Joseph Cummins – författare

This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation’s colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors’ often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers.

This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation’s colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors’ often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers.

Detailed in this book are sixteen events in history so traumatic that they changed the course of history by intimidating masses of soldiers, rallied armies for revenge, shocked the public into action, or left a lasting legacy of bitterness, hatred, suspicion that persists into today. Each one of these lives on in infamy and has left an indelible mark on history, changing the way millions of people think. Cummins' skilled research and instinct for finding disturbing facts and gory details is employed here to impressive effect, as he brings stories to life and revels their impact on the world, be it the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 that pitted Catholic against Protestant for generations, the Holocaust Final Solution, or the My Lai Massacre - a necessary and compelling examination of the dark side of our history.

A rejacketed edition of one of our fun political backlist titles, complete with a reinvigorated interior, just in time for the 2016 election. The 2016 presidential election is looming on the horizon, and you know the campaigns are going to play rough--because dirty tricks and negative campaigning are as American as apple pie. Anything for a Vote chronicles more than 200 years of cheap shots and bad behaviour in presidential elections--from the 1796 contest between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to the 2012 campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Along the way, we'll stop in: 1836 - Congressman Davy Crockett accuses candidate Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women's clothing: He is laced up in corsets! 1864 - A Democratic newspaper alleges that Abraham Lincoln only changed his socks every 10 days. 1912 - Theodore Roosevelt is shot in the chest while preparing to give a campaign speech, then proceeds to deliver it anyway: I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!1928 - Republicans warned that Roman Catholic candidate Al Smith was secretly plotting with the Pope -- and that the Holland Tunnel had a secret passageway leading directly to the Vatican! 1960 - Former president Harry Truman told voters that if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell! Rejacketed, redesigned, and expanded, this new edition of Anything for a Vote is still a valuable reminder that history does repeat itself, that lessons can be learned from the past (though they usually aren't), and that our most famous presidents are not above reproach when it comes to the dirtiest game of all-political campaigning.

‘Imagined Sound’ is a unique cartography of the artistic, historical and political forces that have informed the post-World War II representation of Australian landscapes. It is the first book to formulate the unique methodology of ‘imagined sound’, a new way to read and listen to literature and music that moves beyond the dominance of the visual, the colonial mode of knowing, controlling and imagining Australian space. Emphasising sound and listening, this approach draws out and re-examines the key narratives that shape and are shaped by Australian landscapes and histories, stories of first contact, frontier violence, the explorer journey, the convict experience, non-Indigenous belonging, Pacific identity and contemporary Indigenous Dreaming. ‘Imagined Sound’ offers a compelling analysis of how these narratives are reharmonised in key works of literature and music.

‘Imagined Sound’ is a unique cartography of the artistic, historical and political forces that have informed the post-World War II representation of Australian landscapes. It is the first book to formulate the unique methodology of ‘imagined sound’, a new way to read and listen to literature and music that moves beyond the dominance of the visual, the colonial mode of knowing, controlling and imagining Australian space. Emphasising sound and listening, this approach draws out and re-examines the key narratives that shape and are shaped by Australian landscapes and histories, stories of first contact, frontier violence, the explorer journey, the convict experience, non-Indigenous belonging, Pacific identity and contemporary Indigenous Dreaming. ‘Imagined Sound’ offers a compelling analysis of how these narratives are reharmonised in key works of literature and music.