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Australian life has never had a chronicler quite like the Vagabond. Renowned as journalist and eminently unconventional character'', he suffered extremes of poverty and prosperity. These enabled him to record first-hand experiences revealing the degradation of life in the festering slums of the Victorian era. They also enabled him to write convincingly about the emergence of a well-off middle class in the fast-developing colonies. The Vagabond repeatedly shocked newly respectable citizens with his lively reporting of scandalous situations baby farming, harsh conditions in prisons and asylums, savage sporting events, the life of the demi-monde, and pathetic pauper funerals. This selection of the Vagabond''s best work includes a lengthy introduction to the 1969 edition, which attempted to explain the mysteries of his origins and adventures, and the reasons he always used pseudonyms after fleeing from the USA to Australia. Additional material in this edition reveals for the first time the details of his earlier life in Virginia, USA. Here he married the widow of a rich planter, used her money to build a delightful Southern mansion, became a leading light in society, took control of the local bank, and absconded when things went wrong. The rascal managed to redeem himself with his unique work for Australian newspapers, where no-one realised his true identity. A further addition to this volume is a scholarly examination of the Vagabond''s pioneering technique of immersion journalism'', where the reporter becomes part of the story and gives his own observations and opinions.

For much of the twentieth century, the National Council of Women of Australia was the peak body representing women to government in Australia, and through the International Council of Women, to the world. This history of NCWA tells the story of mainstream feminism in Australia, of the long struggle for equality at home and at work which is still far from achieved. In these days when women can no longer be imagined as speaking with one voice, and women as a group have no ready access to government, we still need something of the optimistic vision of the leaders of NCWA. Respectable in hat and gloves to the 1970s and beyond, they politely persisted with the truly radical idea that women the world over should be equal with men.

Not many can boast of careers that lasted successfully for nearly seventy years, but that is what both Googie Withers and John McCallum achieved. Googie portrayed everything from brazen murderesses to Lady Bracknell, taking in blonde nitwits, wartime Resistance workers, lady farmers and Shakespeare along the way. John not only performed memorably in all the acting media but also was a pioneer producer in Australian television sending Skippy into the far corners of the earth the managing director of a huge theatrical firm, and a film director, playwright and author. Just as remarkable was their 62-year marriage, not all that common in the entertainment world, and the way this worked is as fascinating as their varied and prolific careers. There were plenty of disagreements along the way but underlying all was their profound respect for each others work and a kind of love that was essentially complementary. Together, in professional and personal matters alike, an unbeatable combination. Brian McFarlanes biography does justice to this remarkable pair and reads as an absorbing story.

1860. An Aboriginal labourer named Jim Crow is led to the scaffold of the Maitland Gaol in colonial New South Wales. Among the onlookers is the Scotsman AS Hamilton, who will take bizarre steps in the aftermath of the execution to exhume this young man''s skull. Hamilton is a lecturer who travels the Australian colonies teaching phrenology, a popular science that claims character and intellect can be judged from a person''s head. For Hamilton, Jim Crow is an important prize. A century and a half later, researchers at Museum Victoria want to repatriate Jim Crow and other Aboriginal people from Hamilton''s collection of human remains to their respective communities. But their only clues are damaged labels and skulls. With each new find, more questions emerge. Who was Jim Crow? Why was he executed? And how did he end up so far south in Melbourne? In a compelling and original work of history, Alexandra Roginski leads the reader through her extensive research aimed at finding the person within the museum piece. Reconstructing the narrative of a life and a theft, she crafts a case study that elegantly navigates between legal and Aboriginal history, heritage studies and biography. Searching for Jim Crow is a nuanced story about phrenology, a biased legal system, the aspirations of a new museum, and the dilemmas of a theatrical third wife. It is most importantly a tale of two very different men, collector and collected, one of whom can now return home.

Many domains are black and cruelly white. In this book Colin Tatz, a world authority on racial conflict and abuse, a key figure in Indigenous Studies in Australia and an author of major works on genocide, Aboriginal youth suicide, and Aboriginal and Islander sporting achievements, tells his personal story. Born and educated in South Africa, Tatz worked to expose and oppose that nation''s centuries-old apartheid regimes before leaving for what he thought would be a more enlightened nation, only to find in Australia striking parallels of that other dismal universe. As a researcher, writer and activist he has dedicated his life to confronting what people do to other people on the basis of their race or ethnicity, but relates here also how alienation, his Jewishness and an intriguing problem with food have been, for him, propelling forces. Tatz''s story, ranging from Southern Africa to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Israel, is an important one for anyone genuinely interested in the struggle to achieve social justice for minorities and marginalised peoples.

Englishwoman Eilean Giblin arrived in Australia in 1919 with a shipload of war brides, almost certainly the only woman not wearing a wedding ring. An unconventional feminist, Giblin arrived with a commitment to women's rights and social justice, developed through the suffrage movement and the intellectual appeal of left-wing social and political ideas. During the next three decades in three Australian cities, she pursued roles relevant to her feminist and humanitarian ideals. In the small, insular society of Hobart in the 1920s, Eilean Giblin campaigned for the important feminist goal of 'equal citizenship.' She represented Tasmanian women at the International Woman Suffrage Congress in Rome in 1923 and was the first woman appointed to a hospital board in Tasmania. In Melbourne in the 1930s, she led a committee that achieved the long sought goal of a non-denominational university women's college. During World War II, she kept a diary in Canberra that is a unique social record and a powerful witness to the immense human suffering and futility of war. Eilean Giblin was one of a small minority who supported the enemy aliens deported from Britain to Australia in 1940 on the Dunera, undertaking a lone 500 km journey to investigate their remote internment camp. *** "An incredible true story of one woman's persistence and determination to leave the world a better place than she found it, Eilean Giblin is highly recommended especially for high school, college and public library collections." - The Midwest Book Review, Wisconsin Bookwatch, The Biography Shelf, January 2014 *** "Through meticulous research, and lively writing, Clarke has contributed to the body of evidence that shows that feminists were energetically focused on improving the lives of women during that period ['...the apparent lull in feminist activity between the earlier struggle of the suffragists and the efforts of the late 1960s']. It is a welcome addition to a growing number of biographies of hitherto unknown Australian feminists." - Australian Historical Studies, 45, 2014Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?Ã?Â?