Society & Social Sciences Books

Chasing Africa delicately explores the loss of identity, the gift of health and adventure, and the courage to put oneself first despite guilt, fear, and the pull of family.As a teenager, Lisa couldn't wait to escape suburbia and travel the world. Years...

An inspiring travel adventure memoir that explores a young woman's quest to live life on the front lines, chasing adventure, and confronting the harsh realities of crisis work in Asia and Africa.In 1975, a time of new freedom for women, Ella Harvey lived...

This compact book records a quest for understanding, to find the story behind the Snayackstx (Sinixt) First Nation. Known in the United States as the Arrow Lakes Indians of the Colville Confederated Tribes, the tribe lived along the upper Columbia River...

Australian politics is changing.The two-party system is disappearing, and the balance of power is shifting. While these changes might feel fragile, we may just be on the precipice of a transformative era for democracy in Australia.At the 2022 federal...

Many people think they can do a better job running a country than politicians but few actually give it a go. What happens when political disagreement pushes to the point of no return? When a person has a dream of what their ideal country would be, and...

Despite being described as 'a remarkably successful partnership' by John Howard and a 'triumph of trust' by his counterpart, Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, the art of coalition government is a delicate (and sometimes difficult)...

Since the founding of the Communist Party in China just over a century ago, there is much the country has achieved. But who does the heavy lifting in China? And who walks away with the spoils? Cadre Country places the spotlight on the nation's 40 million...

We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read...

'I am sir [sure] you will act as human bean', wrote one distressed pensioner to Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1953, pleading for assistance.Robert Menzies received 22,000 letters during his record-breaking 1949-1966 second term as Australian Prime...

'Newsrooms were these crazy universities, full of experts on the strangest things, people with real understanding and experience of things that mattered, places where you could ask anybody anything, though you might get your head bitten off if you...

Australia is a land of symbols. The Southern Cross.The Sydney Opera House. The kangaroo. Vegemite.But what do they actually mean? Where do they come from?Why are some symbols so hotly contested?Does Australia have more than its fair share?Symbols of...

Gender is a powerful force that shapes Australia's political leadership.Gender impacts the politics, government and policies of our nation. It influences the public lives of all political leaders. It affects how they interact with political institutions...

*Joint Winner of Oral History Australia Book Award, 2021**Shortlisted in the 2021 Victorian Community History Awards, Oral History Award*The people who volunteered to help during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s provided compassion and...

Few of Australia's institutions are as significant or as complex as its universities. This first comprehensive history of Australia's university system explores how universities work and for whom, and how their relationship with each...

** Shortlisted, NSW Premier's History Awards 2022, NSW Regional and Community History Prize **** Shortlisted, Les Carlyon Literary Prize 2022 **'In May 1824, what can only be described as a period of all-out, total gudyarra ('war' in the Wiradyuri...

Everyone has the right to seek asylum under international law. However, successive governments in Australia have declared the need to 'stop the boats' whatever the cost, be it human, economic, moral or legal.In this new book, Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong...

Demography is far more important than destiny.By tracing connections between a population's past and present, demographers can foresee its future. The true wonder of demography, though, is not its ability to predict the future but to shape it...

'The Earth is a Common Treasury',proclaimed the English Revolutionaries in the 1640s. Does the principle of the commons offer usways to respond now to the increasingly destructive effects of neoliberalism? With insight, passion and aneye on...

A compelling,moving account of the long journey to marriage equality in Australia.Yes Yes Yes,written by two advocates intimately involved in the struggle for marriageequality, reveals the untold story of how a grassroots movement won hearts andminds and...

Australia's official First World War correspondent, Charles Bean, saw more of theAustralian Imperial Force's actions and battleson the Western Front than anyone. Bean'sextensiveprivate wartime diaries, held by the Australian...

The Liberal-National Party Coalition was elected to office on 2 March 1996 and continued in power until 3 December 2007 making John Howard the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister. This book is the final in a four-volume series examining the...

Few periods in Australian political history have generated more controversy than 20012004.Trials and Transformations examines the Howard Government's electoral revival in 2001, the collapse of HIH Insurance and Ansett Airlines, and the MV Tampa...

Thewhite colonisers of Australia suffered from Alliumphobia, a fear ofgarlic. Local cooks didn't touch the stuff and it took centuries for that fearto lift. This food history of Australia shows we held onto British assumptionsabout...

Populism can be a dirty word. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have certainly given it a bad name. But rather than associating it with demagoguery and exclusion, might we better see it as a backlash against free market globalisation? Might it be...

'How is it our minds are not satisfied? What means this whispering in the bottom of our hearts?' Listening to the whispering in his own heart, Henry Reynolds was led into the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten white humanitarians who...

As Australia became a nation in 1901, no-one anticipated that 'Aboriginal affairs' would become an on-going national preoccupation.Not 'dying out' as predicted, Aboriginal numbers recovered and along with Torres Strait Islanders they became an articulate...

Millions of words have been spent in our quest to explain men's seemingly never-ending dominance in boardrooms, in parliaments, in the bureaucracy and in almost every workplace. So why is gender inequality still such a pressing issue?Wage inequality...

Not Just For This Life is a salute and tribute to Gough Whitlam, commemorating what would have been his 100th birthday. Upon his death in October 2014 there was a national outpouring of grief and affectionate remembrances across the nation. This book...

Sexual harassment, domestic violence and date rape had not been named, although they certainly existed, when Damned Whores and God's Police was first published in 1975. That was before the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 and before large...

170,000 Displaced Persons arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1952 the first non-Anglo-Celtic mass migrants.Australia's first immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, scoured post-war Europe for refugees, Displaced Persons he characterised as 'Beautiful...

Garry Wotherspoon'sGay Sydney: A Historyis an updated version of his 1991 classic,City of the Plain: History of a Gay Sub-culture, written in the midst of the AIDS crisis. In this vivid book Wotherspoon traces the shifts that have occurred since...

Matriarch of the criminal underworld ... or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney?The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history...

What has happened on Nauru and Manus since Australia began its most recent offshore processing regime in 2012?This essential book provides a comprehensive and uncompromising overview of the first three years of offshore processing since it recommenced in...

Since 1967 more than 25,000 students have graduated from UNSW after studying at Duntroon, HMAS Creswell, the Australian Defence Force Academy. Tom Frame examines the productive 50-year partnership between UNSW and the Australian Defence Force.In a candid...

'This is a book about Australian food, not the foods that European Australians cooked from ingredients they brought with them, but the flora and fauna that nourished the Aboriginal peoples for over 50,000 years. It is because European...

Everyone has heard the clichs about Queensland politics: Queensland is 'different'. It's the 'Deep North'. Its state elections exemplify Pineapple Party Time. But what if those clichs are in fact looking more like the state of affairs in the rest of...

The past few decades have seen a rapid growth in Chinese language teaching materials, but very little for advanced learning. This textbook is designed specifically for advanced Chinese learners in Western universities. Postgraduate students in Chinese...

Is Australia a 'racist' country? Why do issues of race and culture seem to ignite public debate so readily?Tim Soutphommasane, Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, reflects on the national experience of racism and the progress that has been made...

The so-called War on Terror, in its many incarnations, has always been a war with gender at its heart.Once regarded as helpless victims waiting to be rescued, Muslim women are now widely regarded by both Muslim and non-Muslim disciplinarians as a...

An extraordinary portrait of a brilliant mind on the brink: A new edition of the 1974 memoir by the author of the acclaimed collection Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. With an introduction by Yiyun Li.'For a long time it had seemed to me that...

Should we welcome the end of humanity?In this blistering book about the history of an idea, one of our leading critics draws on his dazzling range and calls our attention to a seemingly inconceivable topic that is being seriously discussed: that the end...

What happens inside our prisons?What's Prison For? examines the "incarceration" part of "mass incarceration." What happens inside prisons and jails, where nearly two million Americans are held? Bill Keller, one of America's most accomplished journalists,...

Why have some of the most interesting artists of our time committed themselves to some of the most devastating conflicts on Earth?Why are some of the most interesting artists of our time committed to engaging with conflict and exploitation around the...

Do the Fed's efforts to stabilize the economy worsen inequality?The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, was built for a monetary system composed primarily of investor-owned, government-chartered banks. But over the years, the erosion of banking law...

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics?The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you've never seen before: a vast...

A one-volume history of the most consequential political movements of our time - populism, nationalism, socialism - and how they are influencing the twenty-first century.The distinguished political analyst John Judis has brought out a book with Columbia...

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is eroding at a time when we are racing to produce a vaccine and treatments for Covid-19. This medical right that we have long taken for granted was...

An illustrated survey of artist hoaxes, including impersonations, fabula, cryptoscience, and forgeries, researched and written by an expert "fictive-art" practitioner.In her groundbreaking book, internationally recognized multimedia artist and writer...