Australia Books

There should have been a section on Michael Robert Hamilton Holmes a Court. Enigmatic raider and consumate businessman. I felt slightly cheated but I enjoyed the book.

This is probably the best book on the corporate excesses of the 1980s since Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. Veteran Australian financial journalist, Trevor Sykes, dissects the collapses of Alan Bond, Christopher Skase and a rogues' gallery of other Antipodean corporate scoundrels. He even bravely attempts to unravel the intricate webs surrounding Brian Yuill's Spedley Securities Limited and John Spalvin's Adelaide Steamship group of companies. Although Sykes explains his reasons why he did not delve into such companies as Elders IXL Limited and John Fairfax Limited, this reviewer feels the book's only failing is that it only mentions by way of cross-reference Australia's biggest player of the Eighties, the late Robert Holmes a Court, the South African-born financier and pastoralist who became Australia's first billionaire. Despite this oversight, The Bold Riders is a highly recommended read which should appeal to all business readers around the English-speaking world, particularly regarding Sykes' insight into Australia's Federal and State politicians and their somewhat symbiotic relationships with business.

This is a really gorgeous book and is perfect for nap/bedtime with baby. My son, who is now 2yrs old, still enjoys looking through the illustrations.

Terrific if you have any Australian/New Zealand/Islander connection and want to share some of it with your kids.

These are original poems/lullabies from people living on the islands. My 7 year old loves this book. Even if you never read it all, the book is worth it for the fabulous artwork. This would be a great gift for anyone who has lived in the islands or feels connected to the sea.

Those of us who play goal know what unique characters we are. This book highlights all the greats from the early days of the sport up to now. Pictures galore. Spreads of early equipment. Full head shots of masks, old and new. Profiles of many of the greats to ever play the position. The innovators and the champions. A well rounded history of the insanely brave men who guard the cages. I reccomend it to all into the sport or the position.

This is a fabulous and very detailed book about the history of goaltending. The book spans from the very first goaltenders all the way to today's goalies. The book has many great pictures along with stories and interesting facts. The book got me interested right away. It shows pictures all the way from before the 1900's and up to today. Famous goalies such as, Jaques Plante, Terry Sawchuck, and many others. I highly recoment this book for just about anyone. This would be a fabulous book for any goaltender currently playing on a team. The book is so well done and easy to read and follow it really brings you into the time of the earlier goaltenders. Just overall...a great book

Turner's is a well-summarized, well-written introduction to the tradition of so-called critical cultural studies. This can draw a lot of attention from undergrads to phd-to-bes, from all across the social science and hmanities fields--such as mass media, communication, literature, aesthetics, philosophy, criticism, popular culture. If you believe that there's something missing in the US mainstream social science and humanities, this is the book you must start with.

I mark this book as a required text to my students in my Cultural Studies Course.

Despite, or rather because of it's professed limitation to British Cultural Studies, Turner demonstrates a lot of sensitivity to what is and what is not British Cultural Studies, making any reader immediately aware of how other Cultural Studies traditions may differ. His extremely cogent and clear account takes the reader easily into the heart of Cultural Studies- what quarrels does British Cultural Studies have with other disciplines and what is so unique about its orientation as a discipline?

This book contains a wealth of information about the business life of these great industrialists like JRD Tata, Walchand Hirachand, G D Birla & Kasturbhai Lalbhai. While there are a lot of information available about G D Birla & JRD Tata, this book contains little known facts about the life of Walchand Hirachand & Kasturbhai Lalbhai which make for a very interesting reading of the business life in India in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

A most interesting read, shows the business acumen of the old times, a large part of it is still valid in this day and age. Most interesting part was how the Birla's managed their conglomerate, how they became a conglomerate - the concept of the "Partha". The lessons from these great men are most inspiring. This could be a text book for a Business school. Show the west - How the east does business and are successful at it. Good work Gita Piramal. - Cheers, Sarab Sokhey

This is a great book, for surfers and non-surfers alike. An exciting and humorous, and at times sad, book to read. Rabbit's life is a series of twists and turns and very human mistakes. I especially liked the stories of his first trip to the Hawaiian Islands, North Shore. I was laughing a lot and couldn't put the book down. A good chronicle of the "Aussie Invasion" of the mid-1970's, and all of the crazy stuff that happened during that time.Pro Surfing nowadays seems very tame in comparison. And to think, Rabbit Bartholomew is now the President of the ASP!

If you've ever gone out at 5 in the morning to catch a wave before school. Or gone out during lunch break even if it's flat. You'll love this book. Nuff said.

100 female convicts were sent from England to Sydney on the Princess Royal. Babette Smith has traced the fates of all of them, so far as possible. For a few, she has fascinating detail. Susannah Watson, a forebear of the author's, regarded transportation as the "best thing befell me, except for you children."
Scholarly but full of lively detail and action, this is a remarkable work

This is a splendid history of the women who, in the 1830s, were convicted of various petty (and some not so petty) offenses and shipped off to the convict colonies of early Australia. Many American booksellers still stock "The Fatal Shore," but in many ways this is a more compelling story, not just because of its observations on early Victorian morality but also because of the fascinating, if tragic, story of its central character, Susannah Watson. Great adventure, great history.

At my secondary school it was obligatory in senior years to read Homer and very dull it was. In stodgy translation, he seemed remote in space/time and world-view from our daily life. This novel touches the Greek myths with an electric spark. How enticing it is to read about Aphrodite's magic brassiere that she lends to aid the seduction of Zeus. Just as Aphrodite was charged with responsibility for sexual love, each Greek god represents some universal human passion. These passions are alive still, operating in present day affairs. One of the premises of Maze's novel is that the ancient deities' interactions offer an analogue for today's social and international undercurrents. Specifically, he holds that since the deities possess mythical being, and the myths are extant in mass entertainment, it is imaginable those old gods still exist and follow their favourite amusement of interfering in mortal affairs.
Most science fiction and modern fantasy are decidedly American. In Cassandra Peel and the Wild Gods of Cyberspace there are no surreal goings on in some small Midwestern town or in slick California, no vision of a future fractured New York, no imaginary metropolis haunted by mushroom dwellers or regal species of riverine squid. This allegorical fantasy for young adults - anyone older than ten - is set in our present world in a traditional genre. We are spared postmodernist distortions and overwrought syntax. The story is told in the invisible author's adult narrative voice.
It is a Sister-of-Harry-Potter novel. Cassandra Peel and her friend Parvati are the dominant characters. Their allies, Pran and Giorgio, have their own personalities and gifts, but their role is basically supportive. We meet them in an Australian country town at a special school for talented, non-conforming dropouts. Working on her computer, Cassandra, a single-minded literature student, accidentally accesses Greek goddess Athena in cyberspace. For her own reasons, Athena later introduces Hephaistos, master craftsman, and his former, faithless wife, the Marilyn Monroe-figure Aphrodite. The four youngsters soon find themselves swept into a plot to foment World War III, hatched by Ares, war-god and seducer of Aphrodite. Our heroes, with the help of Hephaistos, his beautiful robot maidservant Eliza, and the complex Indian goddess Durga who comes to Parvati's aid, foil this plot. The ambivalence between Ares and Aphrodite mirrors the frequent real-life fusion of sex and violence, as Cassandra's admired literature teacher, Sarah Beecham, warns her.
Psychological complexities are important in the novel and for the author, a former psychology professor. The wonderfully capable Eliza has great difficulty when Cassandra encourages her to refer to herself in the first person, not the third. Like a child, she cannot understand how she can be "I" when Cassandra also is "I"- and she is sure Hephaistos, her Maker, won't allow her to be a person. The robot maids are not Maze's invention; they are present in the Iliad, and his references to events there are reliable - such things as Athena gloating how she had felled Aphrodite once with a big rock.
The youngsters rely not on the familiar witches, shapeshifters, vampires and demons, hobbits and wizards as supportive companions but on themselves and each other. Giorgio has developed a Virtual Reality helmet that Hephaistos secretly converts into a Bodily Reality one, so the wearer can be flashed into cyberspace along a TV beam. The kids use this invention to defeat Ares's plot and rescue one another from danger. There is nothing extravagantly fantastical about Bodily Reality travel, there is a feeling it could happen. The novel's hold on reality extends to the oil-economy competition that Ares manipulates to bring about World War III, and the way patriotic fervour colludes with him.
The humour and parody of our own world rattle along and the real and virtual plots come to a satisfying, heart-warming conclusion. Some issues are intentionally left unresolved because the immortals are immortal. A sequel is advertised as forthcoming in 2004 and promises to delve into the darker side of the adolescents' personalities more deeply than in this first novel.
On average one per thousand of new authors' unsolicited manuscripts in children and young adults' fiction are published. Not all of these even cover the cost of publication. Must we believe that the remaining 999 have all been carefully read and found wanting? This terrific read and impressive first novel, defiantly self-published and recently reprinted with Booksurge, was numbered among the 999. Its worldly ironic humour is a refreshing contrast to the prevalent `dumbing-down' of orthodox education, and the publishing industry's low estimate of adolescent taste and understanding.
There is something for everyone in this charming book. The cheerful acceptance of ethnic diversity and disrespectful approach to traditional sanctities give it a distinctly Australian air. It is rich and complex enough for adults and fully accessible to children. Give it to your kids and grandkids and friends' teenage kids - that's after you have read it yourself.

Dr Rachael Henry
Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Sydney
Australia

At my secondary school it was obligatory in senior years to read Homer¯and very dull it was. In stodgy translation, he seemed remote in space/time and world-view from our daily life. This novel touches the Greek myths with an electric spark. How enticing it is to read about Aphrodite's magic brassiere that she lends to aid the seduction of Zeus. Just as Aphrodite was charged with responsibility for sexual love, each Greek god represents some universal human passion. These passions are alive still, operating in present day affairs. One of the premises of Maze's novel is that the ancient deities' interactions offer an analogue for today's social and international undercurrents. Specifically, he holds that since the deities possess mythical being, and the myths are extant in mass entertainment, it is imaginable those old gods still exist and follow their favourite amusement of interfering in mortal affairs.
In Cassandra Peel and the Wild Gods of Cyberspace there are no surreal goings on in some small Midwestern town or in slick California, no vision of a future fractured New York, no imaginary metropolis haunted by mushroom dwellers or regal species of riverine squid. This allegorical fantasy for young adults - anyone older than ten - is set in our present world in a traditional genre. We are spared postmodernist distortions and overwrought syntax. The story is told in the invisible author's adult narrative voice.
It is a Sister-of-Harry-Potter novel. Cassandra Peel and her friend Parvati are the dominant characters. Their allies, Pran and Giorgio, have their own personalities and gifts, but their role is basically supportive. We meet them in an Australian country town at a special school for talented, non-conforming dropouts. Working on her computer, Cassandra, a single-minded literature student, accidentally accesses Greek goddess Athena in cyberspace. For her own reasons, Athena later introduces Hephaistos, master craftsman, and his former, faithless wife, the Marilyn Monroe- figure Aphrodite. The four youngsters soon find themselves swept into a plot to foment World War III, hatched by Ares, war-god and seducer of Aphrodite. Our heroes, with the help of Hephaistos, his beautiful robot maidservant Eliza, and the complex Indian goddess Durga who comes to Parvati's aid, foil this plot. The ambivalence between Ares and Aphrodite mirrors the frequent real-life fusion of sex and violence, as Cassandra's admired literature teacher, Sarah Beecham, warns her.
Psychological complexities are important in the novel and for the author, a former psychology professor. The wonderfully capable Eliza has great difficulty when Cassandra encourages her to refer to herself in the first person, not the third. Like a child, she cannot understand how she can be "I" when Cassandra also is "I"- and she is sure Hephaistos, her Maker, won't allow her to be a person. The robot maids are not Maze's invention; they are present in the Iliad, and his references to events there are reliable - such things as Athena gloating how she had felled Aphrodite once with a big rock.
The youngsters rely not on the familiar witches, shapeshifters, vampires and demons, hobbits and wizards as supportive companions but on themselves and each other. Giorgio has developed a Virtual Reality helmet that Hephaistos secretly converts into a Bodily Reality one, so the wearer can be flashed into cyberspace along a TV beam. The kids use this invention to defeat Ares's plot and rescue one another from danger. There is nothing extravagantly fantastical about Bodily Reality travel, there is a feeling it could happen. The novel's hold on reality extends to the oil-economy competition that Ares manipulates to bring about World War III, and the way patriotic fervour colludes with him.
The humour and parody of our own world rattle along and the real and virtual plots come to a satisfying, heart-warming conclusion. Some issues are intentionally left unresolved because the immortals are immortal.

On average one per thousand of new authors' unsolicited manuscripts in children and young adults' fiction are published. Not all of these even cover the cost of publication. Must we believe that the remaining 999 have all been carefully read and found wanting? This terrific read and impressive first novel, originally self-published with Books & Writers Network and recently reprinted by Booksurge, was numbered among the 999. Its worldly ironic humour is a refreshing contrast to the prevalent `dumbing-down' of orthodox education, and the publishing industry's low estimate of adolescent taste and understanding.
There is something for everyone in this charming book. The cheerful acceptance of ethnic diversity and disrespectful approach to traditional sanctities give it a distinctly Australian air. It is rich and complex enough for adults and fully accessible to children. Give it to your kids and grandkids and friends' teenage kids - that's after you have read it yourself.

Rachael Henry
Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Sydney
Australia

An absolute god send. I have been in the hospitlaity industry for 25 years and never have I seen a book geared especially to the large scale market. It has given me so many ideas. Where is volume 2 and 3 and 4.

This book has proved to be useful on a daily basis. It deals with large numbers as the title suggests and the recipes are given for 25, 50, 100 which I have found, working in a boarding school, to be a great resource. Most of the recipes are basic but are easily modified.

this was a required text in a college political science class. the book gave concise examples of concepts and read easily. plus, dr. hertzke was one of the book's editors.

I give this book more exactly 4,5 stars. I am glad I acquired the book and included it in my personal library of political science. The authors build on a solid framework of different church-state regimes. They analyse neither too many nor two few countries. However, extension by others to cover more countries would be welcome. One can also ask if a similar approach could not be used for studying relations of the state to other organisations than churches. In all cases, the hypothesis is that explicit separation of the state from certain values leads to implicit support to those who are the strongest in pushing the values of their own.