, the Jewish festivals, the ageold customs – now lost – are evoked with intense vitality, before dark clouds gathered to obliterate this Arcadian childhood.
“Possessing a memory of extraordinary fidelity and vividness, Andor Schwartz has succeeded, almost miraculously, in bringing back to life the fascinating world of his family and of prewar Orthodox Hungarian Jewry. I could not put it down.”
—Robert Manne
23
Andor Schwartz was born in Hungary in 1924. He survived World War II in Buda-pest – although his whole family was killed
– before marrying Margaret (Baba) Keimovits, one of the few survivors from their area. They fled to Israel when the communists came to power in 1949. After ten years of working the land, they migrated to Melbourne, where he became a dairy farmer and a successful property developer.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-471-6Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $32.95Page extent: 320ppRelease date: April 2010
We live with him through the horrors of the Holocaust, on the run in Budapest, evading death time and time again under the protection of his Malach (angel), whose name had been given to him by his father on their separation.
Andor survived, but his entire family was killed. He takes us to Israel and then to Australia, where he prospered, his children had children, and the cycle of life returned to its natural order.
April 2010
24
Goodbye to All That?On the Failure of Neo-liberalism and the Urgency of Change
Edited by Robert Manne & David McKnight
This is the first substantial book to explore what the global financial crisis means for Australia. It looks past “neoliberalism” and
“economic rationalism” and asks what kind of social democracy we might hope for in the future. Are the heady days of deregulation and privatisation over? If so, where to from here?
Goodbye to All That? explains the central tenets of neoliberalism and discusses their consequences. After the GFC, how might we rethink the challenge of climate change, of care, of quality of life more generally? What is the proper role of the market? What parts of the social fabric need to be mended to create a more sustainable, fairer Australia?
With a contribution from the prime minister, as well as leading writers in the field, this book is essential reading for anyone
“From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next … there is a sense that we are now living through just such a time”
—Kevin Rudd
25
Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University and a regular com-mentator with the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC radio and television. His most recent books include Left, Right, Left: Political Essays 1977–2005, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia (ed.) and W.E.H. Stanner: The Dreaming and Other Essays (ed.)
David McKnight is an associate profes-sor at the University of New South Wales, where his research covers the future of newspapers, climate change and politics. He is the author of Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture War, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets and Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War. He is currently writing a book on News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch.
ISBN: 978-0-9775949-4-8Imprint: Black Inc. AgendaFormat: PBBook dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $32.95Page extent: 272ppRelease date: April 2010
wishing to understand the financial crisis, its social implications and potential outcomes for Australia.
Contributors: Kevin Rudd, Robert Manne, Jean Curthoys, John Quiggin, Michael Pusey, Anne Manne, David McKnight, Ian Lowe, Guy Pearse.
April 2010
26
Taller When Prone
Les Murr ay
Taller When Prone is Les Murray’s first volume of new poems since 2006’s The Biplane Houses. With characteristic grace and dexterity, these poems combine a mastery of form with a matchless ear for the Australian vernacular. Many evoke rural life – its rhythms and rituals, the natural world, the landscape and the people who have shaped it. There are traveller’s tales, elegies, meditative fragments and satirical sketches. Above all there is Murray’s astonishing versatility, on display here at its exhilarating best.
“There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broadleafed in its pleasures and yet so intimate and conversational”
—Derek Walcott
“He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives”
—Joseph Brodsky
27
Les Murr ay has published some thirty books in Australia. His work has been trans-lated into eighteen languages. In 1996 he was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, in 1999 the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry, and in 2009 the Mondello Prize.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-470-9Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook dimensions: 210 x 135mmAus RRP: $24.95Page extent: 96ppRelease date: April 2010
April 2010
Definitions
Effete: a poseof palace cavalry officersin plum Crimean fig,spurs and pointed boots,
not at all the stampof tightbuttoned guardsexecuting armgeometryin the shouting yards,
but sitting his vehiclelistening to tanks change gearsamid oncoming fusiliersone murmurs the style
that has carried his cohortto this day, and now will test them:You have to kill them, Giles,You can’t arrest them.
—Les Murray
28
EaarthMaking a Life on a Tough New Planet
Bill McKibben
Twenty years ago, in The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he argues, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already underway. Our old familiar planet is melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning in ways humans have never seen. We’ve created a new planet, still recognisable but fundamentally different. In Eaarth, McKibben surveys the changes already taking place and considers what they will mean for our future.
“What I have to say about this book is very simple: read it, please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important.”
—Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
29
Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy. He is the founder of the environmental organisations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warm-ing. He is a scholar in residence at Middle-bury College and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-472-3Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: C (234 x 153mm)Aus RRP: $32.95Page Extent: 256ppRelease date: May 2010
“McKibben is the most effective environmental activist of our age. Anyone interested in making a difference to our world can learn from him.”—Tim Flannery
Adapting to our new home won’t be easy. It will be expensive – and the natural resources on which our economy is built have been damaged and degraded. Our survival depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back, concentrating on essentials and creating the kinds of communities that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change – fundamental change – will be our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.
May 2010
30
Secrets of the Grown-Up BrainThe Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind
Barbar a Str auch
A leading science writer examines how the brain reaches its peak in middle age, and how to keep it there.
For many years, scientists thought that the human brain simply decayed over time, leading to memory slips, fuzzy logic, negative thinking and even depression. But new research from neuroscientists and psychologists suggests that, in fact, the brain reorganises itself as we age, allowing us to recognise patterns faster and make better judgments, and even helping us adopt a more optimistic outlook. Scientists call these traits ‘cognitive expertise’, and they reach their highest levels in middle age.
“Neuroscientists – perhaps the most skeptical crowd around – have found that the brain at middle age has its own identity and surprising talents. Experience and expertise has literally changed our brains.”
—Barbara Strauch, Secrets of the GrownUp Brain
31
Barbar a Str auch is the health and med-ical science editor at the New York Times and the author of The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids. She lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two teenage daughters.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-473-0Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: B+ (210 x 135mm) Aus RRP: $27.95NZ RRP: $30Page Extent: 256ppRelease date: May 2010
In her impeccably researched book, Barbara Strauch explores the latest findings that demonstrate, through the use of technology such as brain scans, that the middleaged brain is more flexible and more capable than previously thought. By describing the ways a healthy brain functions over time, Strauch also explains how its optimal processes can be maintained. Part scientific survey, part how to guide, Secrets of the Grown-Up Brain is a fascinating glimpse into the surprisingly talented middleaged mind.
May 2010
32
Imperfect CreationCosmos, Life and Nature’s Hidden Code
Marcelo Gleiser
A groundbreaking work of popular science for readers of Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins.
For millennia, humankind has searched for an intellectual Holy Grail – a unifying theory to explain the origins of the universe and our place in it.
Our greatest minds, from Pythagoras and Aristotle to Galileo, Newton and Einstein, have explained the universe in terms of symmetry, harmony and order. Yet despite their best efforts, a ‘theory of everything’ has remained elusive, and for good reason.
In Imperfect Creation, Marcelo Gleiser argues that there is no grand plan, cosmic blueprint or overarching explanation for our existence. In fact, the latest evidence reveals that not only are there imperfections
“This is a masterful, even thrilling account of how we happen to exist.”
—Robyn Williams, The Science Show, ABC Radio National
“Marcelo Gleiser is our lucid guide to where beauty is to be found in an imperfect, unsymmetrical, accidental universe. In a masterful and brave argument he shows how grand unification, long a dream of science, will never come.”
—Roald Hoffmann, Nobel laureate and author of Oxygen
33May 2010
in the fabric of the universe – they are the driving, creative forces behind its very existence. The universe, it turns out, is not elegant. It is gloriously messy.
In an absorbing narrative, Gleiser takes us to the first moments of creation, where an imbalance produced more matter than antimatter – the birth of the physical universe. He explains the role of imperfection in the formation of galaxies and planets, and the accidents that led to the appearance of life on Earth. And his enquiries go beyond science: if there is no ‘guiding principle’ behind creation, then what is the nature and role of intelligent life?
Imperfect Creation offers a fresh new perspective on life in an evolving cosmos. It will change the way we see ourselves and our place in the universe.
Marcelo Gleiser is a professor of phys-ics, astronomy and natural philosophy at Dartmouth College. His lectures are as popu-lar with literature students as they are with science students. He is the author of The Dancing Universe and The Prophet and the Astronomer.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-474-7Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $32.95Page Extent: 288ppRelease date: May 2010
34
QE38: Kevin Rudd: An Election-Year Profile
David Marr
In the June 2010 Quarterly Essay, Australia’s leading journalist delves deep into the life, character and style of Kevin Rudd.
This irreverent, controversial account is sure to be one of the most talkedabout publications of election year 2010 – a groundbreaking, indepth profile that traces Kevin Rudd’s years in Queensland, in China, in opposition and finally in gov ernment.
Based on extensive research, observation and interviewing, it examines the forces that have made Kevin Rudd and the way he wields his power.
Marr investigates both the fragility of Rudd’s hold on the Labor leadership, and considers what he might do with his pop ularity – if it is to be translated into a legacy of true achievement. Is he playing a long game? What manner of leader is he?
35
David Marr is the multi-award-winning author of Patrick White: A Life and The High Price of Heaven, and co-author with Marian Wilkinson of Dark Victory. In a career span-ning over thirty years, he has written for the Bulletin and the Sydney Morning Herald, been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC-TV’s Media Watch. In 2007 he authored the best-selling Quarterly Essay: His Master’s Voice.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-477-8Imprint: Quarterly EssayFormat: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 167mmAus RRP: $19.95Page Extent: 144 pp (tbc)Release date: June 2010
Praise for David Marr:
“Intelligent, provocative”
—Australian Book Review
“He doesn’t pull punches”
—The Age
June 2010
36
The Family Law
Benjamin L aw
Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a born humorist – and a literary star in the making. Benjamin Law invites readers into the world of his endearing yet sometimes terrifying family. He constructs brilliantly turned essays in the style of David Sedaris, assembling a portrait that is both universal and very particular. Why was most of his extended family deported to Malaysia in the late 1980s? Why can’t his father stop working? What are Benjamin’s chances of finding love? Read one of these stories and you will inevitably want to read more.
“With these dazzling stories, Benjamin Law manages to be scatological, hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Every sentence fizzes like an exploding fireball of energy.”
—Alice Pung
37
Benjamin Law is a Brisbane-based writer and journalist. Since 2005, he has been a senior contributor to frankie magazine. His features, reviews, essays, stories, profiles and interviews have also been published in the Monthly, Qweekend, Sunday Life, the Big Issue, the Courier Mail, Growing Up Asian in Australia (edited by Alice Pung), The Best Australian Essays 2008 (edited by David Marr) and The Best Australian Essays 2009 (edited by Robyn Davidson).
ISBN: 978-1-86395-478-5Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mm Aus RRP: $27.95Page Extent: 288ppRelease date: June 2010
June 2010
A vivid, gorgeously garish, technicolour portrait of family … it’s impossible not to simply let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book’s end – enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.”—Marieke Hardy
38
God Is Not OneThe Rival Religions That Run the World & Why Their Differences Matter
Stephen Prothero
Is religion toxic or tonic? Is it a force for good or for evil? The answer is ‘all of the above’ – which is to say that religion is a force far too powerful to be ignored.
God Is Not One is the essential guide to learning about and understanding religion and its place in our global culture today, written for religious and nonreligious people alike, and for people in between.
Stephen Prothero’s fresh and controversial argument that the great religions present us with different paths up different mountains creates a new context for understanding the world’s religions in the twentyfirst century, and disproves the assumptions most of us make about the way the major religions work.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller, Religious Literacy
39
“Even if religion makes no sense to you, you need to make sense of religion to make sense of the world”
—Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One
Stephen Prothero is chair of the department of religion at Boston University. His books include Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (2003) and the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy (2007). He has appeared on numerous US radio and television shows, including the Daily Show and Oprah, and is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-480-8Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmAus RRP: $34.95Page Extent: 400ppRelease date: June 2010
God Is Not One gives a brilliant chapterbychapter overview and analysis of Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba Religion, Judaism, Daoism and atheism.
This will be an important reference work for years to come.
June 2010
40
With Stendhal
Simon Leys
With Stendhal is a delightful portrait of the nineteenthcentury French novelist Henri Beyle, better known to us as Stendhal.
Two linked texts, introduced, annotated and translated into English for the first time by multiawardwinning author Simon Leys, illuminate the life and mind of the great writer.
The first piece is a set of impressions and memories written by Stendhal’s famous friend Prosper Mérimée. Several vignettes reveal Stendhal’s character – charismatic, engaging, frenetic, hyperromantic – accompanied by amusing anecdotes of him duelling, falling in love, and holding forth in the company of friends.
“Throughout his life, he was entirely ruled by his imagination; he never undertook anything except under the spur of a sudden enthusiasm”
—With Stendhal
41
Simon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at ANU and Chinese studies at the University of Sydney. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humani-ties and a member of the Académie Royale de Littérature Française (Belgium). He is the author of Other People’s Thoughts, The Death of Napoleon and The Wreck of the Bata-via and Prosper.
ISBN: 978-1-86395-479-2Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 186 x 124mm Aus RRP: $24.95 Page Extent: 144ppRelease date: June 2010
The second is by Stendhal himself, a fantasy composed one idle afternoon, near the end of his life and for his own pleasure: a whimsical list of the supernatural powers he wished he possessed.
With Stendhal is a charming, entertaining insight into the character of one of the world’s greatest novelists, written for the enjoyment of all readers.
June 2010
“One of Australia’s most distinguished public intellectuals”
—The Australian
Black Inc. Essential Backlist
44
“Alice Pung is a gem. Her voice is the real thing.”
—Amy Tan
Growing up Asian in Australia
Edited by Alice Pung
AsianAustralians have often been written about by outsiders, as outsiders. In this collection, compiled by awardwinning author Alice Pung, they tell their own stories with verve, courage and a large dose of humour.
They tell tales of leaving home, falling in love, coming out and finding one’s feet. A young Cindy Pan vows to win every single category of Nobel Prize. Tony Ayres blows a kiss to a skinhead and lives to tell the tale. Benjamin Law has a close encounter with some angry Australian fauna, and Kylie Kwong makes a moving pilgrimage to her greatgrandfather’s Chinese village.
Here are wellknown authors and exciting new voices, spanning several generations and drawn from all over Australia. In sharing their stories, they show us what it is really like to grow up Asian, and Australian.
Including: Shaun Tan, Jenny Kee, Annette Shun Wah, Anh Do, Khoa Do, John So, Simone Lazaroo, Christopher Cyrill, Jason YatSen Li, Sunil Badami, Hoa Pham, Quan Yeomans, Caroline Tran, Tom Cho, Vanessa Woods and many more.
ISBN: 9781863951913Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$27.95Extent: 368ppRights held: World
Essential Backlist 45
Unpolished Gem
Alice Pung
This story does not begin on a boat. Nor does it contain any wild swans or falling leaves.
In a wonderland called Footscray, a girl named Alice and her ChineseCambodian family pursue the Australian Dream – Asian style. Armed with an ocker accent, Alice dives headfirst into schooling, romance and the getting of wisdom. Her mother becomes an Aussie battler – an outworker, that is. Her father embraces the miracle of franchising and opens an electricalappliance store. And every day her grandmother blesses Father Government for giving old people money.
Unpolished Gem is a book rich in comedy, a loving and irreverent portrait of a family, its everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs. With it, Australian writing gains an unforgettable new voice.
Alice Pung is a Melbourne writer and law-yer whose work has appeared in the Monthly, Good Weekend, the Australian and Meanjin. Her book Unpolished Gem received the Australian book industry’s Newcomer of the Year award and was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Book sellers’ Choice Awards. Unpolished Gem was also selected for Books Alive 2007 and voted one of Victoria’s top 5 summer reads in the State Library’s Summer Read program in 2007-08. Growing up Asian in Australia was selected for the State Library’s Summer Read program in 2008–09.
www.alicepung.com
ISBN: 9781863951586Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$26.95Extent: 288ppRights held: World ex US, UK
46
I am Melba
Ann Bl aine y
The story of an Australian girl who defied convention and became the most famous singer of her era.
Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell dreamed of fame, but her devout father disapproved. When a chance arose to go to Paris, she trusted in her musical talent and hoped for a lucky break.
Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with European royalty and collaborating with some of the most renowned composers of the age. Audiences swooned over the ‘heavenly pleasures’ of her voice, while the public showed an insatiable appetite for news of her sometimes passionate private life.
Dame Nellie Melba was Australia’s first international superstar. In this important biography, enhanced by new research, Ann Blainey captures the exuberance, controversy and pathos of Melba’s remarkable career.
Ann Blainey has written five biographies. This life of Melba reflects her fascination with singing and opera. I am Melba was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Awards in 2008 and was also selected for the 2008–09 State Library of Victoria’s Summer Read program. Ann Blainey has served on the council of two Australian opera companies and of the Percy Grainger Museum in Melbourne, where she lives.
ISBN: 9781863953672Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$27.95Extent: 400ppRights held: ANZ
“Blainey … writes with clarity and panache. This is an entertaining biography. Everyone should read it and be reminded of what a remarkable singer we once had in our midst.”
—The Sydney Morning Herald
Essential Backlist 47
A.J. Mackinnon was born in Australia in 1963. He spent his childhood between England and Australia, travelling as a small boy with his family on the last P&O liners to sail between the two countries. His inter-ests include painting, philosophy, writing, conjuring and home-made fireworks. He is currently a teacher at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar.
ISBN: 9781863954259Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PB, with B&W illustrationsBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$27.95Extent: 368ppRights held: World ex US, UK, Netherlands
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow
A .J . Mackinnon
Truly hilarious books are rare. Even rarer are those based on real events. Join A.J. Mackinnon, your charming and eccentric guide, on an amazing voyage in a boat called Jack de Crow.
Equipped with his cheerful optimism and a pith helmet, this Australian Odysseus in a dinghy travels from the borders of North Wales to the Black Sea – 4,900 kilometres over salt and fresh water, under sail, at the oars, or at the end of a towrope
– through twelve countries, 282 locks and numerous trials and adventures, including an encounter with Balkan pirates. Along the way he experiences the kindness of strangers, gets very lost, and perfects the art of slow travel.
“… a great travel writer and more importantly a great traveller.”
—The Sydney Morning Herald
“A must read for anyone plan ning to sail backwards through Europe. Epic, exciting and extremely funny.”—Tom Gleisner
48
Well May We Say: The Speeches that Made Australia
Edited by Sally Warhaf t
From Robert Menzies’ famous speech on ‘The Forgotten People’ to Australian Rules football coach John Kennedy’s stirring address to his players on Grand Final Day, Well May We Say shows that the mood, character and history of Australia and its people can be defined by its oratory. It reminds us, too, of the power of a single voice to move and delight, to persuade and inspire.
This definitive collection includes speeches by Paul Keating, Patrick White, Miles Franklin, Ben Chifley, Geoffrey Blainey and many more. Each speech and speechmaker is deftly introduced by editor Sally Warhaft.
“[This book] is at once a history of the struggle of ideas since 1770 and an anthology of power ful feelings, powerfully expressed”
—Justice Michael Kirby
Sally Warhaft has a PhD in anthropol-ogy. She is a former academic at La Trobe University and RMIT, and former editor of the Monthly magazine. She is a regular commentator on ABC radio.
ISBN: 9781863952774Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$34.95Extent: 608ppRights held: World
Essential Backlist 49
Van Diemen’s Land
Ja mes Boyce
Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen’s Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life. In Van Diemen’s Land, James Boyce shows how the convicts were changed by the natural world they encountered. Escaping authority, they soon settled away from the towns, dressing in kangarooskin and living off the land. Behind the official attempt to create a Little England was another story of adaptation, in which the poor, the exiled and the criminal made a new home in a strange land. This is their story, the story of Van Diemen’s Land.
James Boyce is the author of Van Die-men’s Land. His essay ‘Fantasy Island’ was the central contribution to Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aborigi-nal History, edited by Robert Manne. James also wrote the Tasmania chapter for the book First Australians.
ISBN: 9781863954242Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$32.95Extent: 400ppRights held: World
“A brilliant book and a mustread for anyone interested in how land shapes people”
—Tim Flannery
Awards for Van Diemen’s Land
Winner of the 2009 Tasmania Book Prize, and the joint winner of the 2008 Colin Roderick Award. Shortlisted for the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, 2008 Age Book of the Year Awards, 2008 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2008 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, 2008 NSW Premier’s History Awards, 2008 Australian Book Industry Awards and 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.
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Selected Poems
Les Murr ay
Selected Poems comprises what Les Murray considers his most successfully realised poems, drawn from all his collections up to and including The Biplane Houses but not including his two verse novels.
ISBN: 9781863954044Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$27.95Extent: 320ppRights held: ANZ
Collected Poems
Les Murr ay
Les Murray’s Collected Poems displays the full range of his poetic art. This volume includes all the poems he wants to preserve, apart from the versenovel Fredy Neptune, from his first book Ilex Tree (1965) to Poems the Size of Photographs (2002). In tracing Murray’s artistic development, it shows an everchanging power, grace and humour, as well as great versatility and formal mastery.
ISBN: 9781863952224Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$45Extent: 608ppRights held: ANZ
Essential Backlist 51
Les Murr ay has published some thirty books in Australia. His work has been trans-lated into sixteen languages. In 1996 he was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, in 1999 the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry, and in 2004 the Mondello Prize.
The Biplane Houses
Les Murr ay
The Biplane Houses is Les Murray’s first new volume of poems since 2002’s Poems the Size of Photographs. In it we find the poet at his nearmiraculous best. The collection exhibits both Murray’s unfailing grace as a writer and his ability to write in any voice, style or genre: there are story poems, wordplays, history and mythmakings, aphoristic fragments and dom estic portraits. Houses are a manysided theme of the book, and as ever, Murray’s evocation of the natural world is unparalleled in its inventiveness and virtuosity.
ISBN: 9781863952149Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 210 x 135mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 104ppRights held: ANZ
“There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broadleafed in its pleasures and yet so intimate and conversational”
—Derek Walcott
52
Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s First Colony
John Hir st
Freedom on the Fatal Shore brings together John Hirst’s two influential accounts of the early history of New South Wales. This combined edition includes a new foreword by the author.
Convicts with legal rights, convicts with their ‘own time’, convicts making money, convicts getting drunk – what sort of a prison was this? Hirst describes how the convict colony actually worked and how Australian democracy came into being, despite the opposition of the most powerful.
ISBN: 9781863952071Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$36.95Extent: 512ppRights held: World
Sense and Nonsense in Australian History
John Hir st
Sense and Nonsense in Australian History represents a lifetime’s original reflection by Australia’s most innovative and penetrating historian. In these essays, John Hirst blends the intimacy of the insider with the objectivity usually only available to the outsider. The result is Australian history seen at once from within and without.
In Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, John Hirst overturns familiar conceptions and deepens our sense of Australia’s development from convict society to distinctive democracy.
ISBN: 9780975076996Imprint: Black Inc. AgendaFormat: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$34.95Extent: 336ppRights held: World
Essential Backlist 53
John Hirst is a widely respected histor-ian and social commentator. A former reader in history at La Trobe University, he is a member of the Film Australia Board and the National Museum council. His latest book, The Shortest History of Europe, was pub-lished by Black Inc. in 2009.
The Australians: Insiders & Outsiders on the National Character since 1770
John Hir st
Is there an Australian national character? What are its distinguishing features? Over the years, how have insiders and outsiders summed up this country and its inhabitants, and how have Australians responded to outside criticism?
In The Australians, John Hirst assembles these observations and introduces and links them. There is celebration and criticism. There is humour and insight. There is the difference between what Australians think of themselves and what they are really like.
ISBN: 9781863954082Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$29.95Extent: 224ppRights held: World
“John Hirst is one of the nation’s most independent and original historians”
—Geoffrey Blainey
54
Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
Maude Barlow
Scientists call them ‘hot stains’ – the parts of the earth running out of clean, drinkable water. They now include large areas of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the Midwestern US, and sections of South America. How did the world’s most vital natural resource become so imperilled? And how can we pull back from the brink?
In the tradition of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Blue Covenant addresses an environmental crisis that – together with global warming – poses one of the gravest threats to our survival. Worldrenowned activist and author Maude Barlow has been at the forefront of international water politics, and in this timely and important book she discusses the state of the world’s water, how water companies are reaping vast profits from declining supplies, and how ordinary people
from around the world have banded together to reclaim the public’s right to clean water.
Essential reading for all who care about the planet, Blue Covenant is the most uptodate look at the global water crisis and its impact on humans and the natural world.
“You will not turn on the tap in the same way after reading this book”—Robert Redford
Maude Barlow is the author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold – published in over fifty countries. She was appointed as the first Senior Advisor on water issues to the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.
ISBN: 9781863952231Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 208ppRights held: ANZ
Essential Backlist 55
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Ariel Lev y
Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig – the new ‘empowered woman’ who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, pursues casual sex as if it were sport, and takes off her bra to win favour from the boys. If the male chauvinist pigs of yesteryear saw women as pieces of meat, today’s Female Chauvinist Pigs are going one better, making sex objects not only of other women – but also themselves. They think they’re being brave, they think they’re being funny, but in Female Chau-vinist Pigs, Ariel Levy asks if the joke is on them.
In the tradition of Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, Levy pulls apart the myth of the Female Chauvinist Pig and claims that what appears to be liberating rebellion is actually kind of a stifling con for mity. Compelling, persuasive and provocative,
Female Chauvinist Pigs argues that the rise of raunch does not show how far women have come, but how far they have still to go.
Ariel Lev y is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine. Female Chauvinist Pigs is her first book. Her writing has also appeared in The Best American Essays 2008 and New York Stories: Landmark Writing from Four Decades of New York Magazine.
ISBN: 9781863950862Imprint: Schwartz Publishing Format: PBBook Dimensions: 234 x 153mmRRP: AU$27.95Extent: 256ppRights held: ANZ
“A piercing look at how women are sabotaging their own attempts to be seen as equals by going about the quest the wrong way …”
—Booklist
56
Free to a Good Home
C atherine Deveny
Free to a Good Home includes Catherine Deveny’s thoughts on gifted children and breakfast television, sexy billboards and the bill of rights. There’s also marriage, megachurches, plastic surgery, private schools, strip clubs, Sexpo, Hey Hey It’s Saturday and much, much more …
Fearlessly funny and always provocative, Deveny is the perfect antidote to the modern world’s ills.
ISBN: 9781863954556Imprint: Black Inc.Format: PBBook Dimensions: 198 x 128mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 224ppRights held: World
Say When
C atherine Deveny
In 2008 the Pope came to Sydney, petrol prices soared and Australia proudly became the fattest nation on earth. Big Brother got the chop, Sam Newman mauled a mannequin and the Logies were as wonderfully bad as ever. Thank goodness for Catherine Deveny. Always ready with a subversive aside or a provocative question, she brings her passionate, irreverent wit to bear on the big issues of the day.
ISBN: 9781863953436Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 198 x 128mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 256ppRights held: World
Essential Backlist 57
Catherine Deven y is a comedy writer, columnist and stand-up comedian. She writes weekly opinion columns and tele-vision reviews for the Age and her television credits include Rove Live, Good News Week, Full Frontal and Skithouse. In 2007 she was named as one of the 100 most influential Melburnians by the Age (Melbourne) Magazine.
It’s Not My Fault They Print Them
C atherine Deveny
It’s Not My Fault They Print Them collects Catherine Deveny’s funniest, most biting work, published and previously unpublishable, of 2007. It includes her views on elective caesareans, private education, McLeod’s Daughters, Sam Newman and much, much more. Prepare to be tickled, cajoled, outraged, baited and amused.
ISBN: 9781863951197Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 198 x 128mmRRP: AU$19.95Extent: 256ppRights held: World
“Catherine Deveny tells it like it is. She is so damn funny”
—Rove McManus
58
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life
Je annet te Angell
All callgirls are depraved and drugaddicted – right? No one with any selfrespect would ever choose to be a callgirl – right?
Wrong. At the age of thirtyfive, Jeannette Angell’s life took a shocking turn. Her boyfriend emptied their joint back account and took off, leaving her penniless. Despite her job as a parttime university teacher, she was an independent, educated woman on the skids. The she read a newspaper ad for ‘escorts’ …
Uniquely honest, this is the true story of a threeyear double life – university lecturer by day, callgirl by night. It tells why Angell made her decision and reveals what happened on her journey into a hidden world.
Jeannette Angell is the author of sev-eral books including the historical novels, Légende, Wings, Flight and The Illusionist. She is also the author of the biography, Madam.
ISBN: 9781863951517Imprint: Nero Format: PBBook Dimensions: 198 x 128mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 256ppRights held: ANZ
“Erudite, funny and inyourface.”
—Qantas Magazine
Essential Backlist 59
Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper
Diablo Cody
At twentyfour, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. On a whim, she signed up for amateur night at a seedy Minneapolis strip club. She didn’t win a prize that night – but she discovered a rush she had never experienced before.
In Candy Girl, she tells the captivating fishoutofwater story of her yearlong walk on the wild side. With insight and wit, she takes us on a behindthescenes tour of the industry from quiet gentlemen’s clubs to multilevel sex palaces. Funny and fascinating, Candy Girl is a seductive treat.
Diablo Cody won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Screenplay for the film Juno. Her first television series, The United States of Tara (starring Toni Collette and produced by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks) is currently in production.
ISBN: 9781863953351Imprint: Black Inc. Format: PBBook Dimensions: 198 x 128mmRRP: AU$24.95Extent: 224ppRights held: ANZ
“One of the most original voices to emerge from the US in a decade.”
—The Sydney Morning Herald
“Cody’s observations … are hilariously spot on. As Cody sums it up, some stories beg to be told. And this is such a tale.”
—The Sun-Herald
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