Oceania Books

This is undoubtedly the best analysis of the High Court of Australia ever compiled. It is easy to use, being fully indexed, and it covers every aspect of the court from biographical details of Judges to analysis of important decisions. It is a great mixture of history and information.

The individual entries have been written by eminent judges, jurists and lawyers in Australia. It was edited by 3 of the most well regarded legal academics in Australian history and is a terrific reference source. I can recommend it to anyone with an interest or need to look in detail at the Australian legal system. There is no other work with such detail and information in one volume.

This volume represents the most comprehensive bank of information on the High Court to date. With no less than 800 pages dedicated to the various aspects of the Court's history, personalities and institutional structures, it is a must-own for the students of the High Court.

The book is organized encyclopedia-style, with entries arranged alphabetically from the AAP Case (1975) to Ziems v. Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of NSW (1957). The entries are contributed by various Australian legal scholars, and cover a very wide range of interests. My personal favorite entry is the one on 'Jurimetrics' by Tony Blackshield.

Despite the hefty price tag (to match such a hefty book), this is one book that is well worth owning. Toting it around may give me permanent back problems, but I'm willing to risk it.

The Pacific Ocean is Earth's largest single feature and covers a third of the planet's surface. But photographer Peter Hendrie has found inspiration enough to add a whole new dimension to the beauty and power of its landscape and the richness of its cultures. It's a dimension that allows him to transform landscape and lifestyle from the merely pictorial to a vibrant experience of the Pacific legend. His pictures capture the piquancy of the moment the image was taken,prompting envy of the photographer's vision plus a valuable insight into how to read such evocative images. No other places on Earth possess the enduring magic of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, and Hendrie powerfully reinforces their merger of romance and reality.
I rate Pacific Journeys - 5/5

The Pacific Ocean is Earth's single largest feature and covers a third of its surface. But photographer Peter Hendrie has found inspiration enough to apply a whole new dimension to the beauty and power of its panorama and the richness of its cultures. It is a dimension that allows him to transform landscape and lifestyle from the purely pictorial to a vibrant experience of the Pacific legend. His images possess the piquancy of the very moments he captured them, prompting an envy of his vision and a thoroughly-satisfying lesson in how to read evocative images. Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia have no equals when it comes to enduring magic, and Hendrie brilliantly reinforces their unique merger of romance and reality.
I rate Pacific Journeys - 5/5

This is one of those rare academic books that has much to say to the general reader as well. The images are both beautiful and disturbing. I never before realized just how outsiders viewed women of the Pacific regions... once you see it, though, you'll always be aware of it. Dr. O'Brien has written a powerful and important book.

The general reader with an interest in women's studies, history or anthropology will find O'Brien's book, as I did, a well researched and thoroughly intriguing study of Pacific women's lives since the earliest voyages of discovery. The colonial stereotypes of the exotic Pacific woman are analyzed in a contemporary perspective from the viewpoints of art, literature, film and journals of the explorers and missionaries. This book opened my eyes to the facts that since the 1500's women of the Pacific have been romanticized, educated by missionaries, used, abused and sexually exploited for the advantage of the colonial powers.This is a "must read" for understanding the myth of "The Pacific Muse". It opens another window for understanding women's lives for those of us lacking background of Pacific history during this period.

If you ever want to know anything about the rainforest, this is the series to buy. The author thoroughly discusses people, environment, and hope for rainforests. Beautiful colored pictures throughout the book supports the easy written text. I highly recommend this series to any student who needs to do a report on the rainforest. This series is a must have in any children's library collection.

If you ever want to know anything about the rainforest, this is the series to buy. The author thoroughly discusses people, environment, and hope for rainforests. Beautiful colored pictures throughout the book supports the easy written text. I highly recommend this series to any student who needs to do a report on the rainforest. This series is a must have in any children's library collection.

My history professor claims that this is one book which former students complain about years after having read it. It is dense. There are lots of odd names which run together. It is absolutely not for the casual reader. But I would consider it necessary reading for all scholars of China, Asia, or just history in general. I found it fascinating that the steppe tribes and the various Chinese governments had a not-always unspoken agreement, in which the tribes were essentially allowed to conquer a limited region of China, in exchange for securing trade routes and defending against tribes outside of the system.

Barfield's primary thesis is that the dynamics of Chinese civilization are not intelligible considered in isoloation. Rather, comprehension requires the distinction between Manchurian and Native dynasties and the role that empires of the steppe played in the changes between them.

Of special interest is that by far the best know steppe empire, that of the Mongols under Temujin and his successors, was an anomalous exception to the 2,000 year pattern. Typical steppe empires were interested in extortion (or tribute, or gifts, depending on who tells the story), not direct rule.

If you're a student of Chinese history or of the dynamics of civilizations, read this book. You'll think differently.

This book is rich with detail. The author goes beyond the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty and tells us what happens next, from the late 1700s to the present day. This is a fascinating account of the lives of the people who inhabit and visit Pitcairn Island.

I had a strong hunch before purchasing this book that it would turn out to be an exciting read. Last year at our local college I took Professor Robert Kirk's American History course (1865-present), and I was impressed with how he could transform what otherwise might be a series of dry facts and events into themed narrative tales that had the same compelling force as dramatic fiction.

And Pitcairn Island does not disappoint. Kirk just knows how to tell a tale, and he does this with the same narrative drive he uses in his lectures, and with the same wryness. Describing the fate of the captured mutineers: "Slowly gasping for air, each of the condemned was hoisted up by his neck. It was as good free entertainment as George III's government could provide." (p. 44)

The book reads like a novel, but you never forget that the stories are true, since Kirk documents the events, the characters and their actions in exquisite detail. Kirk had access to many primary documents at the Pitcairn Island Study Center at Pacific Union College, with at least 200 sourced references for this book. His own visit to the island must have given him a real feel for the current scene. The result is that the depth of scholarship and analysis is profound throughout all 250 pages. Just one example: When referring to the prison colony on Norfolk island (to which the Pitcairners moved at one point), Kirk writes, "Victims [prisoners] who fainted from the flogger's blows were allowed to rest for a short time until they had recovered sufficiently to continue to receive the number of lashes promised...it was not uncommon to find survivors with no flesh on their backs." (p. 114). How was Kirk able to dig up such morbid and fascinating details from the early 1800's? Clearly he did his homework.

I'm not usually much of a history buff, but it's hard not to be drawn in by an adventure tale that starts with the violent mutiny on the Bounty, a many-year hideout on an uninhabited remote island with violent mutineers and beautiful Polynesian women, and ends with a controversial rape and sex abuse trial that took place just 4 years ago. Along the way, beneath the seediness and steaminess, Kirk shows us how generations of a small group of isolated islanders survive and die, sometimes prosper, and sometimes wither, under adverse and bizarre conditions that are probably unique on this planet.

Anyone who's looking for a history book that reads like a novel, and certainly anyone planning on taking a cruise through the South Pacific with the idea of visiting Pitcairn Island, should pick up a copy of this book. This is the definitive story.

the photos are great, i just wish there were more. i am not very interested in the human beings that performed the research, and wish there was more about the animals...

I received this book from a thoughtful, loving, and dear kindred spirit of a friend and while it is being marketed as a children's book, I found that it was just as wonderful as an animal lover's or even a conservationists' (organic-free trade-decaffeinated) coffee table book. Nic Bishop's up close and personal photography is beyond any Life Magazine or National Geo quality color photos. Sy Montgomery's writing takes the reader along on the expedition with all the science, language and even a bit of humor provided in part by the guides. Montgomery has created a fun book for kids and adults alike! A great gift for high school graduates to inspire them to follow their dreams and passions. For kid's, this would make a cake science report book!

Worth buying, Asia is still much like this under the glitz and glamour. The essence is captured!

The story Rain is extraordinarily memorable. I recommend this book, though it's definitely not upbeat!

I read these books many years ago and found them moving, perhaps 'The Sword and the Blossom' the most moving. This, the third book, attempts to understand the Japanese character as it was experienced by the POWs. It's not pretty, but it is necessary if you want to try to come to grips with quite a lot of the meanings behind the Pacific theatre of WWII.

Parkin's writing is well-balanced, as pointed out. The brutality, sadism and all the other things can't be hidden. Parkin wrestles with the complexity of the Japanese psyche in the war. The POWs are men in extreme situations. Some may not act as well as they may have liked, but Parkin doesn't judge them: who could? There are quietly heroic acts that just seem 'normal', but Parkin doesn't make a big deal about it.

What shines through is the author's humanity. In spite of the brutality, he can appreciate the people he meets, the world around him (e.g. 'the coruscating sea'), and capture it in his sketches.

The novels were first published in London in the 1960's, the author himself stating it took this long for him to take a balanced view of the things he saw as a sailor during war and as a prisoner of war under the Japanese. His hand drawn pictures in these works were made whilst in Custody under threat of execution if seized.

Before the war, PARKIN was a professional sailor, after the war he studied as a classical artist, and worked on the wharfs of Melbourne as a tally clerk.

This description meets his works, his love of the sea, his artwork throughout the works, his beautiful descriptions, and his exacting detail.

The first novel is of a shipwreck survivor, it doesn't show it, but he is the hero portrait, it is a TRUE story. The second is a diary of his captivity on the Burma railway, and the third of his captivity in Japan, including the dropping of the A-Bomb. 'He states that a newspaper dropped in by air to Japan when he was first released has three momentous events, atomic weapons, jet propulsion and ball point pens'.

His works are not bitter, if anything appreciative of having lived a life less fortunate. Very Australian in it's style and language, it is as moving as any of the recognized greats. I will not wax lyrical about its style further, the editorials above do so far more eloquently than I could.

This book was hard to find or buy in book stores in australia. I found the seller reliable and provided the book in perfect condition and the delivery was quick.

This masterful work by Paul Carter revisits the historical assumptions about the founding of Australia. Carter rejects previous assertions (assumptions) that lay behind a form of Australian history such as the primacy of empirical "facts" and the self-evident rhetoric of cause and effects. Instead, Carter attempts to explain the imagination of a place as somewhere one could be and he illustrates the imperial qualities of this imagination (especially as it pertains to langauge and naming). Early narratives of exploration (such as Capt. James Cook) are used to explain Australian history as a project of European meaning-making and this moves away from imperial history which assert capital-T universal Truth and toward a spatial understanding of Australia as a particular space that Westerners moved through in a particularly Western way.

This book is out of print, but should be near the top of any person's list of must-reads for spatial theory. It is erudite, combining historical analysis with philosophical frameworks, but it is also extremely readable and even poetic in its language. This is only natural as Carter is also a poet. Grab a copy of this book before they all disappear and while it remains a great bargain used.