Autobiography/Bio/Non-Fiction

//Autobiography/Bio/Non-Fiction
­
View Cart "Oskar Kokoschka – A Life: Frank Whitford" was successfully added to your cart.
  • A fabulous compilation of political cartoons from a variety of sources world wide. In this volume: Europe Before The Great War; The First World War; The Uneasy Peace; Depression And Disarmament; The Rise Of The Nazis. With a chapter on Background and guide to cartoon analysis.
  • While Kylie Tennant was living in the little fishing town of Laurieton on the north coast of New South Wales, she made two memorable discoveries - Ernie Metcalfe and Diamond Head. The two belonged together. Called by some 'the mad hermit of Diamond Head', Ernie was splendidly sane, if unlike anybody else. Kylie Tennant has painted his portrait vividly and with love, and with it the portrait of Diamond Head - a place to which Ernie was so closely bound in spirit that in the end they seemed to be one. She evokes its fascination and its subtle menace, its rocks and beaches, its wildflowers and wild creatures, the light on sea and land, so that the reader, too, falls under its spell and shares her grief and anger at its later devastation by mining.

  • At the age of six, Kerry McGinnis lost her mother. Her father, left with four young children to raise, gathered up his family and left the city to go doving. For the next fifteen years, the McGinnis clan traveled the continent, droving, horse breaking and living off the land. Kerry grew up in the harsh outback, and the animals that inhabit the land became her closest friends. With the memory of her absent mother ever present, Kerry begins her difficult journey into young womanhood. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/heart-country-kerry-mcginnis/

  • Poet and author Colleen Burke’s memoir takes the reader into the post World War II decades of the 20th century and a working-class Irish-Catholic background in Bondi, at a time when strict social, religious and family prohibitions were particularly onerous to women. To escape a problematical childhood, Colleen immersed herself in books and stories of lives in worlds far removed from her own. Leaving school at 15, she worked as a shorthand typist in the Public Service as she questioned everything and sought an education, both formal and informal. She explores the stimulating yet confronting era of the Sixties, encountering a broadening political sphere, folk music, poetry and literature which expressed the frustration of the young against injustice. Racism, popular sentiment, American commercialisation, feminism and of course, the Vietnam War. It was during this turbulent times she met her future husband, Declan Affley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declan_Affley. This memoir includes a selection of Colleen’s poems.

  • The frank, honest and heartbreaking true story of parents faced with the unimaginable—a terminal diagnosis for their young adopted daughter. What follows is an extraordinary tale of sacrifice, resilience, and the power of love to overcome. Jia-Mei was the child Sharon Guest and Stuart Neal had always wanted and, following a protracted adoption process, they excitedly traveled to China to collect her from a Chinese orphanage. Friends and family affectionately called her Jessie Mei Mei and welcomed her to a new life in Australia. Jessie was the perfect eighteen-month-old child—gregarious and funny and easy to love. But, from the beginning, Sharon, in that way that parents do, suspected something wasn't quite right about Jessie. She was too serious and immobile and learned quite slowly. When they adopt Bi Bi, another Chinese baby, Jessie's behavior worries them so much that they seek medical help only to hear what no parent is ever prepared to hear—their beautiful daughter has a degenerative condition that means she will be lucky to see her twelfth birthday. What happens next is the all too common and shocking story of how a country as rich as Australia shamefully fails to provide assistance to families in need. The bureaucratic silliness of government departments and their systemic inadequacy in supporting high needs children and adults leads to extreme actions on the part of their exhausted families. Illustrated with colour photographs.
  • NASA astronaut Michael Collins trained as an experimental test pilot before venturing into space as a vital member of the Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 missions. In Carrying the Fire, his account of his voyages into space and the years of training that led up to them, Collins reveals the human tensions, the physical realities, and the personal emotions surrounding the early years of the space race. Collins provides readers with an insider's view of the space program and conveys the excitement and wonder of his journey to the moon. As skilled at writing as he is at piloting a spacecraft, Collins explains the clash of personalities at NASA and technical aspects of flight with clear, engaging prose, withholding nothing in his candid assessments of fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and Buzz Aldrin, and officials within NASA. A fascinating memoir of mankind's greatest journey told in familiar, human terms.

  • Unlike the mostly reverent literature on Australia's most popular sporting hero, this book explains how Sir Donald Bradman's iconic status was created and sustained. How does his popularity and heroism relate to Australian nationhood? Brett Hutchins' unique analysis reveals the mythical character of so many representations of "the Don," and connects them to broader social phenomena and the cultural contexts in which they were created.Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • The sequel to Pieces Of Blue. After seven years on the road with her family, Kerry McGinnis is tired of the wandering life and yearns for a proper home. When her father, the irascible but loveable Mac, buys a property in Queensland's Gulf Country, it seems like she might have found one. But not everything goes smoothly. In their struggle to make a go of things, the McGinnis family encounters fire, flood, a three-metre python, and other, human obstacles. Sian, the eldest son, is at loggerheads with his father, while Mac soon develops itchy feet. And Kerry and her sister Judith discover that life in a man's country is far from easy. At a time when young women are expected to settle down and have a family, Kerry must make some difficult decisions about love, marriage and her passionate desire to write.
  • Since that first brave adventurer left the great Afro-Asian homeland to travel the long chain of islands to Australasia, human beings have consumed the resources they would need for their own future. The Aboriginals, Maoris and Polynesian peoples were the world’s original future eaters. They changed the flora and fauna in ways that now seem inconceivable. Europeans have made a much great impact. Today, future eating is a universal occupation. In this illustrated ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humans, to the European colonisers and industrial society. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale.