Ivor Hele was a prolific artist of extraordinary discipline and power. His front-line responses to war, the portraits that won him an astonishing five Archibald prizes in a single decade, his exuberant nudes and his magnificent landscapes cobine to make up a prodigious body of work. Jane Hylton's book focuses on Hele's non-war art, offering a wider view of the man, his exceptional ability and his contribution to Australian art than has been previously available. This book has some of his finest art work, allowing readers to see the genius behind this great artist and activist.

Australia's constitutional crisis of 1975 was not simply about the precise powers of the Senate or the Governor-General. It was about competing accounts of how to legitimate informal constitutional change. For Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and the parliamentary tradition that he invoked, national elections sufficiently legitimated even the most constitutionally transformative of his goals. For his opponents, and a more complex tradition of popular sovereignty, more decisive evidence was required of the consent of the people themselves. This book traces the emergence of this fundamental constitutional debate and chronicles its subsequent iterations in sometimes surprising institutional configurations: the politics of judicial appointment in the Murphy Affair; the evolution of judicial review in the Mason Court; and the difficulties Australian republicanism faced in the Howard Referendum. Though the patterns of institutional engagement have varied, the persistent question of how to legitimate informal constitutional change continues to shape Australia's constitution after Whitlam.

The desert has a hypnotic presence in Australian culture, simultaneously alluring and repellent. The 'Centre' is distant and unknown to most Australians, yet has become a symbol of the country. This exciting book, highly illustrated in full colour, reveals the singular impact that the desert, both geographical and metaphorical, has had on Australian culture. At the heart of the book is the profound relationship that Aboriginal Australians have with the desert, and the complex ways in which they have been seen by white people in this context.

During the Second World War, in the mountains and jungles of Timor, Bougainville and New Guinea, Australian commando units fought arduous campaigns against the Japanese. The story of these elite independent companies and commando squadrons, whose soldiers wore the distinctive double-diamond insignia, is told here for the first time. Through 130 powerful images from the Australian War Memorial’s unparalleled collection – some never published before – Double Diamonds captures the operational history of these units and the personal stories of the men who served in them, many of whom lost their lives or the friends who trained and fought alongside them.

This social and cultural history concentrates on not only the food and drink of this part of Australia, but also its natural beauty, architecture, traditions and community. Local wines and a mixture of contemporary and historical recipes are included.

Robert Hannaford is one of Australia's foremost portrait artists, but this is only one aspect of his work. ROBERT HANNAFORD: NATURAL EYE, the first book to be published on this acclaimed artist, reveals a richer, fuller story: of an artist who deliberately places representation over abstraction, producing art that celebrates the visual world in all its variety while interrogating its place in the human imagination. Hannaford has been a finalist in every Archibald Prize exhibition since 1991, and winner of the Archibald People's Choice Prize on three occasions. His subjects include Dame Joan Sutherland, Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Edward Woodwards, Hon. Paul Keating, Jean Blackburn, Hon. Bob Hawke, Sir Gerard Brennen, Professor Rolf Prince and Hugh Stretton.

Collection of essays and reviews written by Paul Hasluck in the years before his death in 1993. Contrasts social attitudes in Australia early in the century with attitudes 60 or more years later. Also presents anecdotes about several of his contemporaries, including Curtin, Evatt, Menzies, Gorton, McMahon and Whitlam. Paul Hasluck was born in the country, son of Salvation Army parents. During his life he was variously: journalist, poet, drama critic, war historian, author, publisher, anthropologist, public servant, diplomat, federal minister and Governor-General. Includes an introduction and postscript by his son, Nicholas Hasluck.

Focuses on the wars of the past hundred years; showing how war changed art in the 20th century and how art has changed attitudes to war. Betty Churcher, one of Australia's leading art historians, explores the work of official and unofficial war artists in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and the campaigns in Afganistan and the Persian Gulf.

The prominent Australian artist Nora Heysen has been said to have worked in the shadow of her father Hans Heysen, one of Australia's most recognised landscape painters. Letters between the two, however, reveal a different story. In 1934, when Nora first travelled to London to study art, she experienced her first time away from home and the first of many, often exotic places from where she would write home to Hahndorf, South Australia. The correspondence between Nora and Hans continued until his death in 1968. Theirs was a close and affectionate relationship, in which father and daughter shared a lifetime of thoughts about art and life, and a mutual respect and admiration for each other's work. Heysen to Heysen is a showcase of letters between Nora and Hans Heysen from the collection of the National Library of Australia. Accompanied by carefully selected images and text by leading art historian Catherine Speck, the publication lifts the lid on a vista of Australian art.