Australia Books

Thrump-O-Moto is a wonderful book! I have been reading it since I was old enough to read, yearly at least. An epic storyline, delightful art, and heart warming message. It proves that miracles can happen, but they are never very easy. As a child, it was a children's book about adult things like life, death, and heroism, which is why I love it. Its a pity there aren't more books like this jewel.

This is a beautifully illiustrated and written book for both children and adults. It is touching and inspiring. It brings home the important lesson of never giving up and helping to fight the good fight against an illiness or other evil.
Takes place in Australia and Japan and a fantasy land.
Charming and lovable characters.
Enchanting and inspiring.

I bought this book for my children for Christmas in 1988. It was so beautiful in word and pictures that I bought a second book so that each of the children could have their own book. It's story of the wizard "Thrump O Moto and how he saves Patricia from the evil "Nurk-u the Bad is so delightful. I always wanted to find the address of Steven Spielberg as I felt it would have been a wonderful movie only Spielberg could have writted for the screen.

Clavell's Thrump-O-Moto is nothing short of a literary masterpiece. This fantasy begins with a lazy rural afternoon and leaps across continents and through time warps with a most informal and personal accessibility. The possibilities of friendship, the comparison of cultures, and the thrill of adventure all contribute to create a most fantastic story. The illustrations supplement the flowing text like frosting on an already luscious cake. Clavell's marriage of detail and whimsy make for characters and places with an endearing, enduring reality all their own. Ideal for preschool and young elementary children, Thrump-O-Moto may require a few laptimes for tots with short attention spans; but don't be surprised if when you finally reach the end, you are asked to begin the adventure all over again!

What a fantastic book! I had no idea dogs played a role like this in the war. Whether your interested in war, working dogs or just want to read a great story i would recommend this book. Pete describes perfectly the innocent nature of a dog even in these extreme circumstances. I can't say enough good things about Tracker's so just pick it up and enjoy.....

wonderfully written book of the australian involvement of tracker dog teams in vietnam...thousands of allied lives were saved through the relationship built by the tracker dogs and handlers, together with the scout, sentry, mine, tunnel, booby trap, and other military working dog teams...over 4,000 dogs and in excess of 10,000 handlers kept our troops safe....the lives of our allied military forces depended on the trust built between handler and dog....

I love books written by people who have been in the working dog field with dogs such as Service Dogs of the Police,Military working roles. I personally find books written on the obedience trailling and Schuzhund competitions basically repetitive and in the main, boring.

Service work and associated training to me, is the real world of dog training, I enjoy competition and encourage people to compete.But I get tired of the never ending waffle of the best way to train involving food, toys, clickers, working in drives etc.

This book is excellent taking one into the real world of extreme dangers of the Vietnam war. Well written, reviting, and refreshing after the waffle of other dog books.Well done Peter. ...

I have read numerous books about war dogs. This is by far my favorite. I was totally engrossed from beginning to end. The book will make you laugh and a few pages later make you cry. Mr. Haran's accounts of his experiences in training tracker dogs for Vietnam, and doing two tours as a dog handler in the "J" (jungle), really bring home the effectiveness of man-dog teams and illustrate the deep bonds that develop between the two forged under fire. I can't say enough good things about this book. If you are a dog lover, or if you're interested in war dogs at all, you should read this book. You won't be disappointed.

Waiting for Daylight is a wonderful coffee table book that highlights the joys of ranching which only someone with a broad background in the saddle could write. Janell Kleberg also has a great artistic touch seen in the many photographs that are sprinkled throughout the book.
Having been raised on the King Ranch do Brasil, Kleberg's book brought back many memories. She has done a wonderful job of capturing the many locales of King Ranch operations outside of the USA.

Waiting For Daylight: King Ranch: Images From The Past is a marvelous showcase of full-color photographs taken by Janell Kleberg from horseback while working cattle in South Texas, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. Descriptive captions add insight to the moving images of ranch and animal herding life. Providing the reader with a unique suspension of the ever-present flow of time, the beautiful scenery, the hard-working horses, and superbly documented images of everyday life create and unforgettable window into the lives of dedicated men and women employed in the hard but rewarding work of ranching.

This is a great book documenting the life of people in a harsh environment. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in not only spectacular photos but unbelievable descriptions of the photos.

The authors name is Janell Kleberg, not Janell King.
Janell captures the people of ranching. The images are taken while she worked side by side with the men and women of King Ranch. Photos were taken as she worked horseback on the various operations including Brazil,Texas,Argentina,Australia and Venezuela.The images are of a time past 1970-1990. Tio Kleberg

This is the first book of aerial photography on Mexico City. Bob Cameron and Herb Lingl have done an outstanding work, especially that Mexico City skies are mostly highly cloudy and gray with smog and pollution. They captured extradordinary moments of clear and blue skies of Mexico City and vecinity. They have photographed unusual places and almost unknown and secrets spaces even for Mexico City natives. There are photos that in many years of visiting and touring so many places of the City I really never could see as well as in this magnificent book. This historical bool also shows old moments of the this great City and the new developments of its modernity. If you want to get a realistic and creative approach to this latino metropolis that is a good example of modern architecture and colonial buildings, get the book as soon as possible, the writing done by former Mexican diplomat Luis Herrera-Lasso is first quality. A great value for present to any of your friends or anyone proud of Mexican heritage and contemporary Mexico.

This book is a superb example of how Robert Cameron and Herb Lingl's aerial photographs exemplify the the beauty and majesty of Mexico City. The detailed text is a guided tour of the architecture and landscapes of this oftentimes overlooked cultural metropolis. Now for the first time we see Mexico City in her finest glory. As a native this book makes me proud of my city.

Robert Cameron's books are always first rate and this one is no exception, I think it is one of his best, I was so pleasantly surprised to see him produce another book because of his age, but with the help of his partner he has produced an awesome book. This book highlights the most familiar parts of Mexico City and some that may not be as familiar, all with the most incredible arial photography. The images are crisp and just jump off the page. If you have any interest in Mexico City or just love great photograph quite frankly, then you will love this book. Thank you Mr. Cameron for another top notch book, you are the benchmark in arial photography of this kind. Uh, now how about a city it Texas, Houston?, Dallas?, we'd love to have you capture us, with your unique talent, here's to your continued good health.

I personally do not collect military insignia of any type; I bought this title to read more information on the ELITE organizations of Australia and New Zealand, In particular their Special Air Service (SAS) outfits. The book does and outstanding job at illustrating all the units insignias with hundreds of pictures and descriptions, as for this is what the book was intended for, What I enjoyed the most was the text and descriptions of units and unit lineage and history which really rounded out this text. If you want to know about ANZAC Elites this is a great start for there is no one book that I know of which discusses them all.

While I do not collect insignia, I found this book to be very interesting reading. The bulk of the text provides useful information about the historical background and roles of Australian & Kiwi Special Operations units, some of which I served in. The photos of the insignia included some troop symbols that I had not seen for many years and brought back some fond memories. It is good to see that the current generation are carrying on the traditions. Well done.

Great book. Not only does it provide over 700 full size colour photos of the insignia worn but has a very useful historical coverage for those interested in Australasian special forces. I have not found another book that covers this subject as well. A bonus is that the book is on excellent paper and a very nice addition to ones library.

Among the many worlds within our world, surely one of the saddest is that populated by refugees. Forced by war, oppression, famine, flood or hunger to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere, they share common miseries of dislocation, disorientation and, often, much worse at the hands of unsympathetic authorities. There are millions of them, and they can be found on every continent. They are welcome nowhere and their harrowing experiences often afflict them with traumas that they are unable to shake for the rest of their lives.
One little-known locus of refugee suffering is Australia. The government there has strict laws designed to discourage illegal immigration, and it makes its point clear by treating illegal arrivals with detention in a series of prison-like compounds scattered around the country.
Most of the refugees in Australia literally wash up on its shores, after boarding boats operated by people-smugglers in Indonesia. Most of them come from Middle Eastern countries where they faced persecution by authoritarian regimes, especially Iraq and Iran.
Heather Tyler was working as a journalist on one of Australia's leading newspapers when she became aware of the refugees, and began to take an interest in their plight. She paid many visits to their camps and, whenever possible, interviewed them about their reasons for being there and their experiences in the camps. She heard one sad story after another, and her book, Asylum, recounts her encounters and gives an overview of the refugee situation in Australia and the impact life in detention has on these unwelcome guests.
Many detainees experience severe depression, and some have resorted to desperate measures to gain sympathetic attention, including stitching their lips together in protest against their conditions and the refusal of the authorities to deal with them in a humanitarian way.
This is a sobering account of the dehumanizing experiences of `illegals' in a supposedly advanced democratic and civilized country. It begs the question: Is this really the best we `developed countries' can do for the less fortunate of this world?

This is a collection of skillfully-written, meticulously researched stories about mostly failed asylum-seekers in Australia and what happens to them during their incarceration. One of the things that most disturbed me about this rather remarkable book, was that Australia, a big country that's oretty much known for its sporting achievements and good-natured people, is painted as a place which locks up innocent children in gulags. Unfortunately it's true. Asylum-seekers come from many, troubled regions, and Australia is not their first port of call. In fact, it's often about the sixth country on the list that asylum-seekers and refugees have tried to seek sanctuary in. For their trouble, they are kept in what is called "mandatory immigration detention" centres. Each one is surrounded by multiple layers of deadly coils of razor wire, and each place is run by guards on a prison-style routine. One of them even has an electric fence of 8000 volts. And if this book is to be believed, most of these centres are in geographically very remote locations, in the middle of the desert, or on off-shore islands in stinking tropical heat. I'm a mother of four, and I still cannot get my head around this: that if I was an asylum-seeker, Australia would lock up me and my children. Most of the stories in this book concern the situations of children and how this regime has traumatised them. This is state-sanctioned damage. The stories are poignant and written in an understated way, but their power is unmistakable. I can only imagine that people in the Middle East, accustomed to gross human rights abuses and mass illegal migration, would find this book informative but puzzling as to why the Australian Government takes such a heavy-handed approach with so few people.

It is hard to believe that Australia, which is a very affluent country with vast amounts of space and only 18 million people, can lock men, women and children up behind coils of deadly razor wire in camps in the desert for years on end. In fact, as I read this book, I found myself almost disbelieving its horror. But this is what Australia does to the handful of asylum-seekers fleeing despotic regimes who had the tenacity to make it to the bottom end of the world to seek refuge. When I say handful, I mean a few thousand, and compared to the millions of asylum-seekers and refugees languishing in other parts of the world, I had to ask: what on earth is Australia's problem? This book contains stories of Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, a Russian mother, a Sri Lankan, tells how they fled their homelands and why, and what happened to them when they got to Australia. Some arrived by air, others on leaky wooden boats after perilous voyages. What happened to them is all the same - they were locked up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in camps run like prisons, where desperate people tried to commit suicide. Their cases took far too long to be assessed and so many errors occurred in their cases that some took years to resolve. The camps are long distances from ordinary citizens, so much of what was happening to the detainees was out of sight, until extraordinarily brave journalists such as Heather Tyler penetrated the camps and wrote about what was really happening in this system that the Australian Government calls "humane". This is the first book that tells it like it is. If the detention system is so humane, then why did a 10-year-old Aghan girl hang herself inside one of these detention centres? These people did not have voices. No-one wanted to listen to them, and Heather Tyler has given them the opportunity to tell their stories. This is a compelling book, beautifully written and never melodramatic with what is such dramatic material. I couldn't put it down, and I wept many tears at times for the people that my country treated so harshly.

I am a sports physician and I cannot recommend this "Atlas of Nuclear Imaging" enough. Through the use of clinical case studies, this very well set out manual has been of enormous assistance not only in my practice but for the many fellow physicians and sports trainers I have told about it. I have observed and (happily) participated in many dramatic turnarounds in the health of several patients, whose diagnoses might have otherwise escaped me. This is an outstanding book!

I am a sports physician and I cannot recommend this "Atlas of Nuclear Imaging" enough. Through the use of clinical case studies, this very well set out manual has been of enormous assistance not only in my practice but for the many fellow physicians and sports trainers I have told about it. I have observed and (happily) participated in many dramatic turnarounds in the health of several patients, whose diagnoses might have otherwise escaped me. This is an outstanding book!

I am a sports physician and I cannot recommend this "Atlas of Nuclear Imaging" enough. Through the use of clinical case studies, this very well set out manual has been of enormous assistance not only in my practice but for the many fellow physicians and sports trainers I have told about it. I have observed and (happily) participated in many dramatic turnarounds in the health of several patients, whose diagnoses might have otherwise escaped me. This is an outstanding book!

Mr. Shine has written an excellent natural history of Australian snakes that will be appreciated and enjoyed by those who are knowledgeable of this aspect of Australian fauna as well as by those who experience this volume as a first introduction to this subject. In fact, it is an excellent introduction to snakes, in general, except for its omission of the viper family(i.e., rattlesnakes, copperheads, etc.) which are not found in Australia. This large, softcover volume contains beautiful photographs illustrating just about all the snake species.For those who have never been exposed to the subject, it will spark an interest which will lead to further study.

This book is a must for anybody interested in Australian snakes. It covers in detail the feeding habits, sex lives, habitats and natures of all sorts of snakes. It is also full of all kinds of useful information and facts, and covers evolutionary adaptaions from a very logical and scientific view point. It contains many spectacular photographs and fascinating anecdotes which make it a very enjoyable book to read. Useful for anyone with a budding interest through to those with a full blown passion. This book is much more than just a field guide and I strongly recommend it.

As a recent recreational licenced holder for reptiles this book gave the information in detail on every aspect regarding Australian snakes.It has a fresh, relevant approach to understanding our native reptiles. I found it very easy reading. It will be a wonderful reference guide and Im sure will be used regulary not only by myself but the whole family. It kept the interest of this household from a five year old to mid 40's, including changing the attutude of my wife who always had a fear of snakes. She read the book.The book starts with the Anatomy of snakes through to their habitat, behaviour, eating ,breeding and relationship both past and present with humans. Each page contains beautiful photographs on equal standing with any other publication.Sensational. Good enough to purchase two books. One for constant use, another to keep on the shelf. From a subject that is difficult to find much written about in this detail (Australian Snakes), this book covers most information without adding in other countries that for Australian purposes would not be of much use.

If you haven't yet met Phryne Fischer, what are you waiting for? This is a fun series with an independent, unique heroin. Check them out!

_away with the fairies_ is part of one of the most consistently well-written mystery series i know, and i've been reading mysteries for many many years.

the historical facts are always fascinating, the characters are well-drawn individuals, the writing is always first rate, and the mystery here, as in the other titles, won't be solved by the third chapter. the description of the meals phyrne's cook produces are enough to cause weight gain. and the humor can produce anything from a slight smile to a loud guffaw.

i'm thrilled to see that greenwood's current publisher has brought the series back to the states--the first three were published here in paperback in the early 90s. i enjoy them so much i finally ordered all the other ten titles in paperback from australia--in spite of the extortionate postage. now that i can buy hardback editions from amazon, i'm a very happy reader. i think other mystery readers will be equally happy once they try this wonderful series.

When Marcella Lavender dies, a guilty Detective Inspector Jack Robinson asks private detective Phyrne Fisher to determine whether she died of natural causes or was murdered. Marcella came to him a few weeks ago, showing him threatening letters she received and he told her not to worry because poison pen letter writers usually don't do anything violent. Now he is second guessing himself and wants a second opinion and there is no one he respects more for getting to the bottom of things than Phyrne.

Miss Lavender was a writer who produced many books about fairies and was the advice columnist at a progressive woman's magazine Women's Choice. She also has an unexplained monthly income from the Marshall & Company. Nosing around Ms. Lavender's work place and apartment complex, Phyrne learns that she was not well liked and when the autopsy reports show she died of cyanide poisoning the sleuth dives into the investigation with enthusiasm in part to get her mind off her lover Lin Chung who is in a dangerous China currently wracked by turmoil.

AWAY WITH THE FAIRIES takes place in 1928 Melbourne starring a rich, young independent heroine with an adventurous spirit who doesn't believe that women should be held down because of their gender. She has the respect of the crusty Detective Inspector and mixes with people of all social classes. The brilliant private investigator makes this tale hum as historical who-done-it readers will take delight with her inquiries into an unpopular victim with several individuals having motives and opportunities but without knowing which one would actually kill. Kerry Greenwood makes it impossible for the audience not to like the charming Phyrne or her investigations.

Harriet Klausner

This book was a gift from a friend in Australia and has been a favorite ever since my daughter turned 1 (she's now 3.) The Aussie animals are interesting, and its a good way to help young children learn about the phases of the moon. The illustrations are great, too.

A charming book which my 3 year-old daughter greatly enjoys. We talk about why there are phases of the moon and the life of nocturnal animals. And it's fun. [Note: I'm not related to the main character.]

I picked up this book on a recent trip to Australia to read to my 2.5 year old. He LOVES it. He gets to learn a bit about Australian fauna and flora and gets to learn about the moon waxing and waning. He now TELLS me the story instead of letting me read it. I also picked him up a stuffed bilby which he loves to snuggle while we go over the story. It is simple yet engaging and has beautiful drawings. Now when we look at the moon in the sky my son tells me whether it is smiling or whether it is getting smaller or bigger or half of it has disappeared.