"This is not a book of documents, snippets or worthy speeches. Instead it presents the original essays and the moments of insight that told us what Australia is and could be. These are the essential statements – from historians, reporters, novelists, mavericks and visionaries – that take us from Federation to the present-day, and tell a story of national self-discovery. There is the Frenchman who saw that Australia was a ‘workingman’s paradise’, and the historian who explained why. The two reporters who realised the true significance of Gallipoli and conveyed it to the nation. Russel Ward on the Australian Legend, Robin Boyd on the Australian Ugliness, Donald Horne on the Lucky Country, W.E.H. Stanner on the Great Australian Silence and Anne Summers on Manzone Country. Real Matildas, Cultural Cringers, Future Eaters and For- gotten People – and much more. Memorably written and cohesive, this is the essential sourcebook of the words that made Australia."

A history of the American Constitution's formative decades from a preeminent legal scholar When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.

In a time when little attention is paid to public speaking, this bestselling collection provides a reminder that this country has a unique and distinguished tradition of public oratory. Included here are speeches by Paul Keating, Patrick White, Geoffrey Blainey, Ben Chifley, Sir William Deane and many more. From the inspirational to the eulogising, from the political to the satirical, from the sacred to the controversial, the speeches in this long overdue anthology are each deftly introduced by innovative researcher Sally Warhaft. This is the definitive collection. Now in its third reprint.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.”—Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world. WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD

Italian cinemas after the war were filled by audiences who had come to watch domestically-produced films of passion and pathos. These highly emotional and consciously theatrical melodramas posed moral questions with stylish flair, redefining popular ways of feeling about romance, family, gender, class, Catholicism, Italy, and feeling itself. The Operatic and the Everyday in Postwar Italian Film Melodrama argues for the centrality of melodrama to Italian culture. It uncovers a wealth of films rarely discussed before including family melodramas, the crime stories of neorealismo popolare and opera films, and provides interpretive frameworks that position them in wider debates on aesthetics and society. The book also considers the well-established topics of realism and arthouse auteurism, and re-thinks film history by investigating the presence of melodrama in neorealism and post-war modernism. It places film within its broader cultural context to trace the connections of canonical melodramatists like Visconti and Matarazzo to traditions of opera, the musical theatre of the sceneggiata, visual arts, and magazines. In so doing it seeks to capture the artistry and emotional experiences found within a truly popular form.

Thea Astley won the coveted Miles Franklin Award for the third time with this powerful, bitterly funny novel, her favourite among her own works. Many lives orbit around the radiant genius of Jack Holberg - including wife, lover, child and acolyte - all slowly destroyed by their devotion to the blind musician.

A great speech has the power to define the times, to inspire, to stir and to motivate. This collection of ancient and modern speeches includes the words of activists, politicians, philosophers and scores of others who have born witness to significant moments from the first century to the twenty-first. Many have themselves made history. Here you'll find the words of: inspirational leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela; political heads, from Oliver Cromwell to Kevin Rudd; enlightened writers and thinkers such as Arundhati Roy and Inga Clendinnen; campaigners such as Daniel Mannix and Eleanor Roosevelt; soldiers and statesmen who helped shape the modern world, such as Napoleon and Winston Churchill religious figures from every era, including Jesus and the Dalai Lama. Great Speecheswill make a great addition to every home and library shelf.

This is not a book of documents, snippets or worthy speeches. Instead it presents the original essays and the moments of insight that told us what Australia is and could be. These are the essential statements - from historians, reporters, novelists, mavericks and visionaries - that take us from Federation to the present - day, and tell a story of national self - discovery. There is the Frenchman who saw that Australia was a 'workingman's paradise', and the historian who explained why. The two reporters who realised the true significance of Gallipoli and conveyed it to the nation. Russel Ward on the Australian Legend, Robin Boyd on the Australian Ugliness, Donald Horne on the Lucky Country, W.E.H. Stanner on the Great Australian Silence and Anne Summers on Manzone Country. Real Matildas, Cultural Cringers, Future Eaters and Forgotten People - and much more. Memorably written and cohesive, this is the essential sourcebook of the words that made Australia. Includes essays by Miles Franklin, Albert Metin, Ellis Ashmead - Bartlett, Keith Murdoch, Maybanke Anderson, D.H. Lawrence, W.K. Hancock, P.R. Stephensen, Vance Palmer, Robert Menzies, A.A. Phillips, Manning Clark, Russel Ward, Barry Humphries, Robin Boyd, Donald Horne, W.E.H. Stanner, Humphrey McQueen, Hugh Stretton, Anne Summers, Miriam Dixson, Bernard Smith, Paul Kelly, Geoffrey Blainey, Tim Flannery, David Malouf, Inga Clendinnen, Noel Pearson, Judith Brett and Ghassan Hage.

An important reply to Keith Windschuttle's, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One. Whitewash provides not only a demolition of Windschuttle's revisionism but also a vivid and illuminating history of one of the most famous and tragic episodes in the history of the British empire - the dispossession of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Contributors include: Henry Reynolds, Cassandra Pybus, Lyndall Ryan and Martin Krygier.

The first new novel in almost ten years from award-winning, best-selling author Kate Grenville.