Peter Hiscock presents an introduction to the archaeology of Australia from prehistoric times to the 18th century AD.

The Bone Readers are a dedicated group of scholars who study the earliest human remains, their chemistry and DNA, their extinct floral and faunal contemporaries, and the geologic layers in which they were found. Their research leads them to theories about modern human origins that continually challenge conventional wisdom and cherished beliefs— about “Eve ,” Neanderthals, “hobbits,” and the Bering Straits, among others. Two leading Bone Readers and a science writer have penned a literate, authoritative summary of the current questions and the minefield of academic politics that surround it. Ideal for students in human origins or biological anthropology courses, and a delightful read.

DESTINY IN SYDNEY is an epic, multicultural novel of convicts, Aborigines, and Chinese embroiled in the birth of Sydney, Australia. Adventurous and opportunistic, Scottish marine Lieutenant Nathaniel Armstrong is in charge of convicts on one of eleven ships sent in 1787 on a perilous voyage from England to the other side of the world to establish a British penal colony. He lusts after fiery Irish convict Moira O Keeffe and surprises himself when he falls in love with her. Together they nearly starve in Sydney Cove while learning to farm the harsh land and deal with the Aborigines, whose lot is disease and unequal warfare. Armstrong descendants deny their convict heritage and oppose the Chinese who come for the gold rush. Three Fong brothers suffer violence and despair as they fight to forge a place for themselves. Duncan Armstrong, rich and powerful, helps pass the White Australia Policy in 1901 to keep out the Chinese, while his cousin Eleanor works for women s suffrage and a fair go for the Aborigines. Impeccably researched, this gripping dramatization of the true history of Sydney, Australia, is drawn from the writings of Australian leaders, soldiers, explorers, and settlers. Richards has mined Australian history for its action-adventure and applied his incomparable storytelling skills for a powerful, fast-paced read. The sequel novel A GIFT OF SYDNEY, available in late 2013, will continue the story of the Armstrongs and Fongs, and add the Hudson Aboriginal family, ending with the Summer Olympic Games held in Sydney in the year 2000.

This book makes comparison between the Great Reformation in the 16th Century and Australia in the 21st Century.

Twenty-six leading scholars from around the world have come together to celebrate the strengths, the energies and the sheer intellectual excitement of their discipline. They unashamedly proclaim that over the last hundred years archaeology has transformed itself from a genteel antiquarianpursuit, deeply rooted in the classical tradition, to a rigorous and demanding discipline, spanning the humanities and the sciences, yet at the same time one widely accessible to the public at large. The contributors show how our understanding of the past has changed, reveal the exciting ideas under current debate, and offer their visions of the future.The result is a remarkable overview of world archaeology, focusing on new and unexpected themes at the cutting edge of the discipline.

As the 21st century proceeds apace, Australia faces new and old challenges, both domestically and internationally. These include managing complex governance issues, preventing democratic fracture, balancing an ever- shifting geopolitical strategic order, addressing the recognition and identity demands of marginalised groups, and responding to crises and urgent policy challenges, such as climate change. Bonotti, Miragliotta, and the other contributors to this volume analyse and evaluate the challenges which confront Australia by locating them in their national and comparative context. The various contributions reveal that while these challenges are neither novel nor unique to Australia, the way in which they manifest and Australia’s responses to them are shaped by the country’s distinctive history, culture, geography, location, and size. The chapters offer a cutting- edge analysis of these pressing challenges faced by Australia and offer reflections on how to address them. The book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Australian politics, and of comparative politics in a global perspective.

The remarkable untold story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the five extraordinary men he used to pull America into World War II In the dark days between Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent five remarkable men on dramatic and dangerous missions to Europe. The missions were highly unorthodox and they confounded and infuriated diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. Their importance is little understood to this day. In fact, they were crucial to the course of the Second World War. The envoys were magnificent, unforgettable characters. First off the mark was Sumner Welles, the chilly, patrician under secretary of state, later ruined by his sexual misdemeanors, who was dispatched by FDR on a tour of European capitals in the spring of 1940. In summer of that year, after the fall of France, William “Wild Bill” Donovan—war hero and future spymaster—visited a lonely United Kingdom at the president’s behest to determine whether she could hold out against the Nazis. Donovan’s report helped convince FDR that Britain was worth backing. After he won an unprecedented third term in November 1940, Roosevelt threw a lifeline to the United Kingdom in the form of Lend-Lease and dispatched three men to help secure it. Harry Hopkins, the frail social worker and presidential confidant, was sent to explain Lend-Lease to Winston Churchill. Averell Harriman, a handsome, ambitious railroad heir, served as FDR’s man in London, expediting Lend-Lease aid and romancing Churchill’s daughter-in-law. Roosevelt even put to work his rumpled, charismatic opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie, whose visit lifted British morale and won wary Americans over to the cause. Finally, in the aftermath of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Hopkins returned to London to confer with Churchill and traveled to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin. This final mission gave Roosevelt the confidence to bet on the Soviet Union. The envoys’ missions took them into the middle of the war and exposed them to the leading figures of the age. Taken together, they plot the arc of America’s trans¬formation from a divided and hesitant middle power into the global leader. At the center of everything, of course, was FDR himself, who moved his envoys around the globe with skill and élan. We often think of Harry S. Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George F. Kennan as the authors of America’s global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century. But all their achievements were enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his representatives, who took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world. In these two years, America turned. FDR and his envoys were responsible for the turn. Drawing on vast archival research, Rendezvous with Destiny is narrative history at its most delightful, stirring, and important.

From famines and deforestation to water pollution, global warming, and the rapid rate of extinction of plants and animals--the extent of the global damage wrought by humankind is staggering. Why have we allowed our environment to reach such a crisis? What produced the catastrophic population explosion that so taxes the earth's resources? Reg Morrison's search for answers led him to ponder our species' astonishing evolutionary success. His extraordinary book describes how a spiritual outlook combined with a capacity for rational thought have enabled Homo sapiens to prosper through the millennia. It convincingly depicts these traits as part of our genetic makeup--and as the likely cause of our ultimate downfall against the inexorable laws of nature. The book will change the way readers think about human evolution and the fate of our species. Small bands of apes walked erect on the dangerous plains of East Africa several million years ago. Morrison marvels that they not only survived, but migrated to all corners of the earth and established civilizations. To understand this feat, he takes us back to a critical moment when these hominids developed language and with it the unique ability to think abstractly. He shows how at this same time they began to derive increasing advantage from their growing sense of spirituality. He convincingly depicts spirituality as an evolutionary strategy that helped rescue our ancestors from extinction and drive the species toward global dominance. Morrison concludes that this genetically productive spirituality, which has influenced every aspect of our lives, has led us to overpopulate the world and to devastate our own habitats. Sobering, sometimes chilling, consistently fascinating, his book offers a startling new view of human adaptation running its natural course.

Following on from the highly acclaimed Facing Armageddon and Passchendaele in Perspective, At the Eleventh Hour recognises that a world was ending in November 1918, and by international collaboration on the 80th Anniversary we learn through this book, what it was like to experience the transition from war to peace. Distinguished historians brilliantly convey a sense of immediacy as the Armistice is recreated and analysed.The reader will not just acquire new areas of information, he will have some of the existing knowledge which he thought was soundly held, strikingly challenged in the pages of this superbly illustrated book.