The Land of Plenty
Australia in the 2000s
By Mark Davis

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $36.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85484-8

The book that tells the story of Australia today: how we got here, and where we’re going. A blistering exposé and manifesto for every Australian.

Australia, Davis argues, is built on a dream. A unique democratic experiment, we were once world leaders in developing a uniquely pluralist society. But this has become a dream unfulfilled; a dream betrayed. This book will tell the story of how we have gone backwards and betrayed our national ethos, why this has happened, and how to rebuild it.

Mark Davis teaches in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of the runaway bestseller Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism.

The Blogging Revolution
By Antony Loewenstein

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $32.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85490-9

In many countries, Internet censorship has become one of the key human rights issues of the twenty-first century.

Bestselling author Antony Loewenstein conducts a searching examination of the ways the internet is threatening the rule of some of the planet's most repressive governments, including in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Egypt and Syria.

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based journalist and author. He is the author of My Israel Question (MUP, 2006).

The Great Feminist Denial
By Monica Dux and Zora Simic

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $34.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85415-2

Feminism, if not dead, is at least seriously ill. It is now common to hear women declare themselves ‘Not Feminists’, whereas in the 1970s it was taken as given that any thinking woman would be proud to wear that label.
           
What the hell happened?

Monica Dux has worked in the media, publishing and academia and writes regularly for The Age and The Australian.

Zora Simic wrote her PhD on Australian feminism at the University of Sydney. She is currently a lecturer in Australian History at the University of Melbourne.

Outback Cooking
By Andrew Dwyer

The Miegunyah Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $34.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85541-8

‘You need to have two of these—one for the glovebox ... and one at home on the kitchen shelf because this is real cooking for real people. Best Australian cookbook in years!’
— Peter Evans, Cooking with The Australian Women’s Weekly

Outback Cooking includes more than 100 delicious road-tested recipes you can use on your trip, or at home around the BBQ or in your kitchen. Illustrated with stunning images by award-winning photographer John Hay, this is the essential guide for your glove box on any camping trip or outback adventure.

Andrew Dwyer runs Outback Expeditions. He is an experienced bushman and chef who has a great love of the Australian outback.

Objects of the Dead
Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life
By Margaret Gibson

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $27.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85557-9

What is the fate of objects after a death? And why do some things stay and some go from our lives and memories?

Objects of the Dead is about a universal and often poignant experience—the death of a loved one and the process of sorting through, living with, and discarding, the objects that are left behind. This book is a remarkable reflection on grieving—of both saying goodbye and living with death.

Margaret Gibson has written widely in the areas of mourning and grief. She teaches sociology at Griffith University in Queensland.

The Racket
How Abortion Became Legal in Australia
By Gideon Haigh

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $32.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85578-4

A generation ago in Australia, abortion was a crime.  It was also the basis of one of the country's most lucrative and longest-lasting criminal rackets.

The Racket describes the rise and fall of an extraordinary web of influence, which culminated in the landmark ruling that made abortion legal, and a public inquiry that humiliated a powerful government and a glamorous police force.

Gideon Haigh has written or edited more than twenty books, including Asbestos House, Bad Company and The Cricket War (MUP, 2007).

Denial
History Betrayed
By Tony Taylor

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $34.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85482-4

Denial is the first book to draw together the ideological and psychological elements involved in historical denial.

Tony Taylor surveys major cases in twentieth and twenty-first-century historical denial that illustrate the nature of prejudice and how it relates to techniques of the instigators of denial, including their use of popular media and the Internet.

Associate Professor Tony Taylor is Director of the National Centre for History Education at Monash University.

Private Lives
Australians at Home since Federation
By Peter Timms

The Miegunyah Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $49.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85502-9

In Private Lives, Peter Timms traces the revolutionary changes that have transformed domestic life over the past hundred years or so. Privacy, security, comfort and happiness have always been the ideals people have striven for. Yet what we think they are today, and the ways we try to achieve them, would have bewildered our grandparents.

Witty, irreverent and inventive, full of fascinating information and insight, Private Lives is a sympathetic, but not uncritical, look inside the suburban house that helps to explain why we live the way we do.

Peter Timms has been a freelance writer since 1988, including periods as art critic for The Age and editor of Art Monthly Australia. His books include What's Wrong with Contemporary Art? (2004) and Australia's Quarter Acre (The Miegunyah Press, 2006).

Distraction
A Philosophers Guide to Being Free
By Damon Young

Melbourne University Press, Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $26.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85374-2

We all know what it is to be distracted—a feeling that our attention is not quite where it should be. Though it is not a new complaint, modern life is plagued by distractions. At work and at home, in art galleries and in the bedroom, our attention is often torn between one thing and another. What does it mean to be distracted, and why?

In this insightful romp through the history of philosophy, Damon Young shows how rewarding patient, sensitive and thoughtful attention to the world can be. He suggests that the opposite of a life of distraction is one of genuine freedom.

Dr Damon Young is a Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department, Melbourne University.

Meanjin
Volume 67, Number 3
Edited by Sophie Cunningham

Publication Date: September 2008   RRP: $24.95, Pb, 978-0-522-85559-3

In the September edition of Meanjin, Georgia Blain talks about life-writing, Joseph Pearson considers Don Watson’s American Journeys in light of the USA primaries, Mel Campbell buys a leather jacket, book editor Andrea McNamara tells us why AFL is her first and greatest sporting love, and book designer W.H. Chong give us six great cover ideas. David Nichols defends the suburbs, Anthony Macris describes his young son’s descent into severe autism, Lynne Spender states the case for the Copyleft movement and John Van Tigglen hangs with the twitchers up in Cooktown.  Fiction includes the extraordinary newcomer Abigail Ulman; Luke Stickels, Sandra White, Mark Dapin and one from the master: Alex Miller. We continue with the serialization of Caroline Lee’s novel Stripped and Kate Fielding’s graphic history, Their Hooks Find Hold Deep in Our Flesh.

Tags: melbourne university press