From a riverside shack to the presidential palace, Joko Widodo surged to the top of Indonesian politics on a wave of hope for change. However, six years into his presidency, the former furniture maker is struggling to deliver the reforms that Indonesia desperately needs. Despite promising to build Indonesia into an Asian powerhouse, Jokowi, as he is known, has faltered in the face of crises, from COVID-19 to an Islamist mass movement. Man of Contradictions, the first English-language biography of Jokowi, argues that the president embodies the fundamental contradictions of modern Indonesia. He is caught between democracy and authoritarianism, openness and protectionism, Islam and pluralism. Jokowi’s incredible story shows what is possible in Indonesia – and it also shows the limits.

Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach – and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family – The Bodysurfers is an Australian classic. A short-story collection which has become a bestseller and been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, The Bodysurfers on its first publication marked a major change in Australian literature.

Xi Jinping has transformed China at home and abroad with a speed and aggression that few foresaw when he came to power in 2012. Finally, he is meeting resistance, both at home among disgruntled officials and disillusioned technocrats, and abroad from an emerging coalition of Western nations that seem determined to resist China’s geopolitical and high-tech expansion. With the United States and China at loggerheads, Richard McGregor outlines how the world came to be split in two.

When he became Prime Minister in 2018, Scott Morrison was a foreign policy amateur confronted by unprecedented challenges- an assertive Beijing and a looming rivalry between the two biggest economies in world history, the United States and China. Morrison plunged into foreign and security policy by making highly contentious changes that will be felt for decades, not least the historic decision to build nuclear-powered submarines. Featuring interviews with Morrison and members of his cabinet, this book tells the story of the Prime Minister's foreign policy convictions and calculations, and what drove his attitudes towards China, America and the Indo-Pacific.

?With Western countries consumed by domestic problems, will it be China and Russia that now define the rules of global politics? In a disorderly world, each has become increasingly assertive, and their partnership has emerged from relative obscurity to acquire a new prominence. Yet appearances are deceptive. Beijing and Moscow have shown no capacity to cooperate on grand strategy or establish new international norms. This is no authoritarian alliance, but a partnership of strategic convenience – pragmatic, calculating and constrained.

This illuminating study of Benjamin’s final essay helps unlock the mystery of this great philosopher Revolutionary critic of the philosophy of progress, nostalgic of the past yet dreaming of the future, romantic partisan of materialism—Walter Benjamin is in every sense of the word an “unclassifiable” philosopher. His essay “On the Concept of History” was written in a state of urgency, as he attempted to escape the Gestapo in 1940, before finally committing suicide. In this scrupulous, clear and fascinating examination of this essay, Michael Löwy argues that it remains one of the most important philosophical and political writings of the twentieth century. Looking in detail at Benjamin’s celebrated but often mysterious text, and restoring the philosophical, theological and political context, Löwy highlights the complex relationship between redemption and revolution in Benjamin’s philosophy of history.