http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The Paperback Bookshop, Melbourne, Australia, December 2008 Growing up in Melbourne Nellie Mitchell dreamed of fame, as a young wife on the Queensland canefields she longed for the excitement of a bigger life and then, trusting in her musical talent she made the break and travelled to Paris and London. Within a few years she was performing to overflowing concert halls and collaborating with some of the most renowned composers of the age as Nellie Melba. Blainey draws on new research in this fascinating biography of Australia's first international superstar. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-86395-183-0.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-86395-183-0.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 In the 2007 CBC Massey Lectures, renowned author Alberto Manguel takes a fresh look at the rise of violent intolerance in our societies. We strive to build societies with sets of values all citizens can agree on but the world is still stricken with violence despite the immense suffering that this brings. Manguel suggests a fresh approach: we should look at what visionaries, poets, novelists, essayists and filmmakers have to say about building societies. From Cassandra to Jack London, the Epic of Gilgamesh to the computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Don Quixote to Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Manguel draws fascinating and revelatory parallels between the personal and political realities of our present-day world and those of myth, legend and story. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-7022-3684-5.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-7022-3684-5.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 The great pre-war blues musician Blind Willie McTell was one of the most gifted artists of his generation, with an exquisite voice and a sublime talent for the 12 string guitar. Yet he never achieved stardom, and until now little has been written about his extraordinary life.In this odyssey to the American South, Gray evokes the turbulent history of McTell's time and place and peels back the many layers of his compelling, sometimes tragic but ultimately uplifting story. Part biography, part travelogue, part social history. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-7475-6561-9.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-7475-6561-9.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 The quest for the theory of everything â a single key that unlocks all the secrets of the Universe â is the focus of some of the most exciting research about the structure of the cosmos. Updating his earlier work Theories of Everything with the very latest theories and predictions, Barrow tells of the M-theory of superstrings and multiverses, of speculations about the world as a computer program, and of new ideas of computation and complexity. Barrow also considers and reflects on the philosophical and cultural consequences of those ideas, and their implications for our own existence in the world. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-19-954817-X.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-19-954817-X.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 A new collection of short stories. A woman gauges the state of her marriage by the tone of her husband's cello; a wife reads her husband's mood by the scent in the nape of his neck; a newly emigrated couple are divided by visual obsession, he with his native Budapest, she with South African suburbia. Imaginative and humourous, Gordimer illustrates the showdowns, standoffs and highlights of human intimacy and the nuances of immigration, national identity and race. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-7475-9384-1.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-7475-9384-1.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 How did humans discover how to grow plants like olives, coffee and rice and why were such foods chosen over other foods ? In this surprising and interesting compendium McNamee researches history,anthropology,chemistry, biology and other fields to discover why these foods have become staples of our diets- and there's recipes from culinary traditions around the world. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-8032-1632-7.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-8032-1632-7.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, Bungeyâ s compelling biography of Arthur Boyd explores the man and his art. Boyd emerges as a passionate, dramatic figure whose self-effacing demeanour cloaked a strong personality that refused to allow his turbulent and sometimes tragic personal life to interfere with his creative genius. From Victoria's bohemian enclaves to London, Suffolk and the Shoalhaven, this is a journey into the mind and heart of a complex man with an absolute commitment to his art. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-7417-5613-8.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-7417-5613-8.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Rupert Murdochâ s News Corp holdings - from The New York Post, Fox News, The Australian, and most recently The Wall Street Journal, to name just a few - are vast , and his power is the media unrivalled. With unprecedented access to Murdoch himself, his associates, and family, Wolff chronicles the astonishing growth of the $70 billion media kingdom, probes the family dynasty and looks at what makes Rupert Murdoch, the man, tick. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-7416-6681-3.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-7416-6681-3.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 In 1979, Nam Le's family left Vietnam for Australia, an experience that inspires the first and last stories in The Boat. In between, however, Le's imagination lays claim to the world. The stories in The Boat range from a tourist in Tehran to a teenage hit man in Columbia; from an aging New York artist to a boy coming of age in a small Victorian fishing town; from the city of Hiroshima just before the bomb is dropped to the haunting waste of the South China Sea in the wake of another war. An astonishing collection of intimate and diverse stories. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-241-01541-3.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-241-01541-3.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 These new pieces from Will Self each feature the largest of our internal organs: the liver, in varying states of disease and decay. In 'Foie Humane' we go inside a Soho drinking club, the denizens of which live in a highly stylised yet emotionally dead state of excess. Tony Phillips's subterrainean Kensington flat is the setting for 'Birdy Num Num', where obsessives spend their days in a crepscular realm of cocaine and heroin. Finally, in 'Leberknodel', a terminal liver cancer patient travels to Zurich to commit assisted suicide. When she arrives, however, the cancer mysteriously goes into remission. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-670-88997-0.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-670-88997-0.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Ten of the most significant natural history expeditions spanning three centuries are documented in this beautifully illustrated book. Sir Hans Sloane's journey to Jamaica in 1687; James Cook's perilous Pacific crossings; and Darwin's historic voyage aboard the HMS Beagle are three of the journeys shown with images drawn from the Natural History Museum in London. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-7417-5577-8.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-7417-5577-8.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Robinson returns to the people and places of the award-winning Gilead in a novel that takes up the story of the wayward son Jack who, after decades away, edgily and uneasily returns home. He is the prodigal son and his family believe against all evidence, that if they love him enough, if they welcome him back, he will change and he will stay. But that is not how life really goes. Robinson's understanding of the human heart, of how families operate, of forgiveness and hope, cuts right to the soul. She writes with wisdom, intelligence and generosity. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-8440-8549-X.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-8440-8549-X.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks in which he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations. Discursive, personal and often impassioned, they reveal the way he saw the world. This is a collection of the best of these writings, capturing Deakinâ s extraordinary, restless curiosity into the natural and human worlds, his love of literature and music, his knack for making unusual and apposite connections, his humour - and an optimistic view of our changing world. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-241-14420-5.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-241-14420-5.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Set amongst the anxieties and uncertainties of this new century 'Netherland' is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. Hans van den Broek is living in the Chelsea Hotel, New York, after the attacks of September 11th, alone after his wife and son have returned to England. Seeking company and comfort he joins a cricket team with immigrants from the West Indies and befriends the mysterious Chuck Ramkissoon who has dreams of establishing a proper cricket ground in the unlikely setting of New York. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-00-727500-5.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-00-727500-5.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Featuring established masters as well as fresh new voices, this is a perfect book for summer and an ideal introduction to Australiaâ s best contemporary writing. By turns global and domestic, subversively funny and wrenchingly sad, Falconerâ s criteria for selection were that the stories be surprising and moving â and they are. Contributors include Nam Le, Anna Krien, Robert Drewe, Emily Ballou, Nicholas Shakespeare, Bernard Cohen, Deborah Robertson, Frank Moorhouse, Tony Birch, Marion Halligan, Will Elliott and more. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-86395-295-0.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-86395-295-0.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Gladwell argues that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Examining how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius, Gladwell overturns many conventional notions. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/0-14-103624-9.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/0-14-103624-9.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21 Balram Halwai is the 'White Tiger': servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, murderer... Born in a village in the dark heart of India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. His chance to escape the prescription of his class comes when a rich village landlord hires him as a chauffeur for his son. Arriving in Delhi with his new master, Balram's re-education begins, as he learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India. Balram's journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is an amoral, irreverent and enlightening tale of modern India. This yearâ s Booker Prize Winner. http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/books/1-8435-4721-X.shtml http://www.paperbackbooks.com.au/rss/1-8435-4721-X.xml Sunday 21 December 2008 0:14am 2008-12-21