I've stuck up thousands of posters across Australia to interrogate our national identity. With each, the response has grown. You might expect I have unshakable convictions about social justice, but I don't. I reject the label 'activist'. So why do what I do? Maybe it's time I made sense of my motivations. Artist Peter Drew wanted a better Australia. In 2013, frustrated at the political discussion around asylum seekers, he put up a poster, commenting on Australia's offshore detention. What followed was an outpouring of community support, and a national, then global, following for his art. As Peter's profile rose, he began to question his beliefs - a struggle that led to destructive behaviour and affected his relationships. When compelled to face a painful family legacy, Peter realised that his behaviour and his motivation to make art shared a common thread- his father. Their relationship had been shaped by an outdated Australian machismo - a mix of bravado, inadequacy and shame that not only affects sons and their fathers, but informs social relations more broadly, including the way we as a nation treat outsiders. Told with humour, sincerity and an attentive eye, Peter's story is both intimate and inclusive, drawing a parallel between our personal relationships and Australia's national narratives. This is a book about family and identity, about the lies we tell ourselves and the past we bury. It is an expedition to be a better citizen of his country.

Human civilizations' longest lasting artifacts are not the great Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their inert hulls will continue to drift around Earth until the Sun expands into a red giant and engulfs them about 4.5 billion years from now. The Last Pictures, co-published by Creative Time Books, is rooted in the premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created. Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning signs, and Carl Sagan's Golden Records of the 1970s, artist/geographer Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite in September 2012, as both a time capsule and a message to the future. The selection of 100 images, which are the centerpiece of the book, was influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions that characterize contemporary civilizations. Consequently, The Last Pictures engages some of the most profound questions of the human experience, provoking discourse about communication, deep time, and the economic, environmental, and social uncertainties that define our historical moment. Copub: Creative Time Books