Penguin Books Australia

At the heart of this wrenching memoir of a teenage girl's wartime survival is something utterly unexpected: a love story that blazes briefly in a dark corner of occupied Poland.

Rainbow Pie is a coming-of-age memoir set between 1950 and 1963 in a small Appalachian farming community along a West Virginia road named Shanghai (from the seventeenth-century Scots Irish, 'Shangi', meaning to celebrate).

'These are stories to move the heart profoundly; to elicit
gratitude for all that we have; powerful stories to make us
determined to speak out and take action against prejudice or
hateful gossip; stories to encourage a vigorous, constructive
questioning of authority; stories to remind us always that the
price of liberty is, indeed, eternal vigilance, by all the people, on
behalf of all the people.'...

The Myth of the Great Depression in no way suggests that the Depression of the early 1930s did not occur.   It was a time of huge increases in unemployment, bankruptcies, and social disruption.   Yet health improved and, after a sharp rise in 1930, suicides rates declined.   The word 'Myth' in the title refers to the traditional way the story has been told, focusing almost exclusively...

ART DOESN'T EXPRESS.   IT INVENTS

Whereas fans of Australian post-punk group The Triffids may profess not to know their Barthes from their elbows, Vagabond Holes begs to differ.

A timely reminder of how far we've come since the days of routine slaughter, of how hard conservationists fought to bring it to an end, and how vigilant we must be in making sure that the dark days of whaling are behind us forever.' - Tim Winton

The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption and technology, all of which placed tremendous demands on earth, air and water-the very elements of life. The urgent question of the twenty-first century is how, or whether, this can continue.

Cross-dressing convicts, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes – here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day.

In this highly readable social history, Frank Bongiorno uses vivid examples to chart the changing sex lives of Australians. He shows how a predominantly male penal colony gave rise to a rough and ready culture: the scarcity of women...

Benjamin Law considers himself pretty lucky to live in Australia: he can hold his boyfriend's hand in public and lobby his politicians to recognise same-sex marriage. But as the child of migrants, he's also curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia. So he sets off to meet his fellow Gaysians.

A generation after Pol Pot's regime killed one quarter of the nation's population, Cambodia shows every outward sign of having overcome its devastating history – the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But behind this façade lies a country still haunted by its years of terror.

A delightful and informative history of modern music.

Harmony is created by bringing sounds together. In music lessons, we learn how to do this in a formal way: we learn about chords and keys, and we are given rules for using them. This is the textbook way; this is legal harmony.  Everything else – including the sounds that constantly surround us, those of ticking clocks, dogs, traffic...

In 1629, the Batavia was wrecked on a coral archipelago fifty miles from the Australian continent. Most of the people on board surtvived, only to become victims of a visionary psychopath who, with the help of a dozen followers, organised a methodical massacre of the hapless community.

Nowadays we believe that consenting adults have the freedom to do what they like with their own bodies. We publicise and celebrate sex; we discuss it endlessly; we are obsessed with the sex lives of celebrities. We think it wrong that in other cultures people suffer for their sexual orientation, that women are treated as second-class citizens, or that adulterers are put to death. Yet until quite recently...

The origins of the Royal Mail go back to the early years of the Tudor monarchy: Brian Tuke, a former King's Bailiff in Sandwich, was acknowledged as the first 'Master of the Posts' by Cardinal Wolsey in 1512, and went on to build up a network of 'postmasters' across England for Henry VIII.

Did you know that the Cornish pasty was developed to protect tin miners from arsenic poisoning, or that the word 'salary' comes from Roman soldiers being paid their wages in salt?  Why do we eat goose (or turkey) at Christmas? Is the Scotch egg actually from Scotland and what did some retired crusaders have to do with French toast? What dish was invented by Greek bandits on the run?...

One of this century's greatest surprises has been the economic and social revolution in India. A country long characterized by such adjectives as 'timeless', 'spiritual' and 'backward' is now viewed through a new set of clichés: 'hi-tech', 'materialistic', 'go-getting'. But what is the real nature of this rapid change, and what are its roots?