I was born in England to Australian parents and have lived most of my life in Australia. My family all live there, and I grew up in Sydney. Most of my books have been about Australian-related themes or historical figures. I don’t think enough is known about Australian history outside Australia. Australian writers have always struggled for recognition outside Australia. Publishing can be an unfair business. I’m more interested in reading nonfiction than fiction. True stories are much harder to write and get right, and there’s a bigger responsibility involved. You’re dealing with real people. The dead ones also have families.
The life story of the Australian-born MI6 spy Charles Howard ‘Dick’ Ellis. From the 1920s through to the 1960s, Ellis became one of the most powerful intelligence agents in the world, MI6’s top man in the United States, and was accused of being a Nazi and Soviet spy; in effect, a worse traitor than Kim Philby.
Ellis wrote the blueprint for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the intelligence agency that would evolve into the CIA. Ellis warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He set up training centres for the OSS in the United States and Canada. Ellis was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Harry S. Truman. So was the OSS and CIA compromised from its inception?
A stellar biography of Neil Davis, the legendary Australian cameraman of the Vietnam War who was killed in 1985 in Thailand during a military coup. Davis, tragically, filmed his own death. The camera was still running as he was shot and fell to the ground. His soundman, Bill Latch, was also killed.
This book really ignited my love of travel in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. It would make a fabulous feature film, and I’m surprised no one has made one yet. Davis was a remarkable man and this is a remarkable story, brilliantly told by Bowden. It's a timeless book.
The bestselling biography of one of the world's greatest cinecameramen and an extraordinary Australian. For over twenty years journalist Neil Davis covered the conflicts in SouthEast Asia. Always at the battle front, he brought enduring images of the full horror of modern war to the world. Ironically, in September 1985, having survived so much war, Neil Davis was killed filming an attempted coup in the streets of Bangkok.
This is probably the best, most exhilarating book about modern art I’ve ever read, written by one of the most erudite writers who ever lived. I read it when I was about 11 or 12, and it made me passionate about art and art history.
Hughes was such a good writer, and he made me want to get into writing myself. The BBC made a series based on the book.
This legendary book has been universally hailed as the best, the most readable and the most provocative account of modern art ever written.
Through each of the thematic chapters Hughes keeps his story grounded in the history of the 20th century, demonstrating how modernism sought to describe the experience of that era and showing how for many key art movements this was a task of vital importance.
The way in which Hughes brings that vitality and immediacy back through the well-chosen example and well-turned phrase is the heart of this book's success.
The funniest memoir I’ve ever read about being Australian and growing up in Sydney. It had me in tears throughout, with belly laughs and nostalgia.
Like Robert Hughes, Clive James was a stylish writer with a wonderful facility for words who sadly is no longer with us. He wrote a bunch of sequels (Falling Towards England, May Week Was in June, et al), and his poems are bloody good, too. He’s sadly missed.
Before James Frey famously fabricated his memoir, Clive James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. In an exercise of literary exorcism, James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir. Now, nearly thirty years after it first came out in England, Unreliable Memoirs is again available to American readers and sure to attract a whole new generation that has, through his essays and poetry, come to love James's inimitable voice.
One of the original Aussie literary expats in the 1940s, Kershaw penned this slim but sparkling memoir of his time in Paris and rural France before his death in 1995.
It is superbly written and completely unknown. Grab a copy if you’re lucky enough to find it. It proves that books don’t have to be long to stick in the memory. Sometimes, the shortest ones are the best.
In this witty and entertaining illustrated memoir, Alister Kershaw describes the pleasures of his prolonged residence in France - a country of villages - from 1948, when even Paris was a series of villages. In post-war Paris, Kershaw lived a penniless but joyous existence and captures a Paris long gone. The author conjures Paris prior to the triumph of the technocrats and town planners. It also traces the author's move into the Berry, two hours south of Paris, where he lives in a hamlet of six houses and finds a rural life amongst a small group of traditional Sancerre winemakers.…
Full disclosure: This was a book I edited back in 1999 when I was working as an editor at HarperCollins. I'm not sure if it was ever published outside Australia, but it should have been.
Wells, a sports journalist, tells the amazing story of the heavyweight world title boxing fight between African-American Jack Johnson and Canadian Tommy Burns at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney in 1908. It features a cast of incredible characters, including Jack London.
Describes the championship bout between Johnson and Burns in Australia and the impact of Johnson's unexpected victory, including Jack London's call for a "Great White Hope"
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.
In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues—including Vietnam, Israel, East Timor, and his work in linguistics—that illustrate not only “the Chomsky effect” but also “the Chomsky approach.”
Chomsky, writes Barsky, is an inspiration and a catalyst. Not just an analyst or advocate, he encourages people to become engaged—to be “dangerous” and challenge power and privilege. The actions and reactions of Chomsky supporters and detractors and the attending contentiousness can be thought of as “the Chomsky effect.”
The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower
"People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged."--Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter--voted "most important public intellectual in the world today" in a 2005 magazine poll--Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation. In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues--Chomsky's signature issues,…
11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
deadpan humor,
Paris,
and
France.
