It was the coup that killed Australian politics. Less than three years after taking government in a landslide election victory, Kevin Rudd was betrayed by his deputy and the factional powerbrokers of the Australian Labor Party, the 'Faceless Men', despite enjoying historically high personal and party approval ratings. The betrayal of June 2010 is the most significant Australian political event of the century. No prime minister including Rudd has since seen out a full term before being dethroned by their own caucus. But how did party games in Canberra spiral so catastrophically out of control?Kevin Rudd defeated John Howard on a platform of fresh ideas, progressive innovation and new leadership. He inherited two wars and the legacy of eleven years of conservative economic mismanagement. And within months of taking office, his new government would face the greatest economic cataclysm since the Great Depression - the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. But none of these deterred Rudd from his vision of bringing Australia into the modern age.In witty, forthright and audaciously honest prose, Rudd recounts his early triumphs and challenges in the hard business of government. But beyond the policy goals he kicked - from raising the pension to axing WorkChoices to laying the foundation for a decades-long Labor dream of paid parental leave - he takes us into cabinet, the prime minister's office and the back-corridor conversations that reshaped the country. We learn of the wheeling and dealing of governance as Rudd works with President Obama in the face of the financial crisis, apologises to the Stolen Generations and ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. Yet regardless of Rudd's efforts to combat climate change and his success in keeping Australia out of recession - the great moral and economic challenges of our generation - dark forces within his own party conspired against him. The unceremonious removal of a first-term prime minister from office shocked Rudd as much as it did the nation.Despite great pain, Rudd continued to serve his party, and his country, as backbencher and foreign minister. He documents his time in the wilderness before his brief resurrection as Labor leader and the 2013 election, retaking the party after it had truly 'lost its way'.After years of silence, the 26th Prime Minister of Australia is finally on the record about his time in government, in this second volume of his autobiography. This is the memoir of a prime minister full of energy and ideals, while battling the greatest trials of the modern age. This is Kevin Rudd's response to the ultimate political - and personal - betrayal.'Kevin is somebody who I probably share as much of a world view as any world leader out there. I find him smart but humble. He works wonderfully in multilateral settings; he's always constructive, incisive. And you know I think he is, like me, a pragmatic person. I think he comes to the job wanting to provide better opportunities not just for this generation but for the next. But I think you know he's somebody who isn't an academic, or just thinking about abstract ideas; I think he's constantly thinking in very practical terms about how to get something done.' BARACK OBAMA

A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. The recent political chaos enfolding Downing Street provides the framing for the extraordinary story of the office of Prime Minister, and how and why it has endured longer than any other democratic political office in world history. Sir Anthony Seldon, historian of Number 10, explores the lives and careers, crises and scandals, and successes and failures of our great Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, up to the recent churn of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Seldon discusses which of our PMs have been most effective and why, as well as probing the changing relationship between the Monarchy and the Prime Minister in intimate detail. A celebration of the humanity, frailty, work and achievements of 57 remarkable individuals who averted revolution and civil war, leading the country through times of peace, crisis and war.

A fascinating look at 300 years of the 55 British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Boris Johnson. This concise history includes engrossing facts such as the only PM ever assassinated, the only Welsh PM, the PM who was related to Rudyard Kipling, the PM to die falling off a horse, the PM who served six months in the Tower before becoming PM and the PM who owned the winner of the first St Leger horse race. This book covers the 55 Prime Ministers from 1721 to 2021, it follows their timelines, including the constituencies they represented with their major achievements and failures. From their early life to their rise to power, this book is an engrossing account of some of the most influential leaders in British history. A 300 Year Concise History of British Prime Ministers gives you facts on each Prime Minister, detailing their political allegiances, positions held and their periods of power in parliament. Wellesley, Disraeli, Peel, Churchill, Thatcher, Blair, Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Wilson, Heath, Pitt the Younger, MacDonald, Attlee, Eden, Major, Asquith, Brown, May...in a long list of political giants in one easily referenced concise book. Expanded second edition.

Our first female prime minister Julia Gillard came to power suddenly in a coup that perplexed the nation. She hurried to an election and was chained to a hung parliament. She out-negotiated Tony Abbott and formed a minority government, but the deepest threat was from within: the man she beat for the top job would relentlessly undermine her for three torturous years.

In Gravity, award-winning journalist Mary Delahunty teases out the personal from the political and gives us an exclusive insider account. She reveals for the first time Gillard’s reflections on why she struggled at the top, as well as the thoughts of other key players in this brutal saga. Delahunty had unparallelled access to the PM throughout her final year, and was the only journalist to speak to Gillard on that fatal June day. Gravity takes readers inside Gillard’s private office to detail the drama - exposing the cost of defeat, and capturing just how fast power drains away.

This is the absorbing story of the development, combat use and legacy of the influential sidearms used by the armed forces of the Soviet Union. Featuring archive and present-day photography and specially commissioned artwork, this is the story of the pistols that armed the forces of the Soviet Union and its allies during and after World War II. In 1930 the TT, a single-action semi-automatic pistol developed by Fedor Vasilyevich Tokarev and firing 7.62×25mm ammunition, began to supplement the venerable Nagant M1895 revolver in Soviet military service. From 1933 the TT-33, a simplified version, was also issued; all three would equip Soviet and proxy forces throughout and after World War II, seeing action across the globe. In 1951 a new pistol designed by Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov entered Soviet service; it became the primary Soviet military and police sidearm during the Cold War era and continued in use into the 21st century. The 9×18mm Makarov round was used in various weapons used by Soviet allies, notably the Czech vz 82, the Hungarian FÉG PA63 and the Polish P64 and P83.The PM was quickly joined by the Stechkin machine pistol. Other specialized versions of the Makarov were developed, including the PB suppressed version and the 5.45×18mm PSM, a more compact version. Initially developed in 1990, the improved PMM version of the Makarov was intended primarily to increase the stopping power of the 9×18mm round by chambering a higher-pressure load. In this study, noted weaponry expert Leroy Thompson tells the story of the Tokarev, Makarov, Stechkin and other handguns in service with Soviet and other forces around the world, exploring the development, combat use and legacy of these formidable firearms.

An updated and extended edition of the bestselling biography of one of the most talented, poised and respected Australian politicians ‘What Simons has excavated from the background of this extraordinary Australian should be cause for great pride and celebration.’ —Mandy Sayer, The Weekend Australian Senator Penny Wong is an extraordinary Australian politician. Resolute, self-possessed and a penetrating thinker on subjects from climate change to foreign affairs, she is admired by members of parliament and the public from across the political divide. In this first-ever biography of Wong, acclaimed journalist Margaret Simons traces her story: from her early life in Malaysia, to her student activism in Adelaide, her time in the turbulent Rudd and Gillard governments, her key role as a voice of reason in the campaign to legalise same-sex marriage – and a new chapter on her elevation to the post of foreign minister in the Albanese government. What emerges is a picture of a leader for modern Australia, a cool-headed and cautious yet charismatic figure of piercing intelligence, with a family history linking back to Australia's colonial settlers and to the Asia-Pacific. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Penny Wong and her Labor colleagues, parliamentary opponents, and close friends and family, this is a scintillating insight into an Australian politician without precedence. Shortlisted, 2021 National Biography Award Longlisted, 2020 Walkley Book Awards Longlisted, 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards, Biography Book of The Year A Readings Best Australian Nonfiction Book of 2019 ‘It can be difficult to write entertainingly about the day-to-day slog of politics, but Simons, author of two fine novels and a lauded biography of Malcolm Fraser, is a skilled storyteller who weaves a compelling narrative notable for its clarity and pace.’ —The Monthly ‘We should all be grateful that Simons has given us this clear, well-researched, and comprehensive biography.’ —Australian Book Review

Jones, Barry Owen (1932– ). Australian politician, writer and lawyer, born in Geelong. Educated at Melbourne High School and Melbourne University, he was a public servant, high school teacher, television and radio performer, university lecturer and lawyer before serving as a Labor MP in the Victorian Parliament 1972–77 and the Australian House of Representatives 1977–98. He took a leading role in reviving the Australian film industry and abolishing the death penalty in Australia, and was the first politician to raise public awareness of global warming, the ‘post‑industrial’ society, the IT revolution, biotechnology, the rise of ‘the Third Age’ and the need to preserve Antarctica as a wilderness. In the *Hawke Government, he was Minister for Science 1983–90, Prices and Consumer Affairs 1987, Small Business 1987–90 and Customs 1988–90. He became a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Paris 1991–95 and National President of the Australian Labor Party 1992–2000, 2005–06. He was Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Convention 1998. His books include Decades of Decision 1860– (1965), Joseph II (1968) and Age of Apocalypse (1975), and he edited The Penalty Is Death (1968, revised and expanded 2022). Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work was published by Oxford University Press in 1982, became a bestseller and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish and braille. The fourth edition was published in 1995. Knowledge Courage Leadership: Insights & Reflections, a collection of speeches and essays, appeared in 2016. He received a DSc in 1988 for his services to science and a DLitt in 1993 for his work on information theory. Elected FTSE (1992), FAHA (1993), FAA (1996) and FASSA (2003), he is the only person to have become a Fellow of four of Australia’s five learned Academies. Awarded an AO in 1993, named as one of Australia’s 100 ‘living national treasures’ in 1997, he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1999. His autobiography, A Thinking Reed, was published in 2006 and The Shock of Recognition, about music and literature, in 2016. In 2014 he received an AC for services ‘as a leading intellectual in Australian public life’. What Is to Be Done was published by Scribe in 2020.