Amazing Australian Books

Before it even hit the book shops the whole country was already talking about it; The Latham Diaries.
In this amazing book Mark Latham manages to insult just about every senior Labor politician, from the current party leader Kim Beazley all the way back to Gough Whitlam.
Some highlights of his latest book include;
- Richard Butler; has not resigned as Governor of Tasmania but was sacked for getting pissed at the Royal wedding in Denmark.
- Kevin Rudd; treacherous, nasty piece of work, addicted to the media and leaking. A junior minister in government, at best.
- Kim Beazley; indecent, dirty dog, stands for nothing and does nothing.
- Amanda van Stone; junker guts.
- Bob McMullan; combover
- Bob Carr; A grade asshole
John Howard's party thought this book was the best thing since sliced bread and they thoroughly enjoyed it. Mark Latham is the author of five other books on Australian public policy, including Civilising Global Capital (1998) and From the Suburbs (2003).

True story of the life and adventures of Albert Facey in the early 1900s who worked on the Kalgoorlie goldfields, outback cattle stations and fought in the Second World War. The book was originally published by the Fremantle Arts Press in 1981. Later it was published by Penguin and became so popular that it sold over a quarter of a million copies and was made into a TV mini-series. He wrote his book in the town of Wickepin, about 200 km south east of Perth where you can visit his house which is now the premier tourist attraction of this town.

Book by John Pilger that looks indepth at Australians dirty secrets like the white Australia policy, the dismissal, treatment of aboriginals etc. It makes for interesting comparison with our history books.

19 Year old Aussie boys Luke Carroll and Anthony Prince from Byron Bay were in the US on a snowboarding holiday when they came up with the brilliant idea to rob a bank and then fly to Mexico with the cash, like you always see in the (cheap) movies.
Armed with BB guns that appeared to be pistols they went to the local bank in Vail, Colorado, and managed to get the amount of $US132,000 from the tellers.
Unfortunately they left such a wealth of clues that police had established their identities in less than ten minutes and they were arrested in no time at all and made the news headlines as the Dumb And Dumber couple, relating to Jim Carey's movie of two idiots on a road trip.
Blunders included choosing a bank where they were known, not disguising their Aussie accents, buying a fancy Rolex watch with a mountain of $5 notes in a nearby shop just after the robbery, giving a taxi driver a 20 grand tip, forgetting to take off their work name tags, etc.
They served five years in a US prison before making it home to Oz again..

Buy this book at Amazon.com

Is climate change really happening and does it matter? The answer from the scientific community is a resounding yes, yet debates about the reality of climate change and what measures to take are slowing our response. Barrie Pittock, one of the world’s leading climate researchers, argues that we need to act urgently to avoid increasingly severe climate change.

Climate Change: Turning up the Heat explains how our attitudes to risk and uncertainty – constant companions in life – influence our decision making and, ultimately, how much we and future generations stand to lose from rapid climate change. Our climate takes a long time to alter so what we do now will have impacts decades later; we must encourage market forces to think long term.
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Bill Bryson has written a few books about Australia, from the perspective of an outsider, observing the funny, interesting, and quirky things that make Australia.

Matt Zurbo once did comedy with a bloated ex-wrestler called the Perculator and dominatrix, Mz Velvet Black. Other than that his life is quite strange. He balances life as a bush worker, harvesting tree ferns and regenerating temperate rainforest, in the ranges behind the Great Ocean Road, surfing badly and playing bush footy, with his writing and drawing. He is not an international man of mystery, just very vague. He’s into live music and has a dog called Bucket.

He has written and published a numer of books, ranging from childrens books to novels for adults and a music CD.

Originally from New Zealand, but now living in Australia, Meliors makes artist books.
These are definitely not your standard format books, as you can see on the right.
You can view and buy Melior's work online through art websites like Etsy and Redbubbles or keep up to date with her latest work on her website meliors.net

42 year old Melbourne author Andy Griffiths cashes in on the fact that children usually find farting and anything to do with it extremely funny and has written several mega selling epic works so far. "The day my bum went psycho" was such a success that he followed it up with another literary marvel titled "Zombie bums from Uranus". In 2003 Andy had no less than seven books in the Australian book top 15, and sold more than 180,000 books that year bringing in over $2 million dollars! For 2005 he has planned another epic; Bumageddon; the final conflict. Also American kids loved his books but the title was adapted to Zombie butts from Uranus.

Australian doctor Philip Nietschke became famous for his views that people who are beyond saving by medical science and who are suffering pain should be allowed to die, he pushed his views through to the point where he assisted some people to end their lives and even invented a machine that produced carbon- monoxide that people could use to end ther lives but customs officers confiscated this machine when he was on his way to a conference in the U.S. He was also involved in introducing the Northern Territory's euthanasia laws that were overturned within several weeks by Federal Government, only three terminally ill people had been able to utilize the law to end their suffering. In 2004 he launced his suicide pill and a film about a 79 year old American academic woman who was healthy but had decided she wanted to die before turning 80.
He wrote a book titled ' The Peaceful Pill Handbook ' but had his first print run confiscated at customs arriving back from the U.S. , later the Office of Film and Literature Classification cleared the book and he was allowed to print and distribute the book in Australia.