Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World
Category: Society & Culture
Every human being is endowed with an inheritance. A set of ancient biases - forged by natural selection and fine-tuned by millennia of culture - that shape every facet of our behaviour.For countless generations, this inheritance has been taking us to ever greater heights- driving the rise of more sophis ...Show more
Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre
Category: Society & Culture
Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life—and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your liberal beliefs more seriously Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. ...Show more
Plagued: Australia's two years of hell - the inside story by Simon Benson
Category: Society & Culture
This is the inside story of Australia’s two years of hell, when the country was besieged by crisis after crisis, and a rolling series of challenges and setbacks. Much of what took place behind the scenes will astonish the public. Plagued reveals how the critical decisions were actually made, decisions t ...Show more
The Good Death Through Time by Caitlin Mahar
Category: Society & Culture
Can our forebears help us face complex questions of dying, now?' I have quite a bit of understanding of white man's ways, but it is difficult for me to understand this one.' ;An Australian Senate committee investigation of the Northern Territory's Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, the first legisl ...Show more
Fully Human: A New Way of Using Your Mind by Steve Biddulph
Category: Society & Culture
A mother of small children avoids a murderer in broad daylight. A young dad is able to grieve for his lost baby - using a song. And it saves his marriage. What if there were parts of our minds which we never use, but if awakened, could make us so much happier, connected and alive? What if awakening thos ...Show more
Puff Piece by John Safran
Category: Society & Culture
Wild, hilarious and thought-provoking, Puff Piece is a probing look into Big Tobacco and the vaping industry, and how words can be literally a matter of life and death. The folks that bring you Marlboro - Philip Morris - are wheezing, slowly dying. Cigarettes are out of favour with everyone, from world ...Show more
White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad
Category: Society & Culture | Series: Social & Cultural history
When white people cry foul it is often people of colour who suffer. White tears have a potency that silences racial minorities. White Tears/Brown Scarsblows open the inconvenient truth that when it comes to race, white entitlement is too often masked by victimhood. Never is this more obvious than the de ...Show more
Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell by Louise Milligan
Category: Society & Culture
Cardinal George Pell, Australia's most powerful Catholic, has been found guilty of five sexual crimes against children.Updated edition. He is the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged by police and convicted of child sex offences. The abuse involved choirboys at Melbourne's St Patrick's ...Show more
Indigenous and Other Australians Since 1901 by Tim Rowse
Category: Society & Culture
As Australia became a nation in 1901, no one anticipated that 'Aboriginal affairs' would become an on-going national preoccupation. Not 'dying out' as predicted, Aboriginal numbers recovered and - along with Torres Strait Islanders - they became an articulate presence, aggrieved at colonial authority's ...Show more
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Category: Society & Culture | Series: Picador Classic
With an introduction by Will Self A classic work of psychology, this international bestseller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind. If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer t ...Show more
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Category: Society & Culture | Reading Level: very good
One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist who threatened that she would be next. She made headlines again when she was stripped of her citizenship and resigned from the Dutch Pa ...Show more
Growing Up Disabled in Australia by Carly Findlay
Category: Society & Culture | Series: Growing Up
'My body and its place in the world seemed quite normal to me.' 'I didn't grow up disabled, I grew up with a problem. A problem those around me wanted to fix.' 'We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us.' 'The diagnosis helped but it didn't fix everything.' 'Don't fear the labe ...Show more