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Biography > Autobiography

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A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough

$39.99 AUD

Available Stock:
5

Category: Autobiography

See the world. Then make it better. 'I am 93. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us , barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake - and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited.' All we need is the will do so.     ...Show more

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One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995 by Helen Garner

$29.99 AUD

Available Stock:
3

Category: Autobiography

Helen Garner's second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the bombshell that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in l ove and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another--how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both thrilling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work.   ...Show more

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You Shouldn't Have Joined... by Peter Cosgrove

$49.99 AUD

Available Stock:
3

Category: Autobiography

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, he was invited to take charge of the huge relief and rebuilding operation in Queensland after the devastation of Cyclone Larry. In 2014, Cosgrove became Australia's Governor-General. As Governor-General he travelled far and wide, supporting Australians in times of crisis, sadness, joy or celebration, representing us on the world stage with humour, intelligence and a force of personal magnetism that was felt by everyone from prime ministers to presidents. When he retired in July 2019, it was as one of the most beloved and respected governors-general in Australia's history. Cosgrove embodies the traits we truly value: warmth, humanity, toughness and loyalty. His humour and empathy shone through the pomp and ceremony, and his time as Governor-General will be remembered as much for his laughter as for the usual dignities of the office. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... (an expression much used during his days as a soldier) is the story of Cosgrove's extraordinarily full and eventful life. It is also the story of those who have shared it with him, in particular his wife Lynne. His memoir allows us an incredible insight into the role and world of Australia's Governor-General. He was there as two prime ministers were toppled by their own party. He was there through disasters both natural and man-made, such as the destruction of MH17. He was there for world leaders, and for ordinary Australians. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... is a true reflection of the man himself, filled with intelligence, forthrightness, compassion and a brilliant eye for a telling anecdote. ...Show more

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Dating Tips for the Unemployed by Iris Smyles

$24.99 AUD

Available Stock:
3

Category: Autobiography

Stalled on the precipice of adulthood, Iris doesn't know where her life post-college will lead and, to be honest, it's not a primary concern. She's tried applying for jobs, she's dipped her toes into dating, and she's become Manhattan's resident expert at finding ways to distract herself from what she r eally wants to do. When she does sit down to write, what emerges are meditations on small talk, family, arctic exploration, cannibalism, quantum physics, literary immortality, etiquette guides, memory, dreams, loneliness, growing up, and growing old. A refreshing blend of Proust and Holly Golightly, Iris covers it all. Evoking the screwball heroines of a bygone age as she finds herself often a little lost in her own, Iris relates hilarious and heart-breaking episodes. A mature book about immaturity, Dating Tips for the Unemployed is a wistful, melancholic, madcap, and erudite picaresque about the miserable fun of trying to find a career, love, and yourself at home and abroad. ...Show more

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Growing Pineapples in the Outback by Tony Kelly; Rebecca Lister

$29.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

When Rebecca Lister and Tony Kelly move from Melbourne to Mount Isa to care for Rebecca's elderly mother, Diana, they have no idea what they've signed up for. The isolation, sweltering heat and limited employment opportunities make settling into the mining town a challenge. While Rebecca deals with her mother's declining health and delves into her own past, Tony takes on a new role in native title law. However, caring for Diana - a witty, crossword-loving 92-year-old - proves to be a more enriching experience than either Tony or Rebecca thought possible. As they make deeper connections to the land and community, they find themselves flourishing in a most unexpected place. Growing Pineapples in the Outback explores the highs and lows of caring for an ageing parent, while also celebrating the rewards of a simpler life. ...Show more

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Screw Loose by Peter Blazey; Tim Herbert (Epilogue by); Michael Kirby (Foreword by)

$24.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

First published twenty years ago by Picador, Peter Blazey's audacious, irresistible autobiography Screw Loose will be available in a revised edition with a foreword by the Honourable Michael Kirby. Candid and at times provocative, these self-styled "uncalled-for memoirs" encompass five decades in the li fe of a controversial Australian journalist, biographer and gay activist. Blazey always found himself in the hub of political and cultural times. Press Secretary to the Environment Minister in the Whitlam Government, he moved on to London, a witness to punk while living in a Trot squat and street fighting the National Front. In Sydney he was party to the riot that became the first Gay Mardi Gras parade. Blazey frequented Studio 54 in its heyday; became a millionaire wastrel in Barbra Stanwyck's former Hollywood mansion and, in his final years, an inflammatory columnist and troublesome AIDS activist. Blazey was close to the mark when tagging himself "a belligerent old bugger", though in the end, his larrikin spirit was tempered by more poignant insights. Screw Loose is a unique account of a remarkable life that remains as vivid, incisive and raucously entertaining as when it first appeared in 1997. Screw Loose sold over 5,000 copies when it came out. The cover was designed by Phil Day and will feature blurbs by journalist and writer David Marr and writer Frank Moorhouse. "However angry people were with Blazey, he left everyone feeling a little shamefaced in the end, like poor sticks-in-the-mud in the presence of this free spirit." David Marr. "For me Peter exemplified bravado. Bravado in the face of the inexplicable, in the face of angst and in the face of the petty and not so petty injustices of the world." Frank Moorhouse. ...Show more

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

$27.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Biography

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, A National Book Award Finalist A profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a black father for his son, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, an d offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. ...Show more

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Time to Go by Guy Kennaway

$29.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

In 2017 Susie Kennaway asked her son Guy to kill her.88 years old, with an older and infirm husband, Susie wanted to avoid sliding into infantilised catatonia. The son immediately started taking notes and Time to Go is the result.In turns a manual for those considering the benefits of assisted dying, a portrait of a mother son relationship, and a sympathetic description of old age, this book is a route map through the moral, legal, emotional, intellectual and practical maze that is the biggest issue facing the senior generations today: leaving life on their own terms.During their conversations about when and how to make Susie's final exit, some of the difficulties of their fractious relationship mellowed and some even melted, as the reality of what they were planning brought them together. Many elderly people, like Susie, have clearly stated that they wish to die in a manner and time of their choosing. But the church, the law, the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry stand in the way, wagging their fingers. A change is coming for the rights of the elderly, the way it has come for the rights of women and gay people. Time to Go is a rallying call in this fight.Life is too precious not to be lived properly. As with a job, a relationship or a party, you have to know when it's time to go. ...Show more

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Rising Heart by Aminata Conteh-Biger; Juliet Rieden (As told to)

$34.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

'Rising Heart will never leave you; searing, powerful, disturbing, hopeful.' The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO The astonishing tale of a woman determined to turn her trauma into the power for good in the world. In 1999, Sierra Leone teenager Aminata Conteh-Biger was kidnapped from her father's ar ms during the brutal eleven-year civil war in her country. Violence, amputation and the rape of young women and girls were all weapons deployed in the bloody conflict; in this environment, Aminata was held captive for months. On release, the UNHCR recognised that Aminata's captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. Barely twenty years old, she was put on a plane, flown to Australia - a land she had barely heard of - and told to start again Refusing to let her trauma define her, she eventually built a life for herself, but a near-death experience during the birth of her first child turned her attention to the women of Sierra Leone, where mothers are 200 times more likely to die having a baby than in Australia. So she set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, and went back to help. 'An incredible story of hope and transformation, one that we can all learn from.' Emma Isaacs, Founder and Global CEO, Business Chicks 'Aminata's courage in sharing this intensely personal story is rewarded with the power of inspiring hope. Rising Heart has refuelled my sense of perspective and purpose.' Yael Stone, actor and activist ' Rising Heart is a gripping story of courage, survival and redemption. I could not put it down.' Wendy McCarthy AO ...Show more

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Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity by Nadia Owusu

$29.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

An exceptional memoir about race, family and belonging for a moment when identity and division dominate our global politics I have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me. Our shared languages are thunder and reverberation. When Nadia Owusu was two years old her mother abandoned her and her bab y sister and fled from Tanzania back to the US. When she was thirteen her beloved Ghanaian father died of cancer. She and her sister were left alone, with a stepmother they didn't like, adrift. Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London. And for every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It's no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It's no wonder that those fault lines eventually ruptured. Aftershocks is the account of how she hauled herself out of the wreckage. It is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu's astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis. ...Show more

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The Cherry Picker's Daughter by Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert

$24.95 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

This second edition of The Cherry Picker's Daughter is an exquisite portrait of growing up Aboriginal on the fringes of outback towns in NSW in the mid-twentieth century. Its an important book for school libraries and classrooms, with profound insights into the extraordinary strength, resilience and ing enuity of Aboriginal families to overcome extreme poverty, persecution, racism and cultural genocide.The strength of family ties in Aboriginal communities is clearly evident when three-month-old Kerry and her brother lost both parents. Her father, Kevin Gilbert — later to become a famous activist and artist — killed their mother and was jailed for many years. Her father's sister, whom she always called 'Mummy', raised Kerry and her brother, along with her own children and others within the extended family. The book is a tribute to this truly remarkable woman, who not only loved them selflessly and worked tirelessly to support them, but also managed to keep them from being taken/'stolen' by the 'Welfare'.Told in the child's voice and in the vernacular of her Mob, activist, artist, poet and author, Aunty Kerry, tells her story of love and loss, of dispossession and repeated dislocation growing up in corrugated tin huts, tents and run-down train carriages, of helping her family earn 'an honest living' through fruit picking, and the impact of life as an Aboriginal state ward living under the terror of Protection Laws.'A wonderful yarn by an Aboriginal Elder about a bygone way of life.' — Melissa Lucashenko, author of Miles Franklin Award-winning Too Much Lip'Australia has waited too long to read this book of courage and truth. It heralds a timely change in our thinking of Aboriginal activism.' — Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri writer and academic'Thank you, Kerry, for sharing your story - so much pain and hurt, but such life-affirming strength and love, too.' — Kate Grenville, author ...Show more

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Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin

$26.99 AUD

Available Stock:
1

Category: Autobiography

Before you can fly, you have to be free. In a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, more interested in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strange men come to his sc hool - Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision for China. This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the thinnest thread of a chance, changed the course of a small boy's life in ways that are beyond description. One day he would dance with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world. One day he would be a friend to a president and first lady, movie stars and the most influential people in America. One day he would become a star- Mao's last dancer, and the darling of the West. Since its release in 2003, Mao's Last Dancerhas sold all around the world and been made into a major motion picture. Like millions of other peasants' lives, it was a story that nearly vanished amidst revolution and chaos. It's a story of courage, a mother's love, a young boy's longing for freedom - a beautiful, rich account of an inspirational life, told with honesty, dignity and pride. ...Show more

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