Great book. Not only does it provide over 700 full size colour photos of the insignia worn but has a very useful historical coverage for those interested in Australasian special forces. I have not found another book that covers this subject as well. A bonus is that the book is on excellent paper and a very nice addition to ones library.

I personally do not collect military insignia of any type; I bought this title to read more information on the ELITE organizations of Australia and New Zealand, In particular their Special Air Service (SAS) outfits. The book does and outstanding job at illustrating all the units insignias with hundreds of pictures and descriptions, as for this is what the book was intended for, What I enjoyed the most was the text and descriptions of units and unit lineage and history which really rounded out this text. If you want to know about ANZAC Elites this is a great start for there is no one book that I know of which discusses them all.

Born of the vote, not of a war (I've borrowed that from the Australian Centenary of Federation), the Commonwealth of Australia, barely 13 years old, faced involvement in the First World War as a test of its young resolve. Emerging from the conflict with a sense of identity perhaps not attainable by less traumatic means. This book is a condensation of the Official Australian History of the 1914-18 War, edited by the author (C.E.W. Bean). It seeks to make the events of this time more accessible to the general reader (the Official History is in 12 volumes), especially the original readership, who had just faced the next war (first edition published 1946). The author establishes a sense of authority which no modern writer could ever hope for: photos of the Anzac day landings (25th April, 1915), at Gallipoli, credited as "Photo by the writer". While the Allies eventually lost this campaign (making it a fitting way to remember lives lost to the futility of war), the soldiers who had gathered and given meaning to the title ANZAC (both Australian & New Zealand) went on to serve with distinction on the Western Front (and other notable places). It is here that the book makes its greatest impact revealling lesser known details (the Gallipoli campaign is still actively recalled today on Anzac Day). The soldiers known for being a disciplinary nightmare behind the lines showed themselves to be amongst the most disciplined in the front, under enemy fire. Masters not only of the physical aspects of this war, but also of the psychological: the morale crushing "peaceful penetrations" of the enemy lines. The author does have a pedantic way to his writing, unless you're specifically interested in the units you learn to faze out the extra (though understandable) detail. He also has a tendency to use language that could now be called quaint. I have a strong desire to include specific details from the book, but I genuinely don't know what to include and what not to. The only real option is to recommend that you read it.

This book by noted Australian military historian, C. W. Bean is one of the classics of Australian military history. The book was first published over 70 years ago, and has an immediacy and relevance to the audience of its time. This is a chronological history of Australian (and New Zealand's) participation in the Great War in Europe. Modern perspectives of Australian participation in that conflict have taken on what appears to be a new, and more critical (and decidedly anti-British) bias in recent years. Yet revisionism is no claim to originality. It is surprising to see, in his pedantic style, that C. W. Bean, even as a man of his times, reveals a critical (though controlled) eye to British deployment of Australian forces that were supplementing the well-tested French and British units in the field. At times the language of the text seems quaint, due to its descriptive attention to non-salient matters, such as names of units, officers, and specific communications. The book discusses detailed troop movements before and after specific battles. Through these accounts, the reader obtains, through immersion, an appreciation of many forgotten aspects of tactical, logistical and strategic military operations issues of the time. Of interest, for example, are C. W. Bean's detailed descriptions of the procedures that were adopted to condition new Australian units to the destructive bombardments on the Western Front and the process by which units exchanged places in the front line trenches, without alerting the enemy, is of interest. C. W. Bean was renowned as a man who visited actual battle sites, to confirm contradictory claims made by different unit commanders. When he could, he reviewed the results of Australian actions through captured enemy reports where possible. He was also the man who saved Australian military records from a destruction order, mandated due to government disinterest. This book was perhaps the first popular account that resulted from this digest of actual Australian battle reports. The author utilizes vivid accounts of actions, both major and minor, from the original dispatches, and clearly shows the gradual evolution of the Australian army into a able and dependable ally in a global conflict. The book continues to be valuable as a handy, concise, one-volume review of Australia's total contribution to Allied victory in Europe in World War One. The extent of continued Australian involvement in European campaigns which followed the failed and famous Gallipoli landings in 1915, will surprise many readers, including Australians. The author is a product of his time, and does not question Australia's involvement in the War. But the author does reveal his patriotic and critical temper, through a controlled and detailed analysis of British-dominated decision making at the command level. This criticism is levelled at the perceived lack of appreciation of Australian initiative and command capability, of course, and thereby provides an insight into British-Australian tensions apparent at the time.

Annemieke Mein is one the worlds greatest textile artists. Her attention to detail and incredible sense of colour make her work of a standard unsurpassed by others. She creates a world magical and realistic that will open the eyes of any observer. Annemieke has incredible artistic talent and imagination which she has utilised in her works. A heightening experience!

This book is absolutely breathtaking! The art alone is worth buying the book for. The ideas this lady generates with her views of nature will get your creative juices flowing so much that before you know it you'll be outside hunting down bugs and drawing them. My dogs get frustrated with me because instead of walking them as I used to I now stop every few feet to look at an insect or the odd-shaped leaf or grass, etc. I would recommend this book as THE greatest art/craft/fiberart book ever and this compliment isn't given lightly. I have many, many beautiful craft books but this one is the BEST!

While to all surface appearances this is simply a book of Art & Poetry (rather excellent Art & Poetry at that) it is nonetheless much more. This book is an actual grimoire of Rosaleen Norton's own eclectic brand of magic. Contained herein are the images of the various beings (Gods, demons, elementals) with which Ms. Norton had actual contact as well as many invocations (poems) which may be used in the summoning of these beings. Certain pictures are no less than mandalas while others are astral visions and telesmatic images. Also included are an outline of R.N.'s occult beliefs and excerpts from her magical journals as well as pieces of occult lore from her magical realm. Not a step-by-step Summon-by-numbers text by any means, but rather an advanced tome for the advanced occultist. And if you're not an occultist, then as I mentioned it really is an excellent book of art & poetry.

This book, once banned, was reprinted and published in limited numbers. Roe was a very kind bohemian who took many under her wing(s). Her Art reflects a strong magical/ feminist view. The poetry is somewhat dated now but is an excellent example of its time. If you can get a copy it is well worth treasuring.

Hey Paul great book. Will you be writing a book as a follow up to your story in Readers Digest about the lost tribes. Pretty interesting stuff. If not, do you know of any books written on this subject. Also can you post your e-mail address I wish to inquire about purchasing a copy of the Photograph that was displayed on pages 110 & 111. I would like it large enough so that I may frame it. Best Regards C.A. Esposito

I wrote this book, so I think it is terrific.

As a commercial fisherman this book has been invaluable to my day to day working life.If you like to eat seafood , wish to learn more about fish , crusteations , molluscs , and invertibrates of Australia then this book is a fantastic reference item. inside are clear sharp images , protein fingerprints and a complete written breakdown of each species mentioned.The text is clear , concise , and straight to the point without scientific mumbo jumbo to confuse you. what can i say BUY THIS BOOK !!

This book is a must have if you frequently find yourself lucky enough to enjoy Australian seafood. It features almost all of the commonly available species you are likely to find in a restaurant or a fishmonger.

This book enables you to plan your meals- it mentions eating qualities for each species, and oil contents so you can actually "get the good oil"! It also features latin names, habitats and similar species guides.

Recommended marketing names are also used which is essential for Australian exporters. It is recommend to the novice fish eater and the professional seafood exporter. You can also get this in a laminated version which I suppose you could safely take to sea with.

Hard to find, even in Australia but well worth the hunt. Fantastic photography throughout of the whole fish and fillet.

Conrad's account of his return to Tasmania is a delightful journey in time, place and language. Tasmania's special place in history and geography is depicted in the special style that can only be invoked by the self-exile. His prose is rich with metaphor in dealing with his own life, Tasmania's physical features and the society English society imposed on it. Raised in a suburb north of the State Capital, Hobart [the world's most southern such], Conrad's childhood environment was overshadowed by the looming, capriciously moody Mount Wellington. Everything else about Tasmania was "Behind the Mountain."

Conrad is expressive about what it was like to be raised in a place that even the rest of Australia seemed to have forgotten - it was left off school maps of the Last Continent. As the site of imprisonment for the most incorrigible of Britain's transported felons, its white inhabitants later tried to erase their own history. Isolated, then, in place both globally and socially, its people clung to the only culture they could derive - the "home" that was England. Even when the rest of Australia sought ties with the Americans, Tasmania remained locked into their version of the "old country."

Conrad breaks the mould of that image. He's frank about the white's treatment of Tasmania's Aborigine population and culture. He contrasts the outlook that named and respected every mountain, stream or other physical feature of the island. The Parlemar people were rounded up in a series of paramilitary exercises, the most notorious that of the Black Line. The surviving Aborigines [some suicided from seaside cliffs] were exiled to Flinders Island and other off-shore sites to rot and die. Even their corpses were desecrated by amateur "anthropologists" keen to depict them as sub-humans, well deserving extinction. The eradication was absolute - Tasmania remains the only Australian State with no surviving indigenous population.

Conrad journeys over the island by bus and aircraft [he is unable to drive]. The jaunts confront us with bizarre naming practices the island was subjected to by white settlers. No Aborigine names were applied until the State's Hydro Commission attempted some restitution while building dams in the mountains. The attempt is simply a final instance of the paucity of knowledge of Aborigine culture. His tours take us to Port Davey, a week's walk from the nearest road end, and the distant, disreputable Macquarie Harbour. His map shows the anomaly of this extensive estuary with its entrance but 60 metres wide. It was truly the end of the world for many convicts who laboured their lives away under assault by winds originating off the South African coast.

His candor in descriptions of his life and his family is refreshing. He aspired to the exile he entered with unwarranted enthusiasm. The book opens with the conflagration of his childhood artifacts. He is later as disturbed by this sacrifice as we are while reading it. His evocative metaphors evoke the remorse to follow him as he recovers or recreates those childhood losses. The memories he solicits show a level of confusion about his own identity - at one point unable to discern whether the image in a photograph is himself or his father. Life on the Apple Isle could lead to such vague self-persona given the paucity of information about his roots. An alcoholic grandfather had simply been made to disappear by the rest of his family.

It's trite to state that any examination of one's roots can lead to disillusionment. But Conrad's return to this remote land provided an improved sense of self-identity. He returned to learn more of his natal surroundings than would have been possible had he not left. He demonstrates that all he learned during his journeys didn't require a comparison to his adopted land to be valuable. Every place he visited or researched provided new elements of his self-awareness in their own right. The book is an object lesson for anyone who has left home for other venues. Read it to learn of this faraway land, the brilliance of its re-discoverer, and perhaps some insight into your own outlook about where you are. It's a rewarding journey.

Behind the Mountain is a unique creation, more than a close, personal look at a most unusual place, Tasmania, "an appendix, an after thought" to the mainland of Australia. It is also the memoir of a brilliant, scholarly self-exile's return after twenty years and his coming-to-terms with the people and places that made him who he is.

Conrad had "escaped" from Tasmania at age twenty to attend university at Oxford and to start a new life. He had burned in the back yard all his diaries, exercise books, and "anything that might incriminate [him] by attaching an identity to [him]." He had left his home and family behind, intending never to return, believing that "Home was where you started from, not where you stayed." Twenty years older when he writes of revisiting Tasmania, he has discovered that despite his attempt to escape, "Tasmania had set the terms of [his] life. The home you cannot return to you carry off with you: it lies down the at the bottom of the world, and of the sleeping, imagining mind."

This search for identity and roots informs his travels within Tasmania and gives the book an immediacy and liveliness lacking in so many other studies of place. Tasmania, he explains, is "an offshore island off the shore of an offshore continent," its residents therefore the "victims of a twofold alienation," with nothing between them and Anarctica, the end of the world. Conrad turns his eagle eye, his thoughtful sensibility, his absolutely limitless vocabulary, and his extraordinary skills at description to the recreation of Tasmania from the air, from the water, from the farm, from the mountain, and even under the ground, all in vivid word pictures. You will travel with him, and experience the great good fortune of seeing the island through the eyes of a gifted and introspective native whose twenty-year absence has given him a perspective on life in Tasmania that enable him to communicate it with "outsiders."

Best of all, Conrad permits the reader to share his discovery that he had "placed [his] trust, mistakenly, in the myth of self-invention. You created yourself, and did so out of nothing." Instead, he finds, "we are all still pioneers, required to colonise the piece of ground which chance assigns us, to make it our own by shaping it into a small, autonomous intelligible world....[Tasmania] was the landscape inside me: the space where I spent my dreaming time....Tasmania had set the terms of my life."

When I first grabbed this book (from the library) I had this strange feeling that it was going to be extremely hard to understand. Yet the moment I got home and read the introduction I was immediately piqued.

That was over a month ago. Right now I am still facinated, when I have read the book for over three times.

Drouyn covers all the aspects of writing for the screen in this book. The language she uses to describe certain principals (eg: subconscious subtext) is easy to understand even though it's written in a complex manner. Truly magnificent writing.

Coral Drouyn's book addresses the issue of film and television scriptwriting from an Australian perspective. This may seem trivial until you consider that the Australian media industry is different from the US and European versions in a number of fundamental ways. For example, commercial breaks in TV shows are spaced differently and are of different duration from their overseas counterparts. Ms Drouyn covers all aspects of scriptwriting in a manner that any average reader can relate to and understand.

There should have been a section on Michael Robert Hamilton Holmes a Court. Enigmatic raider and consumate businessman. I felt slightly cheated but I enjoyed the book.

This is probably the best book on the corporate excesses of the 1980s since Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. Veteran Australian financial journalist, Trevor Sykes, dissects the collapses of Alan Bond, Christopher Skase and a rogues' gallery of other Antipodean corporate scoundrels. He even bravely attempts to unravel the intricate webs surrounding Brian Yuill's Spedley Securities Limited and John Spalvin's Adelaide Steamship group of companies. Although Sykes explains his reasons why he did not delve into such companies as Elders IXL Limited and John Fairfax Limited, this reviewer feels the book's only failing is that it only mentions by way of cross-reference Australia's biggest player of the Eighties, the late Robert Holmes a Court, the South African-born financier and pastoralist who became Australia's first billionaire. Despite this oversight, The Bold Riders is a highly recommended read which should appeal to all business readers around the English-speaking world, particularly regarding Sykes' insight into Australia's Federal and State politicians and their somewhat symbiotic relationships with business.

This book is fabulous! For sailors, the story alone is worth the read, but it is much more than just a story about sailing. Bertrand's description of the final race against "the red boat" (Dennis Connor) is so powerful that I felt what he and his crew felt, even before I had read what they felt! Any reader interested in the nature of sport and competition will find this book valuable.

Fantastic book. It is an instructive lesson in how to prepare for what you overwhelmingly want to achieve. Being set in the context of one of the most famous sporting events in history, the attempt to wrest the America's Cup from the US after 132 years, makes it that much more exciting. Sailors will love it, but anyone interested in the psychology of winning will gain from this book.