Described by the London Chronicle as 'the genteelest thief ever remembered at the Old Bailey', during the 1770s the dandy, actor and pickpocket George Barrington acquired infamy throughout Great Britain. His prosecution and conviction in 1790 merely served to intensify popular interest and ensured that when in 1802 the account of his transportation to Australia was published, reading audiences responded with hearty enthusiasm. After prefacing his volume with a concise and useful history of New South Wales, the author regales readers with tales of murder, theft, punishment and retribution. These bloody episodes, combined with engaging, albeit prejudiced, notes on the indigenous population, found favour with European readers and twenty years of serialisations, new editions and translations followed. Punctuated by quirky vignettes and unusual coloured plates, Barrington's narrative continues to entertain and inform anyone with an interest in British colonial, maritime or criminal history.

George Augustus Selwyn (1809 1878) was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand, with Selwyn College, Cambridge later named in his honour. New Zealand was declared an independent British colony in 1841 and the Diocese of New Zealand was established in the same year. After graduating from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1831, Selwyn had been ordained priest in 1834 and consecrated as the first Bishop of New Zealand in 1841. This volume, first published in 1844, contains a series of journals and letters written by Selwyn during his first two years in New Zealand. He provides an intimate and detailed description of the organisation and society of the new colony and the growth of new settlements including Auckland and Wellington. He also describes the landscape and lives of the Maori in remote areas mostly untouched by colonisation, providing a fascinating account of the early history of colonial New Zealand.

Louisa Anne Meredith's account of her life in Tasmania was published in 1852. She was an experienced traveller, and this work is remarkable for being the first detailed account by a woman of life in the colony. Its shrewd observations and descriptive personal narrative make it an engaging read, as well as providing a valuable historical record. A keen botanist and artist, Meredith describes the island's natural life in great detail in beautiful and evocative passages. This first volume covers the journey to the island and her initial impressions of it. Her discussions of 'polite society', politics, prisoner and ex-prisoner populations, the 'white slave' issue, and her attitudes to the island's native people, also provide fascinating examples of colonial attitudes in the period and of how different cultures and backgrounds existed together on the island. For more information on this author, see http: //orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=merel

Louisa Anne Meredith's account of her life in Tasmania was published in 1852. She was an experienced traveller, and this work is remarkable for being the first detailed account by a woman of life in the colony. Its shrewd observations and descriptive personal narrative make it an engaging read, as well as providing a valuable historical record. A keen botanist and artist, Meredith describes the island's natural life in great detail in beautiful and evocative passages. In Volume 2 she provides more anecdotes of her life, including descriptions of the animals she encounters and journeys made within the island. She also covers more social issues, looking at religion and custom in the colony among the settlers and the natives, and closing the book with an examination of Tasmania's industry and trades. For more information on this author, see http: //orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=merel

Eminent biologist Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860 1929) was born in Lancashire but moved to Australia to take up the chair in biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887. As a member of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Spencer made the acquaintance of F. J. Gillen, an advocate of Aboriginal rights, with whom he later formed a working partnership. Spencer and Gillen returned to Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1896 1897, to carry out observations on the local Aboriginal tribe, the Arunta. These observations were published in 1899, in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (also reissued in this series), which represented the most comprehensive study of Aboriginal customs and habits. Gillen and Spencer continued to undertake fieldwork until 1903. Volume 1 of Across Australia (published in two volumes in 1912) describes the region's topography, and the customs and beliefs of the Arunta.

Reverend Richard Taylor (1805 1873) was an English missionary, who wrote extensively on Maori culture and the plant and animal life of New Zealand. Taylor graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1828 and was ordained as an Anglican priest the same year. After serving as a curate in the Isle of Ely, Taylor was appointed as a missionary to New Zealand for the Church Missionary Society. He arrived in Australia in 1836 and landed in New Zealand in 1839. Taylor quickly became a peacekeeper between the different Maori tribes in his district. This volume, first published in 1855, provides a detailed account of Maori mythology and culture with a description of the plant life, animal life and geology of the North Island. Taylor strongly condemns contemporary (nineteenth-century) attitudes to Maori culture and demonstrates the complexity of their society in this sympathetic book.

In the early nineteenth century, Australia remained largely uncharted, and doubt prevailed as to its unity as a continent. The 1801 expedition led by English mariner and cartographer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), on board the Investigator, was groundbreaking in this respect. Flinders' charting of the Australian coastline provided the first complete map outlining the continent, and his influence was decisive in changing its name from Terra Australis to Australia - a term 'more agreeable to the ear'. Structured around daily geographical and astronomical observations, Flinders' journals are remarkable for their humanity and their sense of humour. Started in 1801, they continue to include Flinders' imprisonment by the French in the island of Mauritius between 1803 and 1810. They were first published in 1814, the day before Flinders' death. Volume 1 spans the first two years of the expedition and focuses on the discoveries made along the south coast of the continent.

In the early nineteenth century, Australia remained largely uncharted, and doubt prevailed as to its unity as a continent. The 1801 expedition led by English mariner and cartographer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), was groundbreaking in this respect. Flinders' charting of the Australian coastline provided the first complete map outlining the continent, and his influence was decisive in changing its name from Terra Australis to Australia - a term 'more agreeable to the ear'. Structured around daily geographical and astronomical observations, Flinders' journals - published in 1814, the day before his death - are remarkable for their humanity and sense of humour. Started in 1801, they continue to include Flinders' imprisonment by the French in the island of Mauritius between 1803 and 1810. The second volume tells of the discoveries made along the east and north coasts of the continent, and includes an account of Flinders' captivity. An appendix details botanical discoveries.

When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us.' Reading the archive of early contact in Oceania against European traditions of thinking about intimacy and exchange, Vanessa Smith illuminates the traditions and desires that led Bougainville and other European voyagers to believe that the first word they heard in the Pacific was the word for friend. Her book encompasses forty years of encounters from the arrival of the Dolphin in Tahiti in June 1767, through Cook's and Bligh's voyages, to early missionary and beachcomber settlement in the Marquesas. It unpacks both the political and emotional significances of ideas of friendship for late eighteenth-century European, and particularly British, explorations of Oceania.

Madness in the Family explores how colonial families coped with insanity through a trans-colonial study of the relationships between families and public colonial hospitals for the insane in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand between 1860 and 1914.

The last book in a trilogy of explorations on space and time from a preeminent scholar, The Boundless Sea is Gary Y. Okihiro's most innovative yet. Whereas Okihiro's previous books, Island World and Pineapple Culture, sought to deconstruct islands and continents, tropical and temperate zones, this book interrogates the assumed divides between space and time, memoir and history, and the historian and the writing of history. Okihiro uses himself-from Okinawan roots, growing up on a sugar plantation in Hawai'i, researching in Botswana, and teaching in California-to reveal the historian's craft involving diverse methodologies and subject matters. Okihiro's imaginative narrative weaves back and forth through decades and across vast spatial and societal differences, theorized as historical formations, to critique history's conventions. Taking its title from a translation of the author's surname, The Boundless Sea is a deeply personal and reflective volume that challenges how we think about time and space, notions of history.

The revelatory story of the Bible in Australia, from the convict era to the Mabo land rights campaign, Nick Cave, the Bra Boys and beyond. Thought to be everything from the word of God to a resented imposition, the Bible has been debated, painted, rejected, translated, read, gossiped about, preached, and tattooed. At a time when public discussion of religion is deeply polarised, Meredith Lake reveals the Bible's dynamic influence in Australia and offers an innovative new perspective on Christianity and its changing role in our society. In the hands of writers, artists, wowsers, Biblebashers, immigrants, suffragists, evangelists, unionists, Indigenous activists and many more - the Bible has played a defining and contested role in Australia. A must-read for sceptics, the curious, the lapsed, the devout, the believer and non-believer.

Following on from his acclaimed book, The Battle for Wau, Phillip Bradley turns his attention to the Salamaua campaign - the first of the New Guinea offensives by the Australian Army in the Second World War. Opening with the pivotal air-sea battle of the Bismarck Sea, this important title recounts the fierce land campaign that was fought for the ridges that guarded the Japanese base at Salamaua. From Mount Tambu to Old Vickers and across the Francisco River, the Australians and their American allies fought a desperate struggle to keep the Imperial Japanese Army diverted from the strategic prize of Lae. To Salamaua covers the entire campaign in one volume for the first time. From the strategic background of the campaign and the heated conflicts, to the mud and blood of the front lines, this is the extraordinary story.

Australian Fashion Unstitched provides a compelling and authoritative survey of the myriad influences and attributes of Australian fashion over the last sixty years. This post-war period saw Australia's fashion industry come of age. The word couturier became part of the Australian lexicon and glamorous Paris catwalk shows graced our shores, showcasing overseas styling to large audiences in our major cities. Displaying pride in our nationhood and paying tribute to our heritage, our young and emerging designers, in turn, embarked upon a long, sometimes arduous journey to offer Australian fashion to the world. Unique indigenous textile design, cutting-edge swimwear, and fresh interpretations of global trends infiltrated the international marketplace, sustaining and bolstering the trademark of Australian design. Australian Fashion Unstitched narrates this fascinating story through the eyes of the designers themselves, as well as the journalists, academics, fashion photographers and museum curators who represent this vibrant industry.

This book was first published in 1992. Aboriginal people in Australia's Gulf Country had been dealing with Whites for more than one hundred years. Whitefella Comin' depicts life at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal settlement administered by Brethren missionaries from the early 1930s until 1983. Dr Trigger's portrayal of life at Doomadgee was the first to be published by an anthropologist about such a settlement in Queensland. Through detailed historical and ethnographic study, the author seeks understanding of Aboriginal responses to the intrusions of Australian society. He examines coercion and violence on the frontier, the incorporation of Aboriginal people into the pastoral industry and their reactions to both the authoritarianism and benevolent paternalism of Christian missionaries. The influence of government policies and administrative practices is examined throughout the book. In addressing the structures and processes of power relations between Aborigines and Whites, the author develops an analysis of resistance and accommodation on the part of Aboriginal people.

This richly illustrated book is a detailed history of a uniquely Australasian institution, the stock and station agency. The stock and station agent was a respected and influential figure, coordinating farmers and connecting them to the outside world of banks, wool buyers and government agencies in Australasia and overseas, whose impact on export-led growth cannot be underestimated. Simon Ville examines the ways in which stock and station agents grew from their beginnings in the 1840s as pastoral finance companies to offer a wide range of support services to remote and inexperienced farming communities. In the twentieth century, the leading agents expanded their range of activities and became some of Australasia's earliest nationwide firms and biggest businesses. The Rural Entrepreneurs provides essential insights into understanding Australasia's rural history and economic development up until the end of the twentieth century.

Published to mark the centenary of Federation, this important book explores Australia's national origins in a comprehensive and accessible way. A high-calibre team of writers has been gathered to write the first ever comprehensive, general history of Federation. Starting from the perspective of the individual colonies as they made their way towards membership of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, the book also provides cross-referenced short alphabetical entries covering key events, people and concepts. It approaches Federation not simply as a formal political story, but as a social and cultural process, maintaining the relevance of nation-making by highlighting ongoing debates about democracy, sovereignty and progressive citizenry. A major contribution to the Centenary of Federation, this book should become a standard reference for scholars, students and general readers in the continuing discussions of Australia's future as a nation.

Fighting The Enemy, first published in 2000, is about men with the job of killing each other. Based on the wartime writings of hundreds of Australian front-line soldiers during World War II, this powerful and resonant book contains many moving descriptions of high emotion and drama. Soldiers' interactions with their enemies are central to war and their attitudes to their adversaries are crucial to the way wars are fought. Yet few books look in detail at how enemies interpret each other. This book is an unprecedented and thorough examination of the way Australian combat soldiers interacted with troops from the four powers engaged in World War II: Germany, Italy, Vichy France and Japan. Each opponent has themes peculiar to it: the Italians were much ridiculed; the Germans were the most respected of enemies; the Vichy French were regarded with ambivalence; while the Japanese were the subject of much hostility, intensified by the real threat of occupation.

When Adi leaves his village in Indonesia to take up an art scholarship in Australia, he arrives in the bewildering Sydney art world, determined to succeed. Following his first solo exhibition at a notable art gallery, Adi dares to reveal his true feelings for his outgoing friend, Lisa, and a passionate relationship unfolds. But will their differing expectations of one another drive them apart? This is a deeply felt love story between people -- of different nations, cultures and religions -- and the unseen impact of local and global events on individual lives.

Discovering Monaro, a fascinating local history of an Australian region, is at the same time a contribution to the current debate on the environment and man's manipulation of it. Sir Keith Hancock examines critically the indictment, heralded by Plato in the Critias, that man is a creature who spoils his environment and in so doing spoils himself. He discovers in Monaro, as he did on the terraced hillsides of Tuscany forty years ago, a rhythm of spoiling, restoring and improving. Monaco, a region of nearly 6,000 square miles in Australia's south-eastern corner, is the main provider of water to the earth's driest continent. Sir Keith provides a detailed history of the land use of the area from palaeolithic times to the present day, thus explaining how boo generations of 'black' Australians and six generations of 'white' Australians have supported themselves on its grassy uplands and alpine water-sheds.

On October 23, 1956, a popular uprising against Soviet rule swept through Hungary like a force of nature, only to be mercilessly crushed by Soviet tanks twelve days later. Only now, fifty years after those harrowing events, can the full story be told. This book is a powerful eyewitness account and a gripping history of the uprising in Hungary that heralded the future liberation of Eastern Europe.

Paul Lendvai was a young journalist covering politics in Hungary when the uprising broke out. He knew the government officials and revolutionaries involved. He was on the front lines of the student protests and the bloody street fights and he saw the revolutionary government smashed by the Red Army. In this riveting, deeply personal, and often irreverent book, Lendvai weaves his own experiences with in-depth reportage to unravel the complex chain of events leading up to and including the uprising, its brutal suppression, and its far-reaching political repercussions in Hungary and neighboring Eastern Bloc countries. He draws upon exclusive interviews with Russian and former KGB officials, survivors of the Soviet backlash, and relatives of those executed. He reveals new evidence from closed tribunals and documents kept secret in Soviet and Hungarian archives. Lendvai's breathtaking narrative shows how the uprising, while tragic, delivered a stunning blow to Communism that helped to ultimately bring about its demise.

"One Day That Shook the Communist World" is the best account of these unprecedented events.

In Colonizing Madness Jacqueline Leckie tells a forgotten story of silence, suffering, and transgressions in the colonial Pacific. It offers new insights into a history of Fiji by entering the Pacific Islands' most enduring psychiatric institution-St Giles Psychiatric Hospital-established as Fiji's Public Lunatic Asylum in 1884. Her nuanced study reveals a microcosm of Fiji's indigenous, migrant, and colonial communities and examines how individuals and communities lived with the label of madness in an ethnically complex island society. Tracking longitudinal change from the 1880s to the present in the construction and treatment of mental disorder in Fiji, the book emphasizes the colonization of madness across and within the divides of culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, economics, and power. Colonization of madness in Fiji was forged by the entanglement of colonial institutions and cultures that reflected tensions and prejudices within homes, villages, workplaces, and churches. Mental despair was equally an outcome of the destruction and displacement wrought by migration and colonialism. Madness was further cast within the wider world of colonial psychiatry, Western biomedicine, and asylum building. One of the chapters explores medical discourse and diagnoses within colonial worlds and practices. The "community within" the asylum is a feature in Leckie's study, with attention to patient agency to show how those labeled insane resisted diagnoses of their minds, confinement, and constraints-ranging from straitjackets to electric shock treatments to drug therapies. She argues that madness in colonial Fiji reflects dynamics between the asylum and the community, and that "reading" asylum archives sheds new light on race/ethnicity, gender, and power in colonial Fiji. Exploring the meaning of madness in Fiji, the author does not shy away from asking controversial questions about how Pacific cultures define normality and abnormality and also how communities respond. Carefully researched and clearly written, Colonizing Madness offers an engaging narrative, a superb example of an intersectional history with a broad appeal to understanding global developments in mental health. Her theses address the contradictions of current efforts to discard the asylum model and to make mental health a reality for all in postcolonial societies.