Swimming Sydney is a tale of 52 swims in and around Sydney that take place over the course of a calendar year. From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi, Chris Baker swims at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour enclosures, hidden rivers, tidal rock pools, bushland lakes and in a backyard pool. Taking his weekly plunges, he swims with the many tribes of Sydney: a septuagenarian aqua aerobics class; a six-month-old baby learning to swim; a Saturday morning LGBTQIA+ swim squad; ...

The sector north of Ypres is best known for the inundation of much of the ground to the east of the Yser that acted as a block to the German advance in the autumn of 1914. From that time on military activities were extremely limited. Much of this line was manned by Belgian troops, with some assistance from the French army at its southern end and of the British army on the Channel coast. The role of the Belgian army in the Great War is little known, apart from the opening months, when 'brav...

Early European visitors placed Ayutthaya alongside China and India as the great powers of Asia. Yet in 1767 the city was destroyed and its history has been neglected. This book is the first study of Ayutthaya from its emergence in the thirteenth century until its fall. It offers a wide-ranging view of social, political, and cultural history with focus on commerce, kingship, Buddhism, and war. By drawing on a wide range of sources including chronicles, accounts by Europeans, Chinese, Persia...

The world needs changing – that much is clear. But how best to do it? Change how you vote? Get out and protest? Have an argument?The fact is that the power sits in your pocket. Changing how we spend our money has more potential to change the world than almost anything else we can do with our time on this planet.Consumer spending accounts for over 60% of GDP across the world and it will hit a staggering $77 trillion a year by 2029. But the v...

The world needs changing – that much is clear. But how best to do it? Change how you vote? Get out and protest? Have an argument?The fact is that the power sits in your pocket. Changing how we spend our money has more potential to change the world than almost anything else we can do with our time on this planet.Consumer spending accounts for over 60% of GDP across the world and it will hit a staggering $77 trillion a year by 2029. But the v...

A History of Thailand offers a lively and accessible account of Thailand's political, economic, social and cultural history. This book explores how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree peasants was transformed and examines how the monarchy managed the foundation of a new nation-state at the turn of the twentieth century. The authors capture the clashes between various groups in their attempts to take control of the nation-state in the twentieth century. They track Thailand's economic chan...

A long night ahead means plenty of time for web-making and bug-catching for this meticulous orb-weaver spider in this brilliant, non-fiction picture book that uniquely captures the spider's point of view.Once night falls, Weaver emerges from the rolled-up leaf she sleeps in during the day, and begins searching for the perfect place to spin her latest web. She climbs up and scurries down, and winds around and around until she’s created something per...

Spectacular nebulae where stars are born, beautiful star clusters from the early formation of the Milky Way, and galaxies as far as a billion light years away, all feature in this book of stunning images from astrophotographer Chris Baker.The author takes the reader on a journey through time and space to the Deep Sky, far beyond our Solar System. It is a pictorial description of the awe-inspiring wondrous objects that exist out there."The images are of objects from hundreds to many million...

Do you feel confident at work? Are there times when you lack confidence but can’t show it? The role of confidence in successful leadership is both significant and undisputed and yet organisations are full of leaders and teams who don’t have as much as they want and, even worse, are not doing anything about it.Attempts to develop confidence are usually confined to empty affirmations and vanilla-flavoured self-help books. In contrast, this book provides an evidence-based code that ou...

The Battle of the Lys, fought in April 1918, was critical for the Allies and for Germany. The outcome of the Great War hung in the balance. After the successful German offensive on the Somme, their breakthrough on the Lys threatened Ypres and the British hold on Flanders and brought them close to victory on the Western Front. The Allied line was broken it was only saved by improvisation and great gallantry—and the German onslaught tested Allied cooperation under the newly appointed General...

    "An eleven-year-old girl and boy live in an isolated village with 258 other citizens. Nobody has a name, and everything is calculated to break their spirits so that they surrender to an existence of gray routine.     "But they have each other. They each have a passion: music and art. And a mysterious force is guiding them and protecting them.     "When the savagery of those in control finally transforms the girl, t...

Since it was first published in 2005, A History of Thailand has been hailed as an authoritative, lively and readable account of Thailand's political, economic, social and cultural history. From the early settlements in the Chao Phraya basin to today, Baker and Phongpaichit trace how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree peasants was transformed by colonialism, the expansion of the rice frontier and the immigration of traders and labourers from southern China. This book examines how the mon...