Item category 1: Society & Culture

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, an entire region has lived under the control of one notorious land baron: Joselio de Barros. Joselio cut a grisly path to success: he quickly made a name for himself as an invincible thug who grabbed massive tracts of public land, burned down the jungle and execut...

What if there was an algorithm that could predict which novels become mega-bestsellers? Are books like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl the Gladwellian outliers of publishing? The Bestseller Code boldly claims that the New York Times bestsellers in fiction are predictab...

Politician, feminist and champion for social equality, Jacinda Ardern epitomizes the modern leader. In this warm and candid interview, the fortieth Prime Minister of New Zealand discusses her childhood growing up in rural Aotearoa New Zealand, her journey into politics, and the lessons she has le...

PUBLIC SPEAKING GUIDES. Most people are called upon to make a speech or toast at some point in their lives. This book will help the inexperienced speaker to stand up with confidence, and deliver a really effective speech or toast that is appropriate for the occasion. It also contains a variety of...

A close exploration of the vibrant world of cosplay, showing how cosplayers build a strong connection to the characters and stories they treasure, and ultimately how they are constructing their own identities.

In over fifty pieces, taken from lectures, autobiographical essays, book reviews, cultural criticism, obituaries, and new introductions to her Margaret Atwood's body of work (including The Handmaid's Tale thirty years after its initial publication) as well as that of other writers, we watch Atwoo...

LITERARY STUDIES: GENERAL. In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imagination is Margaret Atwood's account of her rela-tionship with the literary form we have come to know as science fiction. This relationship has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s thro...

Decluttering is all the rage, but what do you do when your preferred style of interior decor is miles of overstuffed bookshelves? If you can't bring yourself to KonMari your collection, Shelf respect will validate your life choices. The perfect gift for the book lover in your life: a celebration ...

Rare is the work of philosophy that invites both the casual reader and the academic. Rare, too, is the text so universal that luminaries across an array of fields lay claim to it. Yet, that is precisely the case with Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space. A rumination on the spaces we inhabit a...

From Gamergate to Pizzagate and beyond to QAnon, internet manipulation and disinformation campaigns have grown to a geopolitical scale and spilled into real life with devastating consequences, entangling everyone from politicians to Hollywood celebrities. But what would motivate followers to so f...

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature-human nature in particular. The Great ...

A much-needed guide to understanding gender, becoming a better trans ally, and making the world a better place Gender is a human experience, not just a trans experience. Every single one of us has a relationship to gender, so how can we change the way we talk about it, challenge misconceptions, ...

SOCIAL & CULTURAL HISTORY. Rather than providing a dictionary of superstitions, of which there are already numerous excellent, exhaustive and, in many cases, academic works which list superstitions from A to Z, Bainton gives us an entertaining flight over the terrain, landing from time to time in...

Drawing on oral history interviews conducted nationwide with abortion-providing doctors, nurses, counsellors and managers, women's health workers, academics and community activists, Baird brings a critical feminist analysis to create a sophisticated historical narrative of abortion provision over...

One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the "Sweetheart Murders" cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father's da...

COVID-19 is the biggest public health and economic disaster of our time. It has posed the same threat across the globe, yet countries have responded very differently and some have clearly fared much better than others. Peter Baldwin uncovers the reasons why in this definitive account of the globa...

Imagine a deadly pathogen that, once created, could infect any person in any part of the globe within seconds. No need to wait for travellers, trains, or air traffic to spread it, all you need is an internet connection. In this gripping investigation, James Ball decodes the cryptic language of th...

After 30 years of his entitled Millennial life, one world-changing pandemic and a seismic shift in Australian politics, "comedian" Tom Ballard has had enough of the smashed avocado jokes. He's furious at the raw deal his generation and those to come have been given, and he's pretty sure things ca...

When Delia Balmer entered into a relationship with the attentive John Sweeney, she had no idea he was a serial killer. At first he was caring but over the course of their relationship he became violent and controlling. On more than one occasion he held Delia hostage and tortured her. Chillingly, ...

Do we have free will? And if we don’t, why do we feel as if we do? In a godless universe governed by impersonal laws of cause and effect, are you responsible for your actions? Former evangelical minister Dan Barker (God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction) unveils a novel solution to th...

Lee Barnett eluded the FBI for almost two decades after fleeing the US with her young daughter, eventually settling on the Sunshine Coast. Then, after eighteen years, her luck ran out. It should've been the happiest time of Lee Barnett's life. She was married to a man she loved and trusted, Harri...

This book shows us that in the new normal of uncertainty, we can overcome the challenge of feeling disoriented, scared, and helpless and chart a path to new possibilities. It's in the places unfamiliar to us--the uncharted places--where magic lies. Here we can claim our innate power to give birth...

Artificial intelligence (AI) helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But ar...

Describes the elements of Catholicism, focusing on the life, incarnation, and teachings of Jesus Christ; the sacraments; worship and prayer; Mary, the Apostles, and the Saints; and grace, salvation, and heaven and hell.

The Wilbur Award-winning book Grateful is now available in paperback and with an updated subtitle. If gratitude is good, why is it so hard to do? In Grateful, Diana Butler Bass untangles our conflicting understandings of gratitude and sets the table for a renewed practice of giving thanks. We kno...

On Tik Tok, Instagram, and his podcast, The Be a Man Guy discusses what it takes to be a man. Now, this funny and insightful book showcases all new stories, vignettes, anecdotes, and pearls of wisdom.

Here are the women whom time has forgotten; those who didn't make it into the history books and those whom society failed to uphold as significant figures in their own right. Finally, we shall know their stories. The recognised format of On This Day in History has served as a platform for many an...

Who Owns This Sentence? is an often-humorous and always-enlightening cultural, legal, and global history of the idea that intangible things can be owned, and makes a persuasive case for seeing copyright as an engine of inequality in the twenty-first century.