Robertson Books

Six Australian children are each emotional, in their various ways, to be going on a light aircraft trip to Coonabibba Station , in Western New South Wales. These children are:

Gerald and Carol, firm friends, and members of the 'in' group,
Colin and Mark, a quiet older brother and a rowdy younger brothers, and,
Bruce and Jan, fraternal twins, the brother burley and affable and the sister nervous and intuitive.

Coonabibba is Gerald's family's place and the children are invited there for his birthday party and to stay weekend. But little do the children know that something terrible is about to happen. This disaster will challenge all of them and deeply affect them as they rise to meet the challenge.

While there are numerous books in the 'survival' genre this one shines above the rest due to the author's excellent writing style. Southall manages to instill the text with stress and tension, sustaining it chapter after chapter. He achieves this effect by concentrating on the psychological affects of events on his characters, especially letting us hear their inner monologue as they struggle with their needs, wishes and inadequacies. In this way Southall manages to truly involve and move the reader. The first half of the book is in fact some of the best writing I have read for some time, even outshining many writers for adults. Another point in Southall's favor is that he manages to take his characters somewhere. The six children at the end of the book are very different from those we begin with. The reader comes to empathize with all the individual children as their fortunes rise and fall. won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award for 1968 and that prize was truly deserved. While the book is now quite old it has not dated in any way as Southall has kept the text quite clean of cultural and historical references.

Six Australian children are each emotional, in their various ways, to be going on a light aircraft trip to Coonabibba Station , in Western New South Wales. These children are:

Gerald and Carol, firm friends, and members of the 'in' group,
Colin and Mark, a quiet older brother and a rowdy younger brothers, and,
Bruce and Jan, fraternal twins, the brother burley and affable and the sister nervous and intuitive.

Coonabibba is Gerald's family's place and the children are invited there for his birthday party and to stay weekend. But little do the children know that something terrible is about to happen. This disaster will challenge all of them and deeply affect them as they rise to meet the challenge.

While there are numerous books in the 'survival' genre this one shines above the rest due to the author's excellent writing style. Southall manages to instill the text with stress and tension, sustaining it chapter after chapter. He achieves this effect by concentrating on the psychological affects of events on his characters, especially letting us hear their inner monologue as they struggle with their needs, wishes and inadequacies. In this way Southall manages to truly involve and move the reader. The first half of the book is in fact some of the best writing I have read for some time, even outshining many writers for adults. Another point in Southall's favor is that he manages to take his characters somewhere. The six children at the end of the book are very different from those we begin with. The reader comes to empathize with all the individual children as their fortunes rise and fall. won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award for 1968 and that prize was truly deserved. While the book is now quite old it has not dated in any way as Southall has kept the text quite clean of cultural and historical references.

"Toxin" is a follow-up to "Venom Vs. Carnage." I was sucked into "V Vs. C" because, besides the allure of those two titans clashing, the comic included Felicia Hardy/Black Cat, and if I ever had a crush on a fictional character, it's Black Cat.
Anyway, in that particular comic, the Carnage symbiote gave birth to an offspring, the grandchild of Venom. The new symbiote bonded with Patrick Mulligan, an NYPD officer. With the help of Black Cat and Spider-Man, Mulligan decided to channel the symbiote for good. It was a fairly decent read.

"Toxin" is actually a better comic. While "V Vs. C" was fairly decent, "Toxin" is fairly spectacular. "Toxin" picks up where "V Vs. C" left off. Patrick Mulligan has walked away from everything he loves: his career as a cop, his wife, and his newborn son, in order to try to gain control of his symbiote, whom he calls Toxin. Along the way, Toxin does battle with villains like Mr. Hyde, King Cobra, The Answer, The Pile Driver, and Razor Fist. Any of those names ring a bell? They don't for me.

The main, and most interesting, of the villains is Razor Fist. A first-rate sociopath who lost both of his hand and had them replaced with sword blades. Sure, he's extremely evil, but he looks more than a little cheesy. He's certainly no Doc Ock or Green Goblin, much less a Venom or Carnage. Anyway, Razor Fist has brainwashed an army of small children, turning them into psychotic serial killers. He calls them "Piranha Tots." He's blackmailing New York by threatening to unleash the Piranha Tots to slice up innocent victims on a day he calls "Slasherday."

Plot aside, the character of Toxin is the true driving force of the story. Or characters. Unlike Eddie Brach and Venom or Kletus Cassidy and Carnage, Patrick Mulligan and Toxin coexist simultaneously, often conversing and arguing with each other throughout the story. The symbiote itself doesn't seem inherently evil. It's more like a naïve child. Meanwhile, Pat Mulligan struggles with using Toxin as a vigilante without going to far. At one point, Mulligan steps in to avenge a cop that's been murdered, and Toxin viciously murders the killer. Parallels are drawn to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Deservingly so. Also, Mulligan struggles with his decision to leave his family behind them. This is real character drama fueling the story, rather than action. In fact, most of the story's violence is unseen, and only implied.

Spider-Man makes occasional appearances though Black Cat, sadly, does not. At first, I missed the artwork of Clayton Crain, who brought a realistic look to "V Vs. C" and made Black Cat sexier than ever. But Darick Robertson brings a great look to the characters of the story, and his depiction of the Piranha Tots is especially disturbing. And Toxin is an amazing character. He deserves his own video games, action figure, and definitely more comic book spin-offs.

This book is a concise and clearly written guide to the best of the new economic thinking taking place in the world today. James Robertson is not only one of the most respected prophets of economic transformation, but also an excellent writer who demystifies the topic in language understandable by anyone. In this 77 page booklet, Robertson summarizes the needed changes in government and the market, common resources, money and finance, and the global economy. All his ideas rely on practical solutions based on principles of efficiency, equity, and ecology. The guide to organizations is also very useful for practical action. If you want to know the future of economics, read it here first.

A Treatise of Mathematical Instruments contains a complete description of a range of tools that are useful in mathematics, surveying, architecture, navigation, drafting, gunnery, physics, and illustration. It covers the sector (a form of calculator that predates the slide rule), the gunner's calipers, the proportional compasses, and a variety of lesser instruments.

Examples show how to use all of the instruments, with extensive details on architectural drawing, plane geoemtry, spherical trigonometry, unit conversion, surveying, perspective drawing, and ship's guns (cannons and mortars). 12 plates of figures illustrate and clarify the text.

Anyone who has ever drafted a plan or drawing by hand or recalls having used a slide rule will be interested in this book. Those who has only used electronic devices will learn something new. Additionally, a wealth of historical details are revealed through the extensive figures and the text.

Modern notes include a biography of the author John Robertson, an explanation of some of the notation used in the book, and a brief commentary and history on mathematical methods, surveying, navigation, and architecture.

Reminiscent of Ken Kesey's cult classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Australian author Peter Kocan's incredible novel "The Treatment and The Cure" is destined to enter the annals of asylum and prison literature. Originally published as two separate novellas, "The Cure" won the 1983 NSW Premier Literary Award for Fiction. Europa Books recently released both titles in one volume.

In 1966 at age 19, Peter Kocan made the headlines when he attempted to assassinate politician Arthur Calwell, federal opposition leader with a sawn-off shotgun. Injuring Calwell, Kocan was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted for attempted murder. With a sentence of life imprisonment, Kocan first went to Long Bay and then Morisset Psychiatric Hospital.

Based on Kocan's experiences, "The Treatment and The Cure" recreates the cockeyed world inside of an asylum, and Len Tarbutt, a lonely, damaged and confused nineteen-year-old tells the story. Len describes what he sees and what he does in the second person "you" and this creates an interesting, depersonalized sense of numbing distance between the narrator and his experiences. Although many of the incidents described here are harrowing, this is not some whining pity-me diatribe, but a witty, clever, unsentimental and sublimely clear depiction of a system in which those who are supposedly 'normal' manage those judged insane. The inmates are a motley assortment: murderers, depressives, and a peeping Tom. Some of the inmates--drooling zombies--are drugged out of their minds; others are subjected to shock treatment at the behest of the absent-minded Dr. "Electric Ned."

When Len first arrives, the asylum is a total change of pace from the prison he just left--almost too good to be true, but in the maximum-security wing, he soon discovers that medications and shock treatment are to be avoided at all costs. With sadistic, resentful and possibly bored prison employees ready and eager to trigger a trip to Electric Ned, Len realizes that the path to avoiding shock treatment is fraught with traps and rules he doesn't yet understand.

In "The Treatment and The Cure" Kocan manages to inject a lively off-kilter sense of humor on almost every page. For example, in one episode, Len's mother comes to visit. A nice woman, she's completely out of her depth when it comes to dealing with a mental asylum. She meets a Polish inmate named Zurka, and finding him pleasant and charming, she nonchalantly discusses her train journey. Zurka is a brutal ax murderer who went berserk on a train one day, and Len watches Zurka chatting to his mother noting that he feels a "faint worry when the talk is about the train trip. Zurka chopped those people up on a train and you're afraid the subject of trains might be risky. You're also feeling a vague sense of satisfaction to think that you can introduce your visitor to someone who's chopped people up."

Len faces his greatest challenges when he moves out of maximum security. Drawn to poetry and the suffering of long-dead WWI poets, Len navigates through loneliness, despair and depression with a few lifelines thrown by those rare individuals who step in and offer kindness. While some inmates are crushed and destroyed by their experiences in the mental asylum, Len emerges from his deeply troubled cocoon as a mature, thoughtful and triumphant human being with the profound realization that 'mad' is a "word that doesn't mean anything."

'The Treatment and the Cure' is a very special novel, both for its straightforward and often humorous portrayal of a mentally disturbed young man and also the glimpse it offers the reader into the daily goings on of a hospital for the criminally insane. Kocan, like the main character in the book, was institutionalized for attempted murder. In the 1970's he unsuccessfully tried to assassinate the Labour politician Arthur Caldwell. During his time in hospital he discovered poetry and eventually published some of the finest volumes of post- World War 2 poetry in Australia. Among his collections are 'The other side of the fence' (1975), probably the best poetic evocation of life in a mental institution produced by an Australia poet, with the possible exception of Francis Webb's 'Ward Two', and also the more recent 'Fighting in the Shade'.

The novel is disturbing in its subject matter, but also cathartic when we begin to glimpse the humanity of the inmates. It has something of the frivolity and anarchy of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, yet it has a darker and more disquietning undertone. This is not a hospital of mute Indians or neurotic teenagers. We are given an insight into the conversations and lives of murderers and psychopaths, yet somehow we also sense their humanity and that they are, in some way, not so unlike ourselves. Given their situation and upbringing we may have become one of them. The book is an intimate account of how the human mind can heal itself, and of how a socially isolated and troubled young man was rehabilitated through his love of poetry and nature. History may judge 'The Treatment and the Cure' to be one of the finest and humane novels to come out of Australia.

I was involved from the begining of this book and it took up a lot of my time to help Keith sort out some of the misconceptions with regard to some of the species. As I had been involved in the growing of PAPHIOPEDILUMS for a considerable time, and in breeding them I hope that I helped to bring this book to its final form. The trouble that was taken to obtian good photographs of all the specie was a long and dificult job as I can afirm. As recently I have had to give up orchid growing due to various reasons, I still look in this book to keep reminding me what great pleasure that I have had gorwing them in the past. We used to visit each others collections from time to time and exchange plants and ideas, and generally talk about what the future will bring. I can only recomend that anyone growing specie PAPHIOPEDILUMS this book is a must. Regards John L Marks

FULL Contents
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1) Introduction
2) Skit
3) Background
4) The Missing Manuscript
5) The Black Hole Theory
6) DNA Evidence
7) Small Scale Model
8) The Book of Abraham
9) Polygamy-Part I: Origin
10) Polygamy-Part II: D&C 132
11) Polygamy-Part III: Deception
12) Polygamy-Part IV: Sorrows
13) Polygamy-Part V: Today
14) Theological Problems
15) Eternal Progression
16) Salvation
17) Baptism for the Dead
18) The Church of the Devil
19) Anti-Mormon
20) Latter-day Saints
21) Conclusion
22) Credits

Running Time: over 3.5 hours on three compact discs

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