Penguin Books Australia

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).

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.

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...

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?

Paper Empires explores Australian book production and consumption from 1946 to the present day, using wide-ranging research, oral history and memoir to explore the worlds...

Interesting and accessible, Paper Empires includes everything you need to know about: The publishing industry from Allen & Unwin to HarperCollins The retail industry from Angus and Robertson...

'It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. I stood on the verandah, just trying to make my mind think: 'War – we're at War'. It was unreal.'

In September 1939 Mary Angove from Plymouth was barely sixteen. A time-honoured sex divide that allocated home-making to women and world affairs to men found her, and millions like her, unprepared for the century's greatest conflict.

Throughout history women have caused wars, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees. The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcées, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves. Scandalous Women tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events.

While their loved ones left to serve overseas, most New Zealanders spent the Second World War at home. This book tells the stories of those who stayed behind.

Based on frank, in-depth interviews, Home reveals the reality of civilian wartime life in New Zealand during the watershed years from 1939 to 1945.

Women and men remember, with disarming honesty, the experiences that unfolded for them, including...

In waiata our forebears spoke their hearts - in grief and celebration.  For many hundreds of years this great oral tradition of song flourished in Aotearoa.  During the second half of the nineteenth century, in times of rapid change, Maori scholars recorded for the future the words of thousands of waiata.  Their manuscripts were preserved by Pakeha of foresight and commitment, and along...

With a new introduction by
Lynsey Hanley

and a Foreword by
Simon Hoggart

'A vivid inside view of working-class culture and one of the most influential books of the postwar era' 
Observer

'The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea cup! he will say'