"The Channel Country is of special interest because its extreme aridity is disrupted unpredictably by summer monsoonal rains, causing massive flooding, and is followed by prodigious growth of plants and reproduction of animals, before returning to daunting conditions of drought. Yet, it is a region teeming with life, both plant and animal, possessing unusual capacities for existing there. It is also a region favoured by hardy pastoralists and their livestock, who have learned to coexist with this harsh climate. In Meanderings in the Bush, the authors describe their many adventures and misadventures in the region, with its climate, its animals and its human inhabitants."--Back cover.

Desert Channels is a book that combines art, science and history to explore the ‘impulse to conserve’ in the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland. The region is the source of Australia’s major inland-flowing desert rivers. Some of Australia’s most interesting new conservation initiatives are in this region, including partnerships between private landholders, non-government conservation organisations that buy and manage land (including Bush Heritage Australia and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy) and community-based natural resource management groups such as Desert Channels Queensland. Conservation biology in this place has a distinguished scientific history, and includes two decades of ecological work by scientific editor Chris Dickman. Chris is one of Australia’s leading terrestrial ecologists and mammalogists. He is an outstanding writer and is passionate about communicating the scientific basis for concern about biodiversity in this region to the broadest possible audience. Libby Robin, historian and award-winning writer, has co-ordinated the writings of the 46 contributors whose voices collectively portray the Desert Channels in all its facets. The emphasis of the book is on partnerships that conserve landscapes and communities together. Short textboxes add local and technical commentary where relevant. Art and science combine with history and local knowledge to richly inform the writing and visual understanding of the country. Conservation here is portrayed in four dimensions: place, landscape, biodiversity and livelihood. These four parts each carry four chapters. The ‘4x4’ structure was conceived by acclaimed artist, Mandy Martin, who has produced suites of artworks over three seasons in this format with commentaries, which make the interludes between parts. Martin’s work offers an aesthetic framework of place, which shapes how we see the region. Desert Channels explores the impulse to protect the varied biodiversity of the region, and its Aboriginal, pastoral and prehistoric heritage, including some of Australia’s most important dinosaur sites. The work of Alice Duncan-Kemp, the region’s most significant literary figure, is highlighted. Even the sounds of the landscape are not forgotten: the book's webpage has an audio interview by Alaskan radio journalist Richard Nelson talking to ecologist Steve Morton at Ocean Bore in the Simpson Desert country. The twitter of zebra finches accompanies the interview. Conservation can be accomplished in various ways and Desert Channels combines many distinguished voices. The impulse to conserve is shared by local landholders, conservation enthusiasts (from the community and from national and international organisations), Indigenous owners, professional biologists, artists and historians.

Caring for Community: Towards a New Ethics of Responsibility in Contemporary Postcolonial Novels focuses on four highly acclaimed publications in order to argue for a new understanding of community and its ethical framework in recent literary texts. Traditionally, community has been understood to function on the basis of individuals’ readiness to establish relationships of reciprocal responsibility. This book, however, argues that community and non-reciprocity need not be mutually exclusive categories. Examining works by leading contemporary postcolonial authors and reading them against Judith Butler’s post-9/11 concept of global political community, the book explores how concrete acts of responsibility can be carried out in recognition of various others, even and precisely when those others cannot be expected to respond. The literary analyses draw on a rich theoretical framework that includes approaches to care, hospitality and the ethical encounter between self and other. Overall, this book establishes that the novels’ protagonists, by investing in an ethics of responsibility that does not require reciprocity, acquire the agency to envisage new forms of community. By reflecting on the nature and effect of this agency and its representation in contemporary literary texts, the book also considers the role of postcolonial studies in addressing highly topical questions regarding our co-existence with others.

A Dubya in the Headlights trains a critical eye on the curious interaction between America's forty-third president and the people who write about him, talk about him, photograph him, and draw him. Joseph R. Hayden details a rough, often tense, relationship between President George W. Bush and media outlets from CBS to the New York Times to The Tonight Show. He also challenges what until recently was the conventional wisdom about Bush's public relations-the notion that the White House was a masterful manipulator of the media, a Machiavellian puppet master. According to Hayden, those types of characterizations are not just overly generous; they are distortions and a cop-out for the press. Focusing in particular on the period since Hurricane Katrina, this lively and timely volume details the pattern of mistakes made by the Bush administration in carrying out its communication strategy and offers a clear portrait of a president stumbling from one crisis to another. Book jacket.

Fully updated and with completely reworked text and images, this is the Fourth Edition of the acclaimed The Mammals of Australia. Strahan's Mammals of Australia is the best book available on the subject, being the most definitive, comprehensive and up-to-date. It provides a written account of every species of native mammal known to have existed in Australia since European settlement, with 403 species covered in total. It is beautifully illustrated with more than 1,500 colour photographs, while each species account includes a detailed description of the animal and its behaviour. Species covered range from marsupials, monotremes and rodents through to bats, seals and whales. The new edition sees the addition of 14 newly described species and includes all the latest taxonomic treatments and many changes to names (common and scientific) and other features that have been accepted in the 14 years that have passed since the publication of the Third Edition.

From the director of the wildly popular Bush Mechanics and Black As - a can-do guide for your next outback adventure filled with practical advice, ripper yarns and road-trip tips. Driving around Australia is one of life's biggest adventures, if you're crazy enough to do it. But as anyone who has broken down on the Nullarbor can attest, it's nerve-wracking to head out into the big red. David Batty knows how to get out of hairy situations because he's wound up in a bunch himself. From nearly being washed away by flash floods in the Kimberley to being marooned on an island in the Top End eating stingray, Batty's Bush Bible is chock-full of yarns from David's four decades as a film director in the most remote regions of Australia. He has lived in Alice Springs and Broome longer than he has in the Big Smoke, has traversed the Tanami Track between Alice Springs and Darwin hundreds of times and reckons he's done more laps of Australia than a Qantas plane. This book also contains the wisdom of many of the First Nations people he has worked with throughout his career, including interviews with the original Bush Mechanics and Black As boys. You'll find out how they stuff blown tyres with spinifex, fashion mulga wood into gear sticks and keep cars going long after their used-by date - and learn how to have a whirl yourself. Batty's Bush Bible is your guide to going bush and living to tell the tale. Filled with practical advice, ripper yarns and road-trip tips, it's designed to be picked up, put down, tossed in the glove box or, if you really need it, used for kindling to cook your tailgate dinner. So whether you're a grey nomad, living your best #vanlife or just looking to do a bit of imaginative armchair tourism, this book is your bible for how to stay out of trouble in the outback - and make your own.