Australia Books

How many towns like Drylands dot the planet? Anywhere drought's furnace breath dries the paddocks and desiccates the stock. Any place where people hold on beyond hope, fearful of change, yet facing only further exhaustion. Such a town sits on the edge of despair, infecting its residents with a deadly torpor. What if one of the townspeople decides to chronicle this theatre of defeat? Which one will observe with purpose instead of ennui? Most importantly, who will read the story?

Astley's run of works has dealt with the small-town idiom before. This book, which capped her illustrious career, is her greatest literary achievement. It's about a remote town and its remote people. Janet Deakin resides in Drylands, struggling to retain a bookstore, which is nothing more than a newsagency. The coastal papers, some fly-specked magazines, a rack of dusty paperback "Westerns" or mysteries. Books don't sell well in Drylands, but beer does. Widowed and alone, Janet watches her town diminish and the world outside continue on, unknowing and uncaring. Deakin bemoans the dominance of the telly, the video film, the game pods that are driving people away from reading. Alone in her flat, she wants to arouse those "twenty-six black characters" that have inspired people to tears, laughter, follies and hope. She wants to write for the last reader.

She has a cast of characters to draw on. One man is on the run, but not because he's a criminal. An itinerant literati arrives in town to teach people how to write. Four women attend, only to be set upon by resentful husbands. The liveliest spot in town is the pub, of course. "The Legless Lizard", run by an expat Yank from New Orleans and his Brisbane-born wife, suffuses the town with the din of sports on the telly. It struggles to survive where income is limited and drop-in trade scanty. Lannie Cunneen, burdened with six sons and a husband who knows that "women have their place" and wants to keep that fixed, fixes her nine thousand, three hundred and twenty-eighth school lunch. And makes a decision. In effect, all the townspeople are on the run, but not all of them are moving.

Astley's portrayal of desperation and resentment at fate's dealings had few parallels. She had an amazing talent for description and feelings. The power of language seems to flow easily through her fingers to these pages. She knew the country of her settings - the creeks without water, the intensity of the sky overhead, the loneliness of living remote from others. Her characters are intensely human. If some of them seem extreme, consider their situation before judgement. Under her deft touch, none of them are artificial. Any of them could be your neighbour - perhaps some of them are. All these stories are tragedies. Humour might have lightened these tales, but their message would have been distorted. The best humour here becomes only cruel irony. The greatest irony in this book is the reader's final predicament - who wrote the book, Janet Deakin or Thea Astley?

Be prepared for a different world in this book. It's a distant place for some, right outside the front door for others. It's an untidy narrative, with much interweaving of characters and events. There are endings that resolve nothing. Astley will introduce her people who will then keep you reading without pause. There is sorrow here, and violence. But love isn't banished and it provides amelioration to offset them. Astley captures and imparts it all, in prose and love of country that can only be described as passionate. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Embittered and sharp-witted widow Janet Deakin sits in her flat above the newsagency in Drylands - an emptying, disintegrating outback town, 'pouring itself out like water into sand' - and proposes to write a book for the world's last reader. Her interconnected tales recount the real or imagined struggles of the townsfolk against the entropy of rural subsistence, the innate and inane brutality of Australian men, the powerlessness of poverty and colour, and the idiocy of wasted years. In escaping from Drylands her characters all achieve small victories, but they're equally hollowed by the question, "And then?" Having escaped, what now? Where to? With whom? As one character puts it, "Nothing's ever finished. Didn't you know? ... Nothing. It goes on and on." Only in the arms of her husband does one woman find a fullness to pit against this constant emptying, a tenderness described as beginning, middle and end. Astley is one of Australia's most prolific, versatile and socially conscious writers, and "Drylands" is one of her better works. It could be enjoyed simply as a collection of quintessentially Australian stories, or more seriously as a meditation on a decaying culture and, specifically, the loss of literacy. Reading is figured in this book as the thing that might have "saved" us if it weren't already too late; page and screen are presented as mutually exclusive and morally opposed. In the final moments, narrator Deakin is bitterly tickled by the memory of discovering a reference to a Rimbaud poem in the naming of an Australian house, "Bateau Ivre" (The Drunken Boat); she's amused by the utter implausibility of the suggestion that Australia could ever have been so civilised. But in referencing Rimbaud, Astley might also be giving us a clue to one way her novel can be read - as a livre composé that borrows the narrative pattern of Rimbaud's poem, but swaps its visionary journey over European water for an ironic tilt over Australian sand. Whatever you make of "Drylands", the prose is dazzling. As Astley herself might lament, to call it "literary" these days risks the misinterpretation that it's pretentious. What I mean is that it's sharp, evocative and above all accurate. Astley's vision has a stark and pitiless precision - the characters and settings are vividly realized and instantly recognisable as Australian without ever being cliché. You get the sense she could conjure the nation in a single phrase. As Randolph Stow noted in another context: "What enormous and desolate landscapes are opened by the voice of a lone crow."

This book left me shell-shocked. The writing is so good, the characters so well-drawn . . . really, I am at a loss as to what to say. I read the whole collection in one night. I had read "Rose" earlier, in another collection, and upon re-reading it I was still shocked and moved! I was also moved by "Deaths At Sea". Great stuff all around. Like the previous reviewer, I wish Dubus was still with us to write more stories like these. I do not like to give 5 stars out very freely, and when I love a book I usually give it 4. But this one was different.

The Last Worthless Evening is Andre Dubus's least acclaimed collection, but it contains one of his most moving novellas, "Rose," and another fine novella, "Molly," that has been neglected by most readers because it has not been collected in his Selected Stories or Collected Novellas.

I can hardly think of a more adult book than The Last Worthless Evening. It is compassionate, wise, and unflinching in its examination of its characters. I only wish Dubus had stuck around a few more years so we could have more stories like these.

I was interested in reading about the Echidna after reading another fascinating one about the Platypus. At 120 pages, I was worried that this book would be on a juvenile level. Actually, it is written in a way that can be enjoyed by everyone from interested middle school scholars to mature individuals with substantial knowledge of science and an interest in learning more about a fascinating mammal. Well written, very interesting, and highly recommended.

Peggy Rismuller's book has everything for the echidna lover - info on the species habitat and biology, intriguing pictures and excellent real life stories. This book is great for fans of the echidna everywhere!

I started doing hardanger about 2 years ago and taught myself from magazines -- and yes, I learned had some bad stitching habits. I've been looking for good reference books to help me really learn the correct way to stitch. This book is at the top of my list! I love the layout -- starting with the basics and working up to the most complicated techniques. The excellent illustrations and explainations on the right and wrong way to stitch really helped me to see what I was doing wrong and how to stitch the right way. And I know for a fact that the explainations on how to fix stitching and/or cutting errors are easy to understand and follow. Whenever I come to a stitch I haven't done before, this is the first book I pull out!

Now, lets talk about the projects and pictures. There's a color photo for each project in the middle of the book and a black & white photo with each project. The charts range from beginner to advanced level, and trust me, you'll want to stitch each one. The fibers and fabrics called for are pretty easy to acquire either from your local store or the internet; and if you need to substitute something, you can do so with ease.

I can't recommend this book highly enough!! And if you have any questions about the designs or techniques, you can reach the author via e-mail and she's friendly and very happy to help. Whether you're a beginner or have been stitching for years, you can't go wrong by adding this book to your library!

This book is fantastic! I wish I had had it when I was beginning hardanger. It has very clear step by step stitch instructions with really nice diagrams that are clear and understandable. It has lots of hints and tips to make your work better. It shows you how to fix any mistakes. It tells you how the stitches should and shouldn't look - which other books don't do.
And then there's the projects - they're not just all doilies. It also has cushions, bolster, cards, scissors case etc. The projects show a range of finishing techniques, meaning that you don't just have to frame everything!
I highly recommend this book to ALL hardanger embroiderers: both beginners and advanced stitchers will get a lot out of it.

In the scope of the great cities worldwide, Melbourne is a baby. Slightly larger than Vatican City, it's easy to write the city off in contrast to the big five; New York, Paris, Rome, London and Tokyo. However, I always felt with utmost conviction that Melbourne can hold a torch to those great landscapes because of the sheer number of cultures, religions, ideas, viewpoints and backgrounds that have been integrated to give this city its unique character unlike anything else in Australia; Melbourne truly falls under the banner of melting-pot. This encyclopaedia chronicles all the suburbs, municipalities, nationalities, landmarks and institutions that have given the city its rich, albeit short, history from the indigenous era to the gold rush to the booming years of development during the last few decades. The Encyclopedia of Melbourne deserves a place on the bookshelf of any Australian who feels a strong sense of loyalty to Marvellous Melbourne.

Melbourne is easily the best city in Australia. It has the best geography, architecture, restaurants, coffee shops, public transport (we have a fantastic tram network), libraries, galleries and gardens. On top of all that, its inhabitants are remarkably relaxed and friendly. The new 'Encyclopedia of Melbourne' is like the city, expansive and generous, and great for dipping & skipping through over a few weeks. It has hundreds of contributors and a number of personal essays by notable Melbournians (and it weighs a ton). It has a huge range of subjects, including a small section about 'nature strips' and a couple of pages about smells. One of the most poetic entries is about Victoria's seasons and their taxonomy, which were reclassified according to observations of plant and animal life (and removed autumn).

Anyone familiar with Melbourne will find one or two problems: I noticed the section about the National Gallery of Victoria neglected to mention the architect, Roy Grounds. Some readers might also find the general style of the prose too academic or humourless.

Canberra is tranquil but entirely suburban and Perth, Hobart and Brisbane are perhaps too small (but I haven't lived in those three) and Sydney - urgh - is an ugly, car-crushed wasteland that only ignorant tourists could love (yes, I lived there for six years and it's a hole). Melbourne seems to have all the best features of a great city without the usual attendant problems. Was this from luck or the talents of its citizens?

This book is simply outstanding. It assumes knowledge of basic chemistry, and a certain degree of comfort with the mathematics of chemistry, and covers only the basics of thermodynamics, as applied to chemistry. To some degree it even paves the way for the later study of statistical mechanics. I won't claim it makes the material easy to learn, but it does as good a job of this as any other text I've read.

This book makes an excellent supplement to most college chemistry textbooks, which have confusing and generally inadequate discussions of thermodynamics. The exercises are reasonable and quite helpful for understanding the material.

As a last comment, I want to point out that the price is absurd--this is a tiny paperback volume, and as good as it is, it is hardly worth paying more than $40 for; the publishers should be ashamed of themselves.

It is certainly a good intro to Thermodynamics book, but it'stoo skimpy for the money. At only 200 pages, it isn't a completetextbook on the subject, but noteworthy and significant nonetheless.

While most American schoolchildren in the U.S. are taught of the American Revolution as a glorious struggle of backwoods colonials fighting for their freedom and independence against the world's most powerful empire, few, if any, are taught of the great tragedy experienced by African-Americans, many of them former slaves, who fought with or sided with the British in the hopes that they would secure their individual freedoms. I was one of those many schoolchildren inculcated in the myth of the Revolution, but I have since expanded my knowledge of the Revolution beyond the history texts. Despite this, I was not aware of the globe-circling stories of former slaves of the American Revolution as carefully documented and researched by Cassandra Pybus in "Epic Journeys of Freedom". But now that I am, I hope these stories become more widely known as examples of not only the failure of the American Revolution to live up to its ideals, but more important, as examples of the unquenchable human desire for freedom and the extent to which brave men and women will go to find it.

I cannot do justice to any of the individual stories in "Epic Journeys of Freedom" in this or any review, and much of the immediacy and drama of the stories come from the first-hand sources of the era that Pybus has collected and orchestrated into compelling narratives. By retelling the history of individual lives set within the context of the American Revolution and its aftermath, Pybus reduces a mythic, seminal event in America's founding to a personal level. The eyes through which we see the Revolution, however, belong not to the victors, but to the disenfranchised and dehumanized; America's victory meant their enslavement, so they fled the land of liberty to seek their own freedom across distant borders and oceans.

Some may ask why bring up more stories of America's past injustices when we have come so far in addressing them. We read these stories and remember their lives because they remind us why men and women have risked all and died for their freedom. They remind us of both our worse and better natures, and offer hope for a more just and free world.

The first three "official" reviews of this book fail to convey the sheer original, revealing, even emotional nature of this book. Many Americans now accept that their patriotic Revolutionary ancestors--including the Founding Fathers--owned slaves. Some Americans are aware that many of these slaves fled to the British controlled areas and cities under the promise of gaining freedom. A few Americans may then know of what happened to these former slaves--how many were take off to Nova Scotia with thousands of white Loyalists. What Cassandra Pybus reveals in this book opens all this up into dimensions undreamed of by all but perhaps a literal handful of historians. And in fact, what she presents is more like a nightmare than a dream. In an impeccably researched and footnoted narrative, she first investigates those three relatively "knowns" that I referred to above, providing details that will astound most of us. And when she goes onto present the story of what happenened to most of these former slaves as they movd on not only to Nova Scotia and London but then on to Sierra Leone and Australia--well, it is history as revelation. Although Pybus stays rooted in the strictest procedures of the historian, the end effect is to feel you are reading a novel. But a novel describing events of such unnmitigated misery, of human suffering, of human cruelty, that no novelist would dare invent these happenings. I defy any reader to put the book down saying (a) "Oh, I had suspected all this might have happened" and (b) "In any case I can't see getting especially worked up over it." The end result is a book that both charges far more human beings than we have imagined with being cruel to African-Americans and at the same time informs us of how many of these same African-Americans endured these cruelties and utimately prevailed. In a word, I found it spellbinding!

There are several reasons why I strongly recommend this book to adults and younger readers. First is the simplicity and clarity (maybe authenticity is a better word) of the writing. I felt as if Mary Bryant were talking rather than being talked for. The Hausmans allow her spirit and courage to come through in a way that keeps the sadness or difficulty of the events of Mary's life from overwhelming the story. The story rings true historically, especially with the conditions on the "death" ships and life in the colonies. Knowing that the story is true brings not only Mary alive, but also the richness and complexity of life in the late 1700's. I am in awe of the Hausmans' research, their skill, perseverance and creativity.

If someone were to say that the content of the story (imprisonment, cruelty, death) is too "heavy" for juvenile readers, I would respond that the handling of Mary's character lifts the story out of the realm of defeat and disaster. Children look for stories that are honest about the scariness of the world but also show them how they and/or the spirit can triumph. Importantly in this story, the triumph or survival comes from who Mary is, not from some external magic potion. The fact that Mary is a true historical person and not fictional is also important, especially since the story itself is so very readable--it lets kids see that real people and real life are interesting and exciting, that history is made of real people just trying to get back home.
Adolescent girls need (yearn) to read about real heroines like Mary, not the psuedo-women who are really just macho men with breasts who are passed off as heroines in movies and TV. There is just a real need for stories like Mary's to be told with the love and quality with which the Hausmans told Mary Bryant's story. As Boswell worked hard to free the real Mary, so the authors have freed the historical Mary.

In 1786 19-year-old Mary has been sentenced to hang for stealing a lady's bonnet - but instead finds herself on a prison ship bound for Botany Bay in Australia. Told in the first person, this tells of her struggles on the ship, her new life on land, and her journey into adulthood and family life.

I knew for some time how close I got to having a vaccine-caused catastrophe with my oldest child. When I read his account, I was even more sure. And I cried for hours as I read his book. A tragedy came close to me and my life. But thousands and thousands of others have already been touched by the tragedy of childhood vaccines and I believe that millions more will need to be sacrificed before the big money making pharmacies are controlled and no longer permitted to continue to kill our children and continue to create a generation of neurologically damaged children. ADD is running at 1 in 5. Autism is running at 1 in 150. Why isn't everyone startled at a striking percentage of an entire generation being neurologically damaged?

My impulse when I don't know what is happening medically is to give vitamin C. This is a legitimate medical response promoted by some wholistically oriented medical doctors. So when my child was reacting SEVERLY right after each vaccine and my physician said that it was NOTHING, I gave vitamin C. And I gave more and more as she went back on a dramatic downward slide with each new vaccine. As I read the book, I saw that the same thing that almost killed my child was the same thing that killed thousands of children referrenced in this book: vaccines. And I saw that the same thing that saved my child is the same thing that saved many children under the care of the author Archie Kalokerinos: vitamin C. I find myself crying even now as I recall my experiences and recall reading this book. It is an eye-opener.

By the way, my daughter is fine now. She had a very rough start to put it mildly. It took years of wholistic remedies to detox her, always including vitamin C. She is towards the top of her class academically, a wonderful piano player and by far the very best athlete in the school, boys included.

This book MUST be made into a movie -- a major movie with big stars which people will pay attention to. Because the vaccination paradigm lies at the very core of allopathic medicine an understanding of its profound weaknesses by enough people could revolutionize modern medicine.

Dr. Kalokerinos, a medical GP working in the Australian outback with the Aborigines, discovered that vitamin C prevents sudden infant deaths (SIDS) brought on by malnutrition and by the introduction of immunization shots. Infants near death were revived by vitamin C injections, and the 50% death rate (hence the title) in the region dropped to near zero during his 8-year practice. Deaths rose to former levels after he was drummed out by the Australian health authorities.

Dr. K found his clinical observations and conclusions ridiculed & ignored by the authorities, and still suffers hostility, persecution and shunning by the medical establishment.

His work is deservedly praised by other medical heretics including Pauling, Klenner, Cathcart and others who challenge the myths that shots are health-giving and that vitamin C is good only for preventing scurvy.

A great book by a great doctor, it should be read by every caring current or future parent. Pediatricians and MDs in general too.

This is one of the best books on conflict resolution I have seen. It is practical, easy to read, makes conflict understandable and laughable, and covers the key underlying problems inherent in most conflict scenarios. Most people view conflict as an out and out battle. Clues and levels of conflict are discussed and tools anyone can use are included. I had used their earlier version for an under-graduate (college level) course I taught from 1992-1998 and the book always received rave reviews. Delightful book for a difficult topic!

This excellent workbook for handling interpersonal conflict has been reprinted over thirteen times since it was originally published in 1989, and enjoys international recognition as one of the most practical "tool-kits" for achieving win/win resolutions. There are twelve "tools" in the kit. Just as a tool has many uses, so these skills can be transferred across diverse spheres of activity. The skills you teach a young child are basically the same ones needed by an international diplomat. One morning at 7:00 a.m. you'll pull out a "tool" for a problem in the kitchen, and find yourself needing it again in a difficult meeting at 11:00 a.m. The book presents everyday examples and stories that reflect the variety of contexts and the transferability of skills. Issues dealt with include: creative response, empathy, assertiveness, co-operative power, managing emotions, mapping conflict, negotiation/mediation, and broadening perspectives. There is also a helpful Conflict Checklist in the Appendices to analyze a problem in detail or to decide which tool is most needed in a situation. This is an indispensable reference for leaders who must frequently deal with conflict.