Rise And Fall Of Australia The

Download or read book Rise and Fall of Australia, The written by Nick Bryant and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2015 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forensic look at the Lucky Country, from the inside and outside. Never before has Australia enjoyed such economic, commercial, diplomatic and cultural clout. Its recession-proof economy is the envy of the world. It's the planet's great lifestyle superpower. Its artistic exports win unprecedented acclaim. But never before has its politics been so brutal, narrow and facile, as well as being such a global laughing stock. A positive national story is at odds with a deeply unattractive Canberra story. The country should be enjoying The Australian Moment, so vividly described by the best-selling author George Megalogenis. But that description may turn out to be inadvertently precise. It could end up being just that: a fleeting moment. At present the country seems to be in speedy regression, with the nation's leaders, on both sides, mired in relatively small problems, such as the arrival of boat people, rather than mapping out a larger and more inspiring national future. In The Rise and Fall of Australia, BBC correspondent and author Nick Bryant offers an outsider's take on the great paradox of modern-day Australian life: of how the country has got richer at a time when its politics have become more impoverished. In this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing with politics, racism, sexism, the country's place in the region and the world, culture and sport, the author argues that Australia needs to discard the out-dated language used to describe itself, to push back against Lucky Country thinking, to celebrate how the cultural creep has replaced the cultural cringe and to stop negatively typecasting itself. Rejecting most of the national stereotypes, Nick Bryant sets out to describe the new Australia rather than the mythic country so often misunderstood not just by foreigners but Australians themselves.

Download or read book A Coveted Possession written by Michael Atherton and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intriguing cultural history of the piano in Australia From the instruments that floated ashore at Sydney Cove in the late eighteenth century to the resurrection of derelict heirlooms in the streets of twenty-first-century Melbourne, A Coveted Possession tells the curious story of Australia’s intimate and intrepid relationship with the piano. It charts the piano’s fascinating adventures across Australia – on the goldfields, at the frontlines of war, in the manufacturing hubs of the Federation era, and in the hands of the makers, entrepreneurs, teachers and virtuosos of the twentieth history – to illuminate the many worlds in which the ivories were tinkled. Before electricity brought us the gramophone, the radio and eventually the TV, the piano was central to family and community life. With its iron frame, polished surfaces and ivory keys, an upright piano in the home was a modern industrial machine, a musical instrument and a treasured member of the household, conveying powerful messages about class, education, leisure, national identity and intergenerational history. ‘Michael Atherton cleverly weaves visual, sensual and sonic elements into the piano’s sociocultural history, adding a rich layer to our knowledge of the piano in Australia.’ —Professor Julia Horne, historian

Download or read book The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I written by Geoffrey Blainey and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast continent of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin. The first came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Each had to come to terms with the land they found, and each had to make sense of the other. The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising of the seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life, while agriculture was revolutionising other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and resources. Traditional Aboriginal life came under threat the moment Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. That land in turn rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated the new arrivals. The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult and complex meetings in recorded history. In this book Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns first to the subject of his celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980), retelling the story of our history up until 1850 in light of the latest research. He has changed his view about vital aspects of the Indigenous and early British history of this land, and looked at other aspects for the first time. Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia is the first instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the lifework of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian. 'Absorbing and important ... the first volume of an ambitious work on the peopling of this continent from its human origins to our own day...bold, rich, wise, authioritative and questioning.' Peter Stanley, The Age 'The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia situates pre-invasion Aboriginal society as a triumphant culture with much to celebrate.' John Maynard, The Age 'Blainey has produced a book that all Australians could and, dare I say it, should read . . . I very much look forward to the next instalment of his bold, rich, wise, wry, authoritative and questioning trilogy.' Canberra Times 'This is the real story of Australia, at last.' Courier Mail 'Blainey delivers a brilliant narrative on Australia's settlement.' Australian Geographic

Download or read book The Rise And Fall of Athens written by Plutarch and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal work What makes a leader? For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths. In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander. Plutarch ultimately held the weaknesses of its leaders responsible for the city's fall. His work is invaluable for its imaginative reconstruction of the past, and profound insights into human life and achievement. This edition of Ian Scott-Kilvert's seminal translation, fully revised with a new introduction and notes by John Marincola, now also contains Plutarch's attack on the first historian, 'On the Malice of Herodotus'.

Download or read book A Concise History of Australia written by Stuart Macintyre and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-29 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.

Download or read book There Goes the Neighbourhood written by Michael Wesley and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in history, Australia will be uncomfortably close to the designs and demarches of competing great powers. In the years ahead, we will no longer be too small to make a difference. In his book, Wesley points to the key economic and political issues that we need to be considering right now, as a western country geographically and economically tied to Asia, and urgently calls for a renewed public engagement and debate.

Download or read book Fairfax: The Rise and Fall written by Colleen Ryan and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COLLEEN RYAN gives the definitive account of the fate of Fairfax. It is the story of greedy media moguls, angry and ambitious politicians, foolhardy heirs and heiresses, zealous journalists, muddling management and the rise of digital media. The once-mighty Fairfax has been a victim of them all. A drama-filled saga that reveals how far Fairfax has fallen.