The author of the #1 international bestseller, The Weather Makers, provides a stunning portrait of Australia’s cultural capital. Sydney, Australia, is one of the world’s most beautiful and fascinating cities, home to over five million people and a popular tourist destination. In The Birth of Sydney, scientist and historian Tim Flannery blends the writings of Australian explorers, settlers, leaders, journalists, and visitors to construct a compelling narrative history of the great metropolis—from its founding as a remote penal colony of the British Empire in 1788 to its emergence as a vital trading power in the nineteenth century. Together, their voices and experiences create an unforgettable panoramic portrait of the early life of the majestic harbor city.

DESTINY IN SYDNEY is an epic, multicultural novel of convicts, Aborigines, and Chinese embroiled in the birth of Sydney, Australia. Adventurous and opportunistic, Scottish marine Lieutenant Nathaniel Armstrong is in charge of convicts on one of eleven ships sent in 1787 on a perilous voyage from England to the other side of the world to establish a British penal colony. He lusts after fiery Irish convict Moira O Keeffe and surprises himself when he falls in love with her. Together they nearly starve in Sydney Cove while learning to farm the harsh land and deal with the Aborigines, whose lot is disease and unequal warfare. Armstrong descendants deny their convict heritage and oppose the Chinese who come for the gold rush. Three Fong brothers suffer violence and despair as they fight to forge a place for themselves. Duncan Armstrong, rich and powerful, helps pass the White Australia Policy in 1901 to keep out the Chinese, while his cousin Eleanor works for women s suffrage and a fair go for the Aborigines. Impeccably researched, this gripping dramatization of the true history of Sydney, Australia, is drawn from the writings of Australian leaders, soldiers, explorers, and settlers. Richards has mined Australian history for its action-adventure and applied his incomparable storytelling skills for a powerful, fast-paced read. The sequel novel A GIFT OF SYDNEY, available in late 2013, will continue the story of the Armstrongs and Fongs, and add the Hudson Aboriginal family, ending with the Summer Olympic Games held in Sydney in the year 2000.

Humans now wield a greater influence on the planet than any other species in history, and human-developed technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence stand poised to overtake biological evolution. Just how did we arrive at this unique moment in human history, 14 billion years after the birth of the universe Sydney Brenner's 10-on-10: The Chronicles of Evolution brings together 24 prominent scientists and thinkers to trace the story of evolution through ten logarithmic scales of time. Through expert insights, this unique volume considers how humans found our place in the cosmos, and imagines what lies ahead.Published by Wildtype Books and distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co.

Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record and re-emerge in early in the twentieth century. Paul Irish's Hidden in Plain View explores what happened in the interim. How did Indigenous people come to be ignored in colonial narratives? In this original and important book, he brings this poorly understood period of Sydney's Aboriginal history back into focus. Irish tells the compelling story of the Aboriginal presence in the heart of Sydney during the nineteenth century and reveals the complex relationship between Aboriginal people and the growth of Sydney. He shows that Aboriginal people were not pushed out of the way by urban expansion and charts how they developed cross-cultural relationships and established links with the settler economy. Hidden in Plain View reminds us that Aboriginal people have always been part of the physical and historical fabric of Sydney.

Australia and the Birth of the International Bill of Human Rights provides the first in depth examination of Australia's first reactions to 'international human rights' during the negotiations for the International Bill of Rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICCPR and ICESCR. It follows Australian policy from 1946, the first year in which the United Nations began discussing a Bill of Rights until 1966 when the twin Covenants were finalized. The book looks at what successive Australian Governments understood by 'human rights' and how they responded to discussion of sensitive domestic topics such as: immigration policies self-determination for inhabitants of trust territories equal pay for men and women and balancing human rights and national security. As well as considering Australian policies towards substantive rights, the book looks at Australian policies towards international schemes for protecting rights including early proposals for an International Court of Human Rights and its later support for more modest, technical expertise based assistance for States, debates often taking place against the background of highly politicised issues such as the Cold War and the fight against apartheid. In looking at this 20 year period, the book demonstrates the way in which Australian policy changed substantially over time: as between Labor and Liberal administrations, between Ministers and bureaucrats and as between decision makers with markedly distinct visions of the ideal relationship between citizens and a State, and the individual State and the international community. In highlighting the diversity of views about human rights, this book thus challenges the notion that Australia has historically supported a universally understood set of human rights norms and underlines the number of variables which may be affecting ongoing implementation of human rights standards.

In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britian, Australia and North America, Tony Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organized their collections, and their visitors. Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, Bennett sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture. Using Foucaltian perspectives The Birth of the Museum explores how the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction, but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place. This invigorating study enriches and challenges the understanding of the museum, and places it at the centre of modern relations between culture and government. For students of museum, cultural and sociology studies, this will be an asset to their reading list.

Annotation " ... It is highly recommended to anyone who thinks they have a serious interest in the book ... or would like to discover to discover something of the complexity of the well-springs of the Australian psyche." Biblionews 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 of book publishing, selling and reading. After 1945, Australian publishing went from a handful of fledgling businesses to the billion dollar industry of today with thousands of new titles each year and a vast array of imported books. Publishing's postwar expansion began with the baby boom and the increased demand for school texts, with independent houses blossoming during the 1960s and 70s followed by the current era dominated by global conglomerates.