Paul Keating’s Redfern Speech – Twenty years on.

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Andrew Cattanach

We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of one of the most important speeches in modern politics in Australia, if not the world. On December 10th, 1992 the then Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating took to the stage in Redfern, Sydney, and delivered a stirring, poignant account of the challenges that faced Indigenous Australians, both at the time and in the future.

The speech continues to divide public perception today. It blindsided the nation, one which had unwittingly become increasingly divided along racial lines.

Many will argue that it’s significance was overblown, that an admission of fault cannot substitute lack of change on the ground. Others count it as one of the major steps in identifying the problems we face as Australians in creating a truly united nation, one free of prejudice on the grounds of colour.

In 2007, ABC Radio National listeners voted the speech as their third most “unforgettable speech” behind Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, lofty praise indeed.

It was an event that would forever stand as the greatest achievement in Paul Keating’s tenure in the highest office in the land. Keating has never released a memoir and few believe he will, so on this anniversary there remains no better place to start learning about this historic day and others than with the book After Words, a collection of Paul Keating’s post prime-ministerial speeches and essays where he reflects on his hopes, feelings, fears, and vision for Australia.

And to mark this occasion we’re proud to offer you our last signed and numbered limited edition copy of After Words. The publisher has no more copies of this signed edition, so this will likely be your last chance to get a hold of this wonderful collector’s item.

You can also pick up the book on its own, in stock with Booktopia for a limited time.

Click here to buy the last signed and numbered limited edition of After Words from
Booktopia, Australia’s Local Bookstore

Filed under: Book Recommendations, Limited Editions, Politics | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

James Button, author of Speechless : A Year In My Father’s Business, answers Ten Terrifying Questions

Posted on November 5, 2012 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru

The Booktopia Book Guru asks

James Button

author of Speechless :
A Year In My Father’s Business

Ten Terrifying Questions

—————————-

1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

I was born, raised and schooled in Melbourne. I have lived in the city for 45 of my 51 years. The writer David Malouf said that Brisbane, where he grew up, was the city he felt from the body outwards. Melbourne is like that for me. I would like to write about it one day.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

A writer, a writer, a writer. I’ve dabbled with the idea of doing a few other things (politics, teaching…) but writing is the only job I think about doing every day. I’ve been a particular kind of writer — a journalist — for 23 years, but I would like to try other forms, too. It’s also the only skill I have. If reading is banned tomorrow, I’ll be sweeping the streets.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?

A belief that I could do anything. At 18 I thought I would write Ulysses. Now I reckon I’ll be lucky if I get to read Ulysses.

4. What were three big events – in the family circle or on the world stage or in your reading life, for example – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced you in your career path?

In Grade Three a teacher read my creative writing essay to the class, and I thought: I can do this.

Reading Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, at the age of 20, thrilled me, because it was about the inner suburbs I lived in, and it showed me that you could write about the places and lives you knew, however ordinary they might seem on the surface.

At the age of 24 I became a journalist for a city newspaper and for my first job was sent to a faraway northern suburb to interview a 14-year old pool playing prodigy. I was astounded by the roaming freedom journalism gave you, the discovery that everyone had a story to tell, and would tell, if you opened your notebook and said you were from the daily newspaper.

5. Considering the innumerable electronic media avenues open to you – blogs, online newspapers, TV, radio, etc – why have you chosen to write a book? aren’t they obsolete?

Not at all. For the amount of work and thought that goes into it, for its potential impact, and for its simple usefulness and beauty, there is still nothing like a book.

6. Please tell us about your new book, Speechless : A Year In My Father’s Business…

It is an account of a year I spent in Canberra, writing speeches for a Prime Minister, failing for complex reasons largely out of my control, learning a little of how government works, and reflecting through this experience on the life of my father, a former Federal Government minister, and how his life shaped mine. It is a memoir of how life often doesn’t quite turn out the way you think but is fascinating all the same.

(BBGuru: here is the publisher’s blurb – An absorbing story of what happens behind Canberra’s closed doors by leading speechwriter James Button.

James Button spent a year writing speeches for Kevin Rudd. Before that, he reported on politics as a highly regarded journalist for Fairfax. But James also has politics in the blood: his father was the diminutive but larger-than-life Senator John Button, who was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments.

Growing up, James watched a roll-call of political luminaries debating the fate of the Labor Party. He saw great victories and defeats at close hand. He believes both his father and his family paid a heavy price for politics.

Speechless is James’ highly personal account of a year working in Canberra, seen from both the inside and the outside. It’s told through his experience of Kevin Rudd’s failure to tell his story, and how this helped destroy his prime ministership. It also reflects on how far the Labor Party has moved from the idealism and pragmatism of his father’s generation. He ends on a note of hope for the Party’s revival.)

Click here to buy Speechless – A Year In My Father’s Business from Booktopia,
Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

7. If your work could change one thing in this world – what would it be?

The best books make us feel less alone, more aware of how the world is, more deeply alive. I would like to write a book that did all that.

8. Whom do you most admire and why?

People who move from hardline positions to the middle, who come to understand complexity while not losing sight of their goal. Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela come to mind.

9. Many people set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

I still hope to write a novel, even if it’s not Ulysses.

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?

Follow good people. Keep a notebook. Remember that stories are everywhere — if you go deep enough, nothing is boring. Write and read all the time.

James, thank you for playing.

Click here to buy Speechless – A Year In My Father’s Business from Booktopia,
Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Filed under: Australian Author, Author Interview, Current Affairs, Politics, Writing Style, Writing tips | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Stop Screaming at the TV & Start Being Part of the Solution by Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Andrew Cattanach

It has been a bizarre month in politics. We’ve seen a speaker talk (or text) about dud roots, an MP allege union officials used his hotel phone while he was in the shower and an opposition minister for business declare  he had the skin of a rhinoceros, the speed of a gazelle and was watching the opposition like a hawk (yes ladies and gentlemen, a one man menagerie voted in by the people for the people), sometimes politics can get you down.

What better way to exorcise the insanity that is currently going on in Canberra from your mind than with a book. Watching the evening news we can easily forget that Australia has a rich and interesting political history. We are one of the few nations whose sovereignty was established with words and deeds rather than bullets and blades.

Here are five of the best books on Australian politics I’ve read. They are sure to be more relevant and richly rewarding than what we currently have to contend with. I plan to read more Australian history. It’s time I stopped yelling at the TV and did something about fixing the mess. Maybe you’ll join me.

The Party Thieves

by Barrie Cassidy

You need to know where you’ve been to know where you are, and what better place to start than one of the best books of the last twenty years, The Party Thieves. Opening with Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull locking horns (doesn’t that seem like a long time ago) and ending with the incredible events of the 2010 federal election, author and respected political commentator Barry Cassidy lets you behind the curtain to dissect the key moments before the election that brought us the first minority government in almost 70 years.

Blurb: When veteran journalist and former Hawke media adviser Barrie Cassidy first started thinking about this book in December 2009, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd were leaders of their parties. Within six months, both men had been deposed. Cassidy contends that both men stole their parties away: Turnbull by insisting on a climate change policy that the majority hated; Rudd by his authoritarian rule and disregard for MPs and party members. In the end, both parties came and took back their parties.

Cassidy contends that the removal of Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister, in the lead-up to the 2010 election ranks with the Dismissal, the disappearance of Holt and the day Fraser called an election as one of the four big stories in Australian politics in the last 50 years. The Party Thieves is more than just a campaign diary of the 2010 election; it is an analysis of a tumultuous eight months in politics, and the impact on the party and the population.

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Lazarus Rising

by John Howard

Perhaps loathed more than liked by the end of his political career, John Howard will still cast one of the largest shadows on the Australia political landscape for many years to come. Howard entered politics at the age 34 in 1974 and ended it in ignominious circumstances in 2007. Arguably the greatest politician of his age, John Howard was able to boast the support of the working class and high earners alike in a way no other Prime Minister has before him. Lazarus Rising not only stands as the only memoir from the second longest serving Australian Prime Minister in history, but also casts a net across over a quarter of the entire history of Australian politics through the eyes of man who has been a backbencher, minister, treasurer, opposition leader and ultimately Prime Minister.

Blurb: John Howard′s autobiography, Lazarus Rising, is the biggest-selling political memoir Australia has seen. In it he talks about his love for his family, his rollercoaster ride to the Lodge and how – as prime minister – he responded to issues like climate change and the war on terrorism. Drawing on his deep interest in history, he paints a fascinating picture of a changing Australia.

In this new revised edition, he also analyses the cataclysmic lead-up to the 2010 election and the vexed political paradigm that emerged. From the future prospects of the Greens and Independents to the performance of Barnaby Joyce, Howard pulls no punches. No stranger to power struggles himself, he is uniquely qualified to note the remaking of the Nationals, decode Tony Abbott′s strategies and understand the pressures facing Julia Gillard and the comeback prospects of Kevin Rudd.

Essential reading for all followers of politics.

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

After Words

by PJ Keating

In a world where teenagers release 500 page memoirs, it’s refreshing when a public figure with the gravitas of Paul Keating states repeatedly he will never release one. After Words is the closest we’ll get to one from the former Labour Prime Minister, with Keating’s most important post-political speeches recorded fastidiously in this 2011 release. His vision of an Australia with strong ties with Asia now appears a beacon amongst other economical commentators of his day, and with his famous turn of phrase and lightning wit we are treated to the public reflections of a man who oversaw the downturn and overdrive of the Australian economy like few others.

Blurb: A unique volume of speeches and occasional pieces written entirely by former Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Books of speeches are rarely published as a compendium of work by one person. After Words is unique in Australian publishing by virtue of its scale and range of subjects, and that all the speeches are the work of one eye and one mind: former Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Each speech has been conceptualised, contextualised and crafted by Paul Keating. Subject to subject, idea to idea, the speeches are related in a wider construct, which is the way Paul Keating has viewed and thought about the world.

The speeches reveal the breadth and depth of his interests – be they cultural, historical, or policy-focused – dealing with subjects as broad as international relations, economic policy and politics. Individual chapters range from a discussion of Jorn Utzon’s Opera House through to the redesign of Berlin, the history of native title, the challenge of Asia, the role of the monarchy, to the shape of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and more.

After Words contains an analytic commentary on Australia’s recent social and economic repositioning, in the minds of many, by its principal architect. The speeches, more often than not, go beyond observations, as Paul Keating sketches out new vistas and points to new directions. For those interested in matters that go to the future of Australia and the world, After Words presents, unmediated, a panoply of issues which the policy mind and writing style of Paul Keating has sculpted into a recognisable landscape.

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Malcolm Fraser – The Political Memoirs

The former liberal Prime Minister, a grazier’s son, who attended the elite Melbourne Grammar School before receiving his masters from Oxford and entered the parliament at the then record age of 24. Sounds like a simple story of a conservative done good doesn’t it? Despite this hard right résumé Malcolm Fraser remains one of the most divisive figures in Australian politics, largely for his views since leaving the Liberal Party in 1983. While former Liberal frontbenchers like Peter Costello, John Howard, along with Labour contemporaries Bob Hawke and Kim Beasley continue to applaud any action taken by their former political parties, Fraser has remained neutral throughout his retirement and continued to be an important player in public life, playing a key role in persuading the USA Congress to impose sanctions on South Africa as part of the battle against apartheid. He was also the founding chair of CARE Australia, one of our largest aid agencies. Calling things as he sees them with his a savvy political mind and strong appreciation of the arts, Fraser reflects on the changes in the Australian political landscape, from the end of World War II to the events of today. A wonderful read.

Blurb: Malcolm Fraser is one of the most interesting and possibly most misunderstood of Australia’s Prime Ministers. In this part memoir and part authorised biography, Fraser at the age of 79 years talks about his time in public life. From the Vietnam War to the Dismissal and his years as Prime Minister, through to his concern in recent times for breaches in the Rule of Law and harsh treatment of refugees, Fraser emerges as an enduring liberal, constantly reinterpreting core values to meet the needs of changing times.

Written in collaboration with journalist Margaret Simons, Malcolm Fraser’s political memoirs trace the story of a shy boy who was raised to be seen and not heard, yet grew to become one of the most persistent, insistent and controversial political voices of our times.

The book offers insight into Malcolm Fraser’s substantial achievements. He was the first Australian politician to describe Australia’s future as multicultural, and his federal government was the first to pass Aboriginal Land Rights and Freedom of Information legislation, also establishing the Human Rights Commission.

After his parliamentary career, Fraser continued to be an important player in public life, playing a key role in persuading the USA Congress to impose sanctions on South Africa as part of the battle against apartheid. He was also the founding chair of CARE Australia, one of our largest aid agencies.

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

John Curtin – A Biography

by Lloyd Ross

Australia has never known wartime on its doorstep since federation like World War II, and from the ashes of that conflict rose John Curtin, named in 2004 by a panel of writers and historians and Australia’s greatest Prime Minister. While only in power for a short time, between 1941-1945, Curtin led Australia in one of its darkest hours before tragically dying in office. A passionate man who held a minority in the senate for most of his term, Curtin was as complex as he was inspirational, constantly battling his own demons of the bottled variety. Author Lloyd Ross’ biography on the former leader sets the benchmark for all political biographies to aspire to. A truly great book about a truly great man.

Blurb: ‘A first-rate fighter, with the mild appearance of a curate’ Bulletin

This is an important classic biography of an Australian Prime Minister whose life still exerts an abiding influence on Australian society and national consciousness—a key figure in Australian history.

‘Curtin was a complex character. Warm and sympathetic, but cold and aloof; a comrade but a loner; a rebel and anti-conscriptionist but Prime Minister. Moody; irritable; uncertain; changeable; vacillating; temperamental; opportunist; sentimental; courageous; all are true of Curtin.’

Lloyd Ross sums up the character of the wartime Labor Prime Minister who fought Churchill to bring back Australian troops from Europe to defend our nation. An intense and passionate orator, Curtin inspired respect in cynical Australians by his unassuming dignity, straightforwardness and refusal of any personal privilege.

‘A natural Australian, impervious to imperial ideology. Labor and Australia were his twin causes.’ Geoffrey Serle

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Best Australian Political Cartoons

One positive to emerge from the ever-frustrating politics of modern day Australia is the seemingly bottomless array of events that have given birth to the incredible cartoons we see every day. As clever and witty as they have ever been, political cartoonists have been living in the land of milk and money for over a decade. They point their pencil and brush at some of the most memorable moments in Australian Politics with an eye for detail that is astounding. There is no greater reflection of the world of politics than these wonderful drawings and comments found in these pages. An absolute must.

Blurb: 2010 has been a year of reversals. At the start Kevin Rudd, the conscience of decent folk everywhere, was still enjoying an unprecedented run of popularity in the polls. Meanwhile, the Liberals were fast becoming a reactionary rabble who, after sacrificing most of their leadership talent, were left with only a mad monk to guide them out of the wilderness.

But by midyear Tony Abbott had become the iron man, smuggling in a new set of budgies to get the Liberals’ oppositional juices flowing. Kevin Rudd was looking as rattled as a clapped out third-termer, displaying a level of political expediency that would have made John Howard blush. Opinion polls indicated that without drastic action there was no way out, and Labor turned to Julia Gillard to bring them back to the light.

The election campaign was full of sound and fury, but — to all our costs — signifying very little. The result seemd to suggest an electorate profoundly pissed off with this cynical, content-free world of spin and obfuscation. Enter the three amigos, the resurgent Greens, and a former whistleblower.

See what Australia’s wittiest and most perceptive political cartoonists make of it all in Best Australian Political Cartoons 2010: your essential alternative guide to the year in politics.

With Dean Alston, Peter Broelman, Warren Brown, Matt Davidson, Andrew Dyson, Firstdogonthemoon, Matt Golding, Fiona Katauskas, Mark Knight, Jon Kudelka, Bill Leak, Alan Moir, Peter Nicholson, Vince O’Farrell, Ward O’Neill, Bruce Petty, David Pope, David Rowe, John Spooner, Ron Tandberg, Andrew Weldon, Cathy Wilcox, Paul Zanetti, and many more …

Click here to buy your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

 

Follow Andrew on twitter at @andrew__cat

Filed under: Book Recommendations, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Australian Moment : How We Were Made for These Times by George Megalogenis

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Booktopia

There’s no better place to be during economic turbulence than Australia.

Brilliant in a bust, we’ve learnt to use our brains in a boom. Although the Great Recession continues to rumble around the globe, we successfully negotiated the Asian financial crisis, the dotcom tech wreck and the GFC.
Despite a lingering inability to acknowledge our achievements at home, the rest of the world now asks: How did we get it right?

This is the page-turning story of our nation’s remarkable transformation since the ’70s. One of our most respected journalists, George Megalogenis, traces the key economic reforms and brilliant moments of collective instinct that opened our society to the immigration of capital, ideas and people to just the right degree. He pinpoints the events that shaped our good fortune and national character, and corrects our selective memory where history has been misunderstood or misdirected by self-interested political leadership.

No one writing today is better at reading the numbers and telling the story around them than Megalogenis, and no one else has been able to coax our former prime ministers to candidly re-assess each other’s contribution to the Australian Moment. Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and Rudd, as well as Whitlam’s confidant Graham Freudenberg, go on record for the first time about many aspects of the internal politicking, decision-making and bids for the legacy of our astonishing period of significant reform.

The Australian Moment demands we reconsider what we have achieved and our place in the global economy, and how we might purposefully approach the future. A groundbreaking work in the tradition of The Lucky Country and The End of Certainty.

‘Megalogenis is Australia’s best explainer – a historical bowerbird who has woven a sparkling narrative answering the big contemporary questions of how the hell we got here, and how we go about not buggering it up. A brilliant read.’ Annabel Crabb

About the Author: George Megalogenis is a senior journalist and political commentator with The Australian newspaper, to which he also contributes the much-respected blog Meganomics, and is a regular guest on ABC TV’s The Insiders. He spent over a decade in the Canberra press gallery, and is the author of Faultlines, The Longest Decade and Quarterly Essay 40: Trivial Pursuit – Leadership and the End of the Reform Era.

Click here to buy The Australian Moment from Booktopia,
Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Filed under: Australian Author, History, Politics, Social Commentary | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

COMING SOON: Am I Black Enough For You? by Anita Heiss (Available April 2012)

Posted on February 6, 2012 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru


I’m Aboriginal. I’m just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want
or expect me to be.

The story of an urban-based high achieving Aboriginal woman working to break down stereotypes and build bridges between black and white Australia.

What does it mean to be Aboriginal?

Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity?

Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal – however, this does not mean she likes to go barefoot and, please, don’t ask her to camp in the desert.

After years of stereotyping Aboriginal Australians as either settlement dwellers or rioters in Redfern, the Australian media have discovered a new crime to charge them with: being too ‘fair-skinned’ to be real Aborigines. Such accusations led to Anita’s involvement in one of the most important and sensational Australian legal decisions of the 21st-century when she joined others in charging a newspaper columnist with breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. He was found guilty, and the repercussions continue.

In this deeply personal memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, Anita Heiss gives a first-hand account of her experiences as a woman with an Aboriginal mother and Austrian father, and explains the development of her activist consciousness.

Read her story and ask: what does it take for someone to be black enough for you?

PRE-ORDER your copy of Am I Black Enough For You? by Anita Heiss
from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

About the Author:  Dr Anita Heiss is the bestselling author of Not Meeting Mr Right and Avoiding Mr Right, both published by Bantam Australia. Anita was recognised for Outstanding Achievement in Literature in the 2010 and 2011 Deadly Awards for her novels Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming. A writer, satirist, activist, social commentator and occasional academic, Anita is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, an Indigenous Literacy Day Ambassador and a board member of the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy. She lives in Sydney and but dreams of living in New York.

Filed under: Biography/Memoir, Book Recommendations, Current Affairs, Politics | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Rupert Murdoch : An investigation of political power by David McKnight

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Booktopia

When Rupert Murdoch called, Prime Ministers and Presidents picked up the phone.

David McKnight exposes Murdoch’s unflinching use of his media empire to further his political agenda over decades. This is the story behind the hacking scandal that rocked the world and shook the Murdoch empire.

‘A study of dangerous media abuse of power and of abject government weakness in regard to it. This is a disturbing book.’ – From the foreword by Robert Manne

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world. Murdoch’s commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is his successful pursuit of political goals, using News Corporation as his vehicle.

David McKnight tracks Murdoch’s influence, from his support for Reagan and Thatcher, to his attacks on Barack Obama and the Rudd and Gillard governments. He examines the secretive corporate culture of News Corporation: its private political seminars for editors, its sponsorship of think tanks and its recurring editorial campaigns around the world. Its success is reflected in the fact that the campaigns are familiar to us all: small government and market deregulation, skepticism on climate change, support for neo-conservative adventures such as Iraq and criticism of all things ‘liberal’.

While the phone hacking crisis has tarnished his reputation, Rupert Murdoch’s influence is far from finished.

DAVID MCKNIGHT is Associate Professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW, and a former journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC TV’s Four Corners.

Click here to order your copy from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop

Filed under: Australian Author, Current Affairs, Politics, Social Commentary | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Peter Popham, author of The Lady and the Peacock: the Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, answers Ten Terrifying Questions

Posted on November 16, 2011 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru

The Booktopia Book Guru asks

Peter Popham

author of The Lady and the Peacock: the Life of Aung San Suu Kyi

Ten Terrifying Questions

———————————-

1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

I was born in a village in County Cork, Eire, then moved to England when I was a baby and grew up in Richmond, south-west of London, famous for its glorious park. I went to a London grammar school where I edited the school magazine and had my first encounter with Australia via Richard Neville when I became one of the schoolkid editors of a notorious issue of Oz magazine.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

Writer, writer and writer. Like my dad. It was what I was good at, and I liked his lifestyle of staying home all day, smoking his pipe and occasionally firing his catapult at the pigeons.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?

That the United Nations was going to save the world.

4. What were three big events – in the family circle or on the world stage or in your reading life, for example – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced you in your career path?

My parents’ divorce, unfortunately, which brought home the impermanence of ‘home’. Reading Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and beginning to appreciate what prose could do, and what style was. Encountering Zen Buddhism when I was teaching English in Japan, and learning a little about silence.

5. Considering the innumerable electronic media avenues open to you – blogs, online newspapers, TV, radio, etc – why have you chosen to write a book? aren’t they obsolete?

Not yet!

6. Please tell us about your latest book…

A woman in her early forties with an academic husband, two sons and a comfortable life in England dreams of one day emulating her heroic father, who fought for and won his nation’s independence. But it’s just a dream – until she finds herself plunged into the thick of a mass uprising and discovers her destiny. It sounds like a novel and I hope it is as gripping as one, but it is the true story of Aung San Suu Kyi, a true heroine of our times.

(BBGuru: from the publisher -

The definitive biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader.

Until she was released in November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest in Burma for fourteen of the previous twenty years. She was already confined to her home when the party she co-founded and led, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in a general election in 1990. The result was never acknowledged by the military regime in power for many decades.

Yet, headline, tragic events have happened in Burma in recent years: the brutally put down uprising of the monks and nuns in 2007, the devastation left by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and then Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial following the entry into her home of an American intruder who swam across a lake to reach her. Since then there have been sham elections held in November 2010, and ‘Daw Suu’ (as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is known) was released into an uneasy stand off with the junta.

Praised all over the world for her martyrdom, a matchless emblem of Buddhist fortitude and good humour to her people, there is no public figure in the world today who can compare to her. Yet no book has yet been written that does justice to her extraordinary story: brought up mostly in India, settled in N. Oxford with her English scholar husband and two sons, called back to Burma to look after her sick mother, then caught up in a revolutionary uprising for which she became leader, yet trapped inside the country – never to see her husband again.

The Lady and the Peacock is the first, accessible biography of Aung San Suu Kyi. It will become the definitive work on this extraordinary woman, of whom Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi is a remarkable and courageous human being. Listen to her voice and be inspired…’ )

7. If your work could change one thing in this world – what would it be?

To enable at least a few people to see that, while life can be futile, it doesn’t have to be. It’s up to us.

8. Whom do you most admire and why?

The Dalai Lama. Who has transformed the shit of humiliation into spiritual gold.

9. Many people set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

I have written a good book. I would like to write another.

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?

If you like it, just do it! And never slacken your standards.

Peter, thank you for playing.

Filed under: Author Interview, Biography/Memoir, Current Affairs, Politics, Writing Style, Writing tips | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

This Changes Everything : Occupy Wall Street & the 99% Movement

Posted on November 16, 2011 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru

Occupy Wall Street protests have spread around the world, with a common slogan of “We are the 99%.”

But there is a great deal of confusion and misperception about this movement. This book clarifies the who, what, when, where, why, and how of this movement. It provides profound insight into the movement’s power, messages, significance, methods, and impact. The editors of YES! Magazine bring together voices from inside and outside the protests to show how the meaning and impact of this movement are much bigger and more far-reaching than is being reported.

The central thesis of this book is “This Changes Everything.”

The authors show how this movement changes (1) how citizens view themselves, (2) what citizens see is really going on in the world, (3) what is possible in creating a world that works for the many (the “99%”) and not just the few (the “1%”), and (4) how citizens can bring about changes they seek in their communities, nations, and the world.

The Occupy Wall Street movement names the core issue of our time: the overwhelming power of Wall Street and large corporations—something the political establishment and most media have long ignored.

But the movement goes far beyond this critique. This Changes Everything shows how the movement is shifting the way people view themselves and the world, the kind of society they believe is possible, and their own involvement in creating a society that works for the 99% rather than just the 1%.

Available through Booktopia from the middle of December 2011 – pre-order here

Filed under: Current Affairs, Politics, Social Commentary | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Matt Granfield, author of HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster, answers Ten Terrifying Questions

Posted on October 31, 2011 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru

The Booktopia Book Guru asks

Matt Granfield

author of HipsterMattic: One Man’s Quest to Become the Ultimate Hipster

Ten Terrifying Questions

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1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

For a second there I thought that read ‘Why were you born?’ and I was thinking that was a little deep for an author questionnaire, but given this is the ‘ten terrifying questions’ I wasn’t surprised. Then I realised I had my non-prescription hipster glasses on instead of my actual reading glasses. I’ve swapped them now so I can read properly. It’s suddenly a much less intrusive and less philosophical experience. I grew up in a little town on the NSW South Coast called (more…)

Filed under: Australian Author, Author Interview, Cutural Studies, Humour, Philosophy, Politics, Writing Style, Writing tips | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West by A. C. Grayling

Posted on September 16, 2011 by John Purcell, The Booktopia Book Guru

I have been reading Towards the Light for a while now. My father said it was right up my alley. I am chuffed to think that my father knows I have an alley and has understood my mad ravings at family get-togethers enough to appreciate I may like to read Towards the Light.

A.C. Grayling, of course, writes far better than I rave.

Towards the Light is very much the kind of book which makes me want to scream… Yes! Yes! Yes! That’s what I’ve been saying all along!

The only way to ensure we retain the freedoms we enjoy today is to appreciate and understand the struggle to attain them.

Now, to get every single human in the world to read and to understand the book.

The trouble is, I can’t really justify any attempt to force people to read a book about liberty.

So here’s what I’ll do. I shall make a request to you, dear reader. If you love and respect the freedoms you enjoy right now, buy multiple copies of Towards the Light and leave them lying about in places where people may need a book to read. Or, if you really, really love liberty, buy box loads and donate them to schools. Okay? Great.

I bet this is going to work so well!

Buy Towards the Light here.

About A.C. Grayling’s inspirational history of ideas in action, Towards the Light.

The often-violent conflicts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were sparked by the pursuit of freedom of thought. In time, this drive led to bitter fighting, including the English Civil War. Then came revolutions in America and France that swept away monarchies for more representative forms of government and making possible the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, and the idea of universal human rights and freedoms.

Each of these struggles was a memorable human drama, and Grayling interweaves the stories of these heroes, including Martin Luther, Mary Wollstonecraft and Rosa Parks, whose sacrifices make us value these precious rights, especially in an age when governments under pressure find it necessary to restrict rights in the name of freedom.

About the Author

A.C. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a multi-talented author. He believes that philosophy should take an active, useful role in society. He has been a regular contributor to The Times, Financial Times, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Economist, Literary Review, New Statesman and Prospect, and is a frequent and popular contributor to radio and television programmes, including Newsnight, Today, In Our Time, Start the Week and CNN news. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum at Davos, and advises on many committees ranging from Drug Testing at Work to human rights groups.

AC Grayling recently answered my Ten Terrifying Questions

Filed under: Cutural Studies, Feminism, History, Philosophy, Politics, Popular Science, Social Commentary | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

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