Yearbook by Seth Rogen

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

A collection of funny personal essays from one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express and one of the producers of The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, and The Boys. (All of these words have been added to help this book show up in people's searches using the wonders of algorithmic technology. Thanks for bearing with us!) Hi! I'm Seth! I was asked to describe my book, Yearbook, for the inside flap (which is a gross phrase) and for websites and shit like that, so... here it goes!!! Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy "book" way of saying "the first one.") I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day. I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don't enjoy it, I'm sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I'll do my best to make it up to you.   ...Show more

Sam Bloom: Heartache and Birdsong (HB) by Cameron Bloom; Samantha Bloom; Bradley Trevor Greive

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

The follow-up to the ABIA award-winning, internationally bestselling sensation Penguin Bloom. The heart-warming Australian story Penguin Bloom - the miraculous tale of a baby magpie that helped save a young mother and her family - is a homegrown and international bestseller; soon to be a major Hollywood movie, starring Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln. Sam's personal message at the end of the book has resonated powerfully with readers - where, pulling no punches, she writes about what it is really like to face life in a wheelchair. In Sam Bloom, Sam tells her own story for the first time - how a shy but determined Australian girl became a nurse and travelled across Africa. How she fell in love with a like-minded free spirit, raised three boys and built a life together on Sydney's Northern Beaches. And then, in a single horrific moment, how everything changed. Sam's journey back from the edge of death and the depths of despair is so much more than an account of overcoming adversity. Sam's captivating true story - written by close friend, New York Times bestselling author Bradley Trevor Greive, and featuring extraordinary photographs taken by Sam's husband, Cameron Bloom - is humbling, heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure. A triumph of raw emotion and incredible beauty, Sam Bloom: Heartache & Birdsong is a truly unforgettable book.         ...Show more

Julia Morris Makes it Easy by Julia Morris

$29.99 AUD

$34.99 (14% off)

Category: Biographies

Life is hard. Families, friends, jobs, bills. So much pressure, and everyone else seems to make it look so simple. But don't panic, Lady JMo is here to help you live the perfect Julia Morris life. Julia's hilarious brand of nice-but-not-very-bright advice, slacker life hacks and impractical solutions to practical issues is 0% guaranteed to transform your life with the bare minimum of effort or time. And if she can't do that, she'll at least show you how to cover up the mess she made and make it all look OK on Instagram. EASY!   ...Show more

Black Summer: Stories of Loss, Courage and Community from the 2019-2020 Bushfires by Michael Rowland (Editor)

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

Told by ABC journalists who were on the ground and broadcasting during our worst ever fire season, spearheaded by Michael Rowland The bushfires that burnt across Australia from June 2019 to February

You Shouldn't Have Joined... by Peter Cosgrove

$44.99 AUD

$49.99 (10% off)

Category: Biographies

General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK AC (Mil) CVO MC (Retd) is one of Australia's most significant public figures. As a soldier he saw action in Vietnam, winning the Military Cross, and rose to the very top of his profession, becoming Chief of the Defence Force. Soon after his retirement from the Army, he was invited to take charge of the huge relief and rebuilding operation in Queensland after the devastation of Cyclone Larry. In 2014, Cosgrove became Australia's Governor-General. As Governor-General he travelled far and wide, supporting Australians in times of crisis, sadness, joy or celebration, representing us on the world stage with humour, intelligence and a force of personal magnetism that was felt by everyone from prime ministers to presidents. When he retired in July 2019, it was as one of the most beloved and respected governors-general in Australia's history. Cosgrove embodies the traits we truly value: warmth, humanity, toughness and loyalty. His humour and empathy shone through the pomp and ceremony, and his time as Governor-General will be remembered as much for his laughter as for the usual dignities of the office. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... (an expression much used during his days as a soldier) is the story of Cosgrove's extraordinarily full and eventful life. It is also the story of those who have shared it with him, in particular his wife Lynne. His memoir allows us an incredible insight into the role and world of Australia's Governor-General. He was there as two prime ministers were toppled by their own party. He was there through disasters both natural and man-made, such as the destruction of MH17. He was there for world leaders, and for ordinary Australians. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... is a true reflection of the man himself, filled with intelligence, forthrightness, compassion and a brilliant eye for a telling anecdote. ...Show more

What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Oprah Winfrey, Dr Bruce Perry

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain development and trauma expert, Dr. Bruce Perry, discuss the impact of trauma and adverse experiences and how healing must begin with a shift to asking, "what happened to you?" rather than "what's wrong with you?" Through wide-ranging, and often deeply personal conversat ion, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Perry explore how what happens to us in early childhood - both good and bad - influences the people we become. They challenge us to shift from focusing on, "What's wrong with you?" or "Why are you behaving that way?," to asking, "What happened to you?" This simple change in perspective can open up a new and hopeful understanding for millions about why we do the things we do, why we are the way we are, providing a road map for repairing relationships, overcoming what seems insurmountable, and ultimately living better and more fulfilling lives.   ...Show more

My Year of Living Vulnerably by Rick Morton

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

From Rick Morton, the author of the bestselling, critically acclaimed memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt comes a dazzlingly brilliant book about love, trauma and recovery, My Year of Living Vulnerably. 'Wonderfully readable and wide-ranging exploration of the visible and invisible touchstones of our liv es ... this is nourishing reading for our lonely, frightening and fraught times. Part self-help book, part treatise on the importance of love, kindness and forgiveness ... Morton is a national treasure and we need more like him.' Books+Publishing In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, bestselling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of twelve months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably. It's a book about love. What love is, how we see it, what forms it takes, how we practice it in our lives, what it means to us, and how we really, really can't live without it, even if, like Rick for many years, we think we can. As he says: 'People think they want cars - and they do, to get to jobs and appointments in cities and regions where public transport has failed them. But what gets them into those cars, out of the house, out of bed for God's sake, is love.' 'Read this investigation because it will remind you of how optimism and love work together. Read it because your heart has been broken somewhere along the line and you need to know how to mend. Read this book because Rick Morton is the bloke we all need in our life to show us it is going to be okay.' Readings 'Wryly comic, hard-thought and deeply-felt ... It is a heartbreaking book, but a beguiling and necessary one. And a work far wiser than the modesty of its author would allow.' The Saturday Paper ...Show more

Fury by Kathryn Heyman

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

A raw, painfully honest, heartbreaking account of a young woman raising herself out of abuse and poverty to become her own hero.   A roadmap of recovery and transformation, this is the story of becoming heroic in a culture which doesn't see heroism in the shape of a girl. At the age of twenty, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life and became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea. Coming from a family of poverty and violence, she had no real role models, no example of how to create or live a decent life, how to have hope or expectations. But she was a reader. She understood story, and the power of words to name the world. This was to become her salvation. After one wild season on board the Ocean Thief, the only girl among tough working men, facing storms, treachery and harder physical labour than she had ever known, Heyman was transformed. Finally, she could name the abuses she thought had broken her, could see 'all that she had been blind to, simply to survive'. More than that, after a period of enforced separation from the world, she was able to return to it newly formed, determined to remake the role she'd been born into. A reflection on the wider stories of class, and of growing up female with all its risks and rewards, Fury is a memoir of courage and determination, of fighting back and finding joy. ...Show more

Twelve Rules for Living a Better Life by Reverend Bill Crews

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

A straight-talking, uplifting and inspiring guide to living a better life and becoming a better human being - through compassion, tolerance, acceptance and love - from one our very best, most authentic and genuine people, the Reverend Bill Crews. He's been named one of Australia's 100 most influential p eople, yet he's often considered a thorn in the side of his own church. He's a fierce campaigner against poker machine gambling yet it was the proceeds of a horse race that first established his soup kitchen that now feeds thousands across the city. His Sunday-night radio show is the most widely listened to across the nation, but he often makes the news himself. He is a 75-year-old minister and regularly inspires news article headlines that read: 'What if we were all like Bill Crews?' He is the epitome of compassion and often controversial. He is Bill Crews, the charismatic shepherd of Ashfield in Sydney's inner-west. Bill has spent his entire adult life in the service of others, giving a voice to the truly voiceless, be they prostitutes on the streets of Sydney's Kings Cross, refugees fleeing ISIS in a shanty-town camp in Northern France, or Korean women abused during WWII. Bill Crews has spent an unfathomable amount of hours on the frontline of life with the marginalised, disenfranchised and the abandoned.This book is for the secular and the spiritual alike; it's for those who believe and those who don't, won't or can't. It's a much-needed and timely manifesto on being a better human and how to pay it forward. It's bottled wisdom - to help us all live a better life.   ...Show more

Gough and Me: My Journey from Cabramatta to China and beyond by Christine Sykes

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

When Gough Whitlam moves into her street in Cabramatta in 1957, eight-year-old Christine has little idea how her new neighbour, one of the most visionary and polarising political leaders of Australia, would shape the direction of her life. Born to working-class parents and living in a fibro house built by her truck-driver father, Christine simply dreams that one day she might work as a private secretary like her aunt. But when the reforms Whitlam championed give Christine the chance to go to university, her world expands. She experiences the transformative power of education, struggles to balance motherhood with being the family breadwinner, and faces her own mental health battles. She follows a path forged by Whitlam, from scholarships he fought for, to local community initiatives he generated, and even as far as China, where Whitlam crucially initiated Australia’s relationship when he visited the country in 1973. Written with genuine heart and humour, Gough and Me is a nostalgic and deeply personal memoir of social mobility, cultural diversity, and the unprecedented opportunities that the Whitlam era gave one Australian working-class woman.   ...Show more

Emotional Female by Yumiko Kadota

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

A passionate account of the toxic culture of bullying and overwork that junior doctors can experience in the workplace as part of their training. Yumiko Kadota was every Asian parent's dream: model student, top of her class in medical school and on track to becoming a surgeon. A self-confessed workah olic, she regularly put ‘knife before life’, knowing it was all going to be worth it because it would lead to her longed-for career. But if the punishing hours in surgery weren’t hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons’ oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from ‘emotional’ to ‘too confident’; and she was expected to work a relentless on-call roster – sometimes seventy hours a week or more – to prove herself. Eventually it was too much and Yumiko quit. Emotional Female is her account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and what made her walk away. Yumiko Kadota is a voice for her generation when it comes to burnout and finding the resilience to rebuild after suffering a physical, emotional and existential breakdown. This is a brave, honest and unflinching work from a major new talent. ...Show more

Shanghai Acrobat by Jingjing Xue

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biographies

For readers of Mao's Last Dancer comes the inspiring true story of a world-famous acrobat who escaped communist China to begin a new life in Australia. Jingjing Xue was born in China in the 1950s, during one of the worst times in the reign of communist leader Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao. Mao's extreme f ive-year industrialisation plan - the Great Leap Forward - left much of the population starving, destitute and gripped with fear. Jingjing, abandoned to an orphanage as a young boy, was destined to a life of hardship before officials singled him out and enlisted him to train with the Shanghai Acrobatics School. This autobiography tells the moving story of his rise from poverty to become an admired performer in China and beyond - and of his extraordinary escape from Mao's repressive regime to secure his freedom. Set in China from the early years of the communist era, through the turbulent period of the Cultural Revolution, and to a new life in Australia, this is a story of hope and perseverance, of overcoming adversity and of finding a place to belong. ...Show more