Collins Booksellers Autumn Reading Guide 2018 Autumn 2018 | Page 17

follow us HISTORY AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN SEVEN CHEAP THINGS MOMENT OF TRUTH Mark McKenna RRP $22.99 Raj Patel RRP $34.99 In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the frontier, the Anzac legacy and deep time. He drags some fascinating new scholarship into the light, and pushes the debate about history beyond the familiar polarities. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things brings the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other uprisings to demonstrate how throughout history, crises have always provided fresh opportunities to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. SUNBURNT COUNTRY DEEP TIME DREAMING: UNCOVERING ANCIENT AUSTRALIA Joelle Gergis RP $34.99 Billy Griffiths RRP $34.99 Sunburnt Country pieces together Australia’s climate history for the first time. It uncovers a continent long vulnerable to climate extremes and variability, as well as highlights the impact of a warming planet on Australian lifestyles and ecosystems and the power we all have to shape future life on Earth. Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. VICTORY ON GALLIPOLI DARK EMU Peter Stanley RRP $29.99 Bruce Pascoe RRP $19.99 DUE 1ST MAY Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australian s. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing - behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. DUE 1ST MAY SKIN IN THE GAME EXACTLY Simon Winchester RRP $32.99 DUE 8TH MAY In Victory on Gallipoli, prominent historians contemplate how Australia today could have been a very different place but for a decision made or not made, an opportunity taken or not taken. These are the nation’s sliding door moments, our alternative history. Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see as far as the moon and as close as the Higgs boson. Exactly takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to Britain where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production. SPINNING TOPS AND GUMDROPS Edwin Barnard RRP $44.99 Spinning Tops & Gumdrops captures a time when ‘imagination, skill, and daring’ was the source of children’s play. Quoits and jacks, dress ups and charades, can all be seen in these images. This was also a time when children could view public hangings, and premature death was frequent. MRS KELLY Grantlee Kieza RRP $29.99 Mrs Kelly is the astonishing story of one of Australia’s most notorious women and her wild family, but it’s also the story of the making of Australia, from struggling colony and backwater to modern nation. Sonya Voumard RRP $27.99 Sonya Voumard’s Skin in the Game is original, incisive, and hugely entertaining. The daughter of a European refugee mother and a journalist father, Voumard recounts with aplomb her passionate but questioning relationship with journalism and the nature of the interview. POPULISM NOW! David McKnight RRP $29.99 This timely and persuasive book exposes the failures of globalisation: greedy banks, predatory privatisation and corporate tax avoidance. David McKnight argues that a progressive populism could address the genuine economic grievances of everyday people, without scapegoating immigrants or ethnic minorities. Support Your Local Bookshop - We Love books