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In 100 years of polar exploration, no-one had ever walked from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back without any support. Many had tried. None had succeeded. Until, on 26th January 2012, James Castrission - Cas - and Justin Jones - Jonesy - made history by completing the longest unsupported polar journey of all time. Following in the footsteps of the great polar explorers like Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Mawson, they battled frostbite, physical and mental breakdown, starvation, blizzards and crevasse falls. After 89 gruelling days they made it back to the coast more dead than alive. This is the inspiring story of two Australian adventurers who realised an almost impossible dream. With honesty and humour, Castrission outlines their preparation, the rich history of past explorers who inspired their efforts and takes the reader along on their daring expedition, showing what can be achieved through hard work, tenacity and mateship. Illustrated with colour photographs. -
Born and raised in a house on Tinakori Road in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, Mansfield was the third child in the Beauchamp family. She began school in Karori with her sisters before attending Wellington Girls' College. The Beauchamp girls later switched to the elite Fitzherbert Terrace School, where Mansfield became friends with Maata Mahupuku, who became a muse for early work and with whom she is believed to have had a passionate relationship. Mansfield wrote short stories and poetry under a variation of her own name, Katherine Mansfield, which explored anxiety, sexuality and existentialism alongside a developing New Zealand identity. When she was 19, she left New Zealand and settled in England, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917. She died in France aged 34. -
From 1851, in the space of little more than a decade, the world was reshaped by technology, trade, mass migration and war. As instantaneous electric communication bridged the vast gulfs that separated human societies, millions of settlers travelled to the far corners of the Earth, building vast cities out of nothing in lightning-quick time. A new generation of fast steamships and railways connected these burgeoning frontier societies, shrinking the world and creating an interlinked global economy. Fortune-seekers and ordinary migrants journeyed to these rapidly expanding frontiers, savouring the frenetic activity and optimism of the boom-towns of the 1850s in Australia, New Zealand the United States. This is a story not only of rapid progress, but of the victims of an assurgent West: indigenous peoples who stood in the pathways of economic expansion, Asian societies engulfed by the forces of modernisation, Muslim guerrilla fighters in the Caucasus mountains and freelance empire-builders in the jungles of Nicaragua, British free trade zealots preying on China and samurai warriors resisting Western incursions in Japan. No less important are the inventions, discoveries and technologies that powered progress, and the great engineering projects that characterised the Victorian heyday, notably the transatlantic telegraph cable. This was a time of explosive energy and dizzying change, a roller-coaster ride of booms and bust, witnessed through the eyes of the men and women reshaping its frontiers. At the centre - Great Britain, at the peak of its power between 1851 and the mid-1860s as it attempted to determine the destinies of hundreds of millions of people. Illustrated with colour and sepia plates. -
The golden age of Hollywood may be in the past but it isn't too far behind! We are still fascinated with the larger than life stars of the period - because so much was NOT known, unlike today. In this book: Charlie Chaplin, the first international film star; Rudolph Valentino, the ultimate sheikh; John Barrymore, who took over the role of 'Great Lover' after the death of Valentino; Douglas Fairbanks, the dashing swordsman; our own Errol Flynn, whose sexploits gave us the expression in like Flynn; Clark Gable, Rhett Butler to the life but classed as less-than-able by his third wife actress Carole Lombard; Gary Cooper, allegedly well-endowed as well as being a man of few words ('yup' and 'nope', apparently...) Cary Grant, formerly Archibald Leech - and nothing about him was quite what it seemed... Rock Hudson, who covered his tracks well, until he contracted AIDS; James Dean, the archetype rebel, of whom Humphrey Bogart said: "Dean died at just the right time. If he'd lived, he never would have been able to live up to his own publicity" and Warren Beatty, who doesn't discuss his sex life (but Madonna did!) With black and white photographs. -
It seems as if Frank Clune enjoyed writing this book. given how his personality and enthusiasm shows through. He invites his readers to participate as he rambles from Brisbane to Cloncurry, to the Gulf round Cape York and down the east coast. He works his passage over one part of the journey, at others travels as a tourist, and then with his wife. He makes every town he visits special as Clune had a great eye for purple patches or for those slender news items that can be interesting when presented properly. There are cattle duffers, gold discoverers, explorers, convicts, squatters and heads of industry, all sketched colourfully. He dips into history for wrecks, old sea navigators and explorers. Wherever he is, he presents it with his own brand of rare humor. With black and white photographs. -
Before 1840, no-one really knew who the Maya were or where they came from. In 1839, Stephens and Catherwood hacked their way through the jungles of Central America to explore and discover the remains of the mysterious Maya civilisation. This pair of 19th century explorers formed a remarkable combination. Stephens, an American lawyer was an unusually fine writer and Catherwood, an English architect, was an accomplished and renowned artist. This biographical account traces their eventful lives: the drama, the excitement, all the adventure and hardship of their arduous journey to the heart of the ancient Maya civilisation. With colour and black and white illustrations. -
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live. -
Billy: Pamela Stephenson
$7.00Once in a lifetime, there strides upon the stage someone who can truly be called a legend. Such a person is the inimitable, timeless genius who is Billy Connolly. His effortlessly wicked whimsy has entranced, enthralled – and split the sides of – thousands upon thousands of adoring audiences. And when he isn't doing that…he's turning in award-winning performances on film and television. He's the man who needs no introduction, and yet he is the ultimate enigma. From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over. How did this happen, who is the real Billy Connolly? Only one person can answer that question: his wife, Pamela Stephenson. Pamela’s writing combines the very personal with a frank objectivity that makes for a compelling, moving and hugely entertaining biography. This is the real Billy Connolly. -
The stories of five pioneer families of the central west of New South Wales. The Coates family of Bathurst and Kings Plains; The Luck family of Blayney; the Smith family of Gallymont; the Green family of Neville; and the Healey Family of Mandurama. Illustrated with archival black and white photographs.
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What do you do with the rest of your life, after you’ve achieved brilliance at an early age? This is the question posed by celebrated journalist Chris Wright to some of the most renowned adventurers, athletes and politicians of the twentieth century. What happens if you are an athlete or gymnast and your career peaks at 14, like Nadia Comaneci, who scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic competition – and the second, and the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. What is the next challenge for the likes of adventurer Reinhold Messner, when you have climbed all the really tall mountains? Where do you take your career, when you’ve achieved the impossible and walked on the moon? In this far-reaching and illuminating book, Chris Wright travels the globe, talking to Apollo astronauts, record breakers, world leaders and prisoners of war, people whose defining moments came early in their life, and asks a rare but captivating what happened next? Those interviewed in this book are: Don Walsh; the Moonwalkers; Nadia Comaneci; Reinhold Messner; Gloria Gaynor; United 232; Apollo 8; John McCarthy; Ray Wilson; Russ Ewin, The Sandakan Survivor; Chuck Yeager. -
Liz: David Heymann
$10.00The ultimate and intimate bio of Elizabeth Taylor. Child star in National Velvet, youthful object of desire controlled by her mother and MGM, Oscar-winning actress in Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, eight-time wife and champion of funding for AIDS research and intimate of celebrities and tycoons for six decades. The volume contains never-before published studio documentation, interviews with stars, directors, friends and family, her battle with weight issues, alcohol and drug addiction, affairs, lovers and husbands, her own million-dollar perfume and jewellery lines - it's all here and more. Lavishly illustrated with black and white photos. -
Or: Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. There's plenty of books on manners and etiquette, and this book is not about either. It's about the rudeness of modern life and the sense of outrage we all experience when we discover that other people are crass, selfish and inconsiderate. You ask a shop assistant, "Can you tell me the price of this? There doesn't appear to be a label," and she says, "What d'you think I am, psychic?" Whatever happened to please and thank you? Why do people behave in public as if they're in private? It's about that sort of bad manners. A bitingly humorous look at the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life, from maddening mobile phones to stupid slang.
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Fred Hollows (1923 - 1993, AC) was no saint. He didn't pretend to be. He was as rough a diamond as they come. Author Tom Keneally called him 'the wild colonial boy of Australian surgery'. 'Every eye is an eye,' said Fred - and when 3.5 million Africans go blind each year, then the world was not up to scratch for Fred Hollows. Four out of five people who are blind don't need to be - but millions of people are blind simply because they don't have access to treatment. It was daunting, and that was no excuse for inaction or failure. Fred knew what tools were needed. Energy, money, training and a plastic lens factory. Action. So he got busy. He travelled rough roads, operated in a cave, held clinics in dry creek beds and the MiG jets overhead didn't help matters either. When chance took him to Watti Creek and he discovered how bad eye problems were among the outback Aboriginals, he got stuck in. Two years and a quarter of a million kilometres later, the Trachoma Program had fixed the worst of the problem. When Fred got busy, conflict was inevitable, some sensibilities were probably bruised, hindrances were there to overcome, waffle got dismissed and wasted time was not tolerated. But the patient - whoever and wherever he or she might have been, would see the doctor. Today, The Foundation bearing Fred Hollows' name is continuing his dream to end avoidable blindness. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
1917. President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America - moving pictures. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire Studios, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives - West Coast movie star, East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress - so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood & Washington. This history as only Vidal can recreate it: brimming with intrigue & scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen & American politics. Vidal was born into an upper class political family. Constantly surrounded by controversy, as a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's primary focus was the history and society of the United States - as a novelist, he explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. -
Inferno! Hal Butler
$55.00A very interesting volume of accounts of great holocausts over the last one hundred years, with accounts from survivors, eyewitnesses, reporters and emergency service workers. Chapters: The Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the destruction of a tiny lumbering village in Peshtigo with a death toll of over 1,000; the Iroquois Theatre Fire, 1903; the burning of the paddle-wheel excursion boat, the General Slocum in 1904, with over 1,000 lives lost; the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed not only homes and businesses, but utility services. When fires broke out, there was no water with which to fight them; The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, New York, 1911 when 146 employees died, many of whom had tried to leap from the windows to escape the flames; In Halifax, 1917, a fire on board the SS Mont Blanc - a French cargo ship - set off its load of high explosives, killing over 2,000 and injuring 9,000 more; In 1930, a candle ignited some oily rags left on the roof of the West Block of the Ohio State Penitentiary. Many inmates burned to death in their locked cells; The Hindenberg airship disaster of 1937; The Cocoanut Grove was Boston's top night spot - on November 28, 1942, a fire began which became the deadliest nightclub fire in history and the second-deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history, claiming 492 lives; July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, saw a fire begin under the Big Top during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey that would kill 160+ people; The Winecoff Hotel, Atlanta, was advertised as "absolutely fireproof" - but in December 1947, a conflagration broke out that would kill 119 people; In Galveston Bay, April 1947, a fire started on board the docked French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp, detonating her cargo of about 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, starting a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department; December 1, 1958 - a fire broke out at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, killing 92 students and three nuns - a tragedy which caused over 16,000 schools across the U.S. to be brought up to safety standards before one year had passed. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
The Astors: Virginia Cowles
$18.00The Astors' immense fortune came from furs, ships and real estate. When 20 year old John Jacob Astor arrived in Baltimore from Germany in 1783, his ambition was to live comfortably from the sale of musical instruments. At his death in 1848 he was the richest man in America. He had spent his early years tramping Indian trails trading for furs and his last fourteen years quadrupling his fortune on Manhattan real estate and rentals. The family line produced politicians, social hermits, society leaders, radicals...This book covers five generations of this fascinating family and contains many family photographs and paintings. -
Told by Stirling to Robert Raymond. Stirling Moss (OBE; 1929 - 2020) was the idol of hundreds and thousands of racing fans, a man whose uncanny skill and daring have put him amongst the greatest racing car drivers of all time. He began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948 and his first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
Steve Ovett, Olympic 800 metre champion and 1500 metre world record holder, is one of the most extraordinary runners Britain has ever produced. But what kind of a man is he? Described as a loner, harder than stone, a refreshingly free spirit, shy and withdrawn, a brash and arrogant young man - who is the real Steve Ovett?
