Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world's most famous unknown artist. 'Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does.' She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity and, often, a villain - an i...

Long before they were ARIA Hall of Fame inductees, Yothu Yindi were a bunch of Yolngu (Aboriginal) and balanda (non-Indigenous) mates in far-north Australia jamming together for fun. Soon they were creating some of the coolest new music in the country, splicing traditional sounds with electric, a...

Nico was an ever-evolving myth, an enigma that escaped definition. Born Christa Paffgen, Nico grew up in war-torn Berlin before being scouted by a fashion photographer in her early teens. At age twenty-seven, she became Andy Warhol's newest Superstar, securing the position of chanteuse for the Ve...

Tim Booth is shocked when his first emergency callout for someone short of breath turns out to be an adult man with a blocked nose. Far from beginner's luck, this turns out to be an omen for the rest of his paramedic career. Between the obligatory stories of objects lodged in body cavities to gro...

Kal Penn's unlikely career arc has taken him from nerdy American kid from an immigrant family in the New York suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, to world-famous actor, to White House staffer under President Obama, and back to actor again. Now, in You Can't Be Serious, he reflects on the most ridicu...

Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is a once in a hundred-year athlete with immense sporting talent in Rugby League, Rugby Union and Boxing. Sonny Bill has built an incredible career and sporting reputation across the globe. His athleticism has taken him from inner-city Auckland, where he grew up, to the ...

In 1990, while covering a story about homelessness for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Ted Jackson encountered a drug addict sleeping under a bridge. After snapping a photo, Jackson woke the man. Pointing to the daily newspaper by his feet, the homeless stranger looked the photojournalist in the ...

General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK AC (Mil) CVO MC (Retd) is one of Australia's most significant public figures. As a soldier he saw action in Vietnam, winning the Military Cross, and rose to the very top of his profession, becoming Chief of the Defence Force. Soon after his retirement from the Army, ...

Castro got his toughness from a father who survived Spain's nasty class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. He grew up to be full of contradictions. In prison, he showed a passion for French literature, wrote flowery love letters, a...

An extraordinary story about Henri Tovell who was known as 'Young Digger'. Orphaned, homeless and no more than seven years old, he attached himself to several British Army fighting units, until he was eventually smuggled back to Australia where he was raised by an airman as his own son. Ages 14+.

How did the first forty years of H.G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction? From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marria...

David Day's biography of the young Bob Hawke takes readers on a journey through the first fifty years of one of Australia's most charismatic leaders. From his humble beginnings in South Australia to his time as a Sunday School teacher, from his rise as the country's most powerful union leader to ...

When Adolf Hitler went to war in 1914, he was just 25 years old. It was a time he would later call the 'most stupendous experience of my life'.That war ended with Hitler in a hospital bed, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. The world that he opened his newly healed eyes on was new and it was ter...

This is the story I promised myself, aged twenty-one, that I would one day be brave enough - and well enough - to write. Clare Bowditch has always had a knack for telling stories. Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what...

The extraordinary life story of Australia's beloved Julie Goodwin, first winner of MasterChef and bestselling cookbook author.

Zarifa Ghafari was three years old when the Taliban banned girls from schools, and she began her education in secret. She was seven when American airstrikes began. She was twenty-six when she became mayor -- the only female mayor in the country -- of Maidan Wardak, Kabul. An extremist mob barred ...

The message from the free world to Russian President Putin has always been clear: Leave Ukraine alone... What Russia thought would be a three-day hit-and-run mission to oust the Ukraine government of Volodymyr Zelensky was an abject failure. The Russians even took with them their dress uniforms r...

Ukraine's most popular comedic actor was an unlikely president of his country. And now, even more improbably, Volodymyr Zelensky has become the world's most celebrated statesman. Who is he? How did he become the international hero of our time? This book is a compelling account of this fascinating...

Zendaya is a multitalented queen that not only dazzles on the screen, but also serves as an inspiration to all who dare to be themselves. She is a formidable force that redefines what it means to be a modern icon with her unique fashion style, powerful performances, and dedication to authenticity...

We live in a dangerous world. And the stories of war and terrorism that fill our screens are brought to us by brave journalists who put their lives on the line. They will always face peril, but now they can work in much greater safety, thanks to the determination and dedication of one remarkable ...