'An unforgettable, multi-layered history, Alice's dreaming is at once biography, literary thriller and stunning evocation of Country and place.' —Mark McKennaEarly last century, Alice Duncan-Kemp grew up on a remote Queensland cattle station. Later she would write down her childhood memories of learning from Aboriginal women and men at home on their own Country. In her books, she evoked a rich parallel universe of storytelling and lore, which she felt privileged to witne...

An exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time, so computer scientists have...

From the coauthor of Algorithms to Live By, an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds.Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force, acceleration, ...

No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us.Winner of the Ernest Scott Prize and Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction'A rare feat of imagination and generosity' —Mark McKennaWith every sentence they write, historians must walk the tightrope between discipline and imagination, empathy and evidence. In this landmar...

Kafka's final novel was written during 1922, when the tuberculosis that was to kill him was already at an advanced stage. Fragmentary and unfinished, it perhaps never could have been finished; perhaps the tensions between K., the Castle and the village, K.'s struggle for acceptance or recognition by the mysterious Castle authorities or by the people of the village, never will and never can be resolved.Like much of Kafka's work, The Castle is enigmatic and polyvalent. Is it an alleg...

Translated by Antony M. Ludovici. With an Introduction by Ray Furness.The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous utterances of the prophet (together with the ill-defined figure of the Übermensch) are forsaken, as wit, exuberance and dazzling insights predominate, forcing the reader to face unpalatable insights and to rethink every commonly accepted 'truth'. Th...

Translated by C.E.Detmold. With an Introduction by Lucille Margaret Kekewich.Written in 1513 for the Medici, following their return to power in Florence, The Prince is a handbook on ruling and the exercise of power. It remains as relevant today as it was in the sixteenth century. Widely quoted in the Press and in academic publications, The Prince has direct relevance to the issues of business and corporate governance confronting global corporations as they...

The final letters and diary entries of Robert Falcon Scott – written in his last days, while hopelessly trapped in a tiny tent by a raging blizzard on the Great Ice Barrier – are among the most poignant and haunting passages ever penned. ‘Had we lived,’ he wrote, ‘I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.’Scott’s diaries, discovered with his body the next spring and then used as...

‘I was sitting upon a low bench, made of rough boards, and without coat or hat. I was handcuffed. Around my ankles also were a pair of heavy fetters. One end of a chain was fastened to a large ring in the floor, the other to fetters on my ankles . . . Then did the idea begin to break upon my mind, at first dim and confused, that I had been kidnapped.’Solomon Northup’s kidnap in 1841 tore him away from a life of relative comfort as a free-born African-American farmer and violinist i...

According to tradition Cervantes first conceived his comic masterpiece in jail - his avowed intent being to debunk the romances of chivalry. From first publication Don Quixote was a best-seller, initially taken as a knockabout account of a mad Spanish gentleman and his cowardly peasant squire, but later reinterpreted as an enlightenment text, a representation of universal human nature, a myth of a tragic hero defending man's nobler aspirations, a study in alienation, a spiritual a...

Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson.The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC), they anticipate Machiavelli's The Prince by nearly 2000 years.The Art of War is the best known of a considerable body of Chinese works on the subject. It analyses the nature of war, and reveals how vict...

Translated with Notes by George Rawlinson. With an Introduction by Tom Griffith.Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining.Why did Pheidippides run the 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.195 kilometres) from Marathon to Athens? And what did he do when he got there? Was the Battle of Salamis fought between sausage-sellers? Which is the oldest language in...