Playing In The Bush

Playing in the Bush is an engaging account of the ways the national parks of New South Wales have been used over the past 130 years. Researched and written by seven young historians from the University of Sydney, the book weaves together stories of diverse experiences in our national parks. Established 'for the use of the public forever', they have had a long history of popular use and created deep emotional attachments among people from all walks of life.

The fourth release in the Young Art Board Book Series showcasing young Indigenous artists In the bush is a playful ensemble of Australian creatures, and an exciting illustrative debut from teenage artist, Kiara Honeychurch. Hailing from Tasmania, Kiara is inspired by the bush creatures she encounters in her rural home out of Hobart. With bold and sophisticated pops of colour, Kiara unleashes the beauty and character of each creature and reimagines its unpredictable tones in a changing light from sunrise to sunset. Kiara's warm and creative understanding of the animals she sees is a lively showcase of her talent. This board book for Early Childhood will capture the hearts of young readers and readers young at heart.

An unprecedented high-level master narrative of America's intelligence wars, demonstrating in a time of new threats that espionage and the search for facts are essential to our democracy For General Michael Hayden, playing to the edge means playing so close to the line that you get chalk dust on your cleats. Otherwise, by playing back, you may protect yourself, but you will be less successful in protecting America. "Play to the edge" was Hayden's guiding principle when he ran the National Security Agency, and it remained so when he ran CIA. In his view, many shortsighted and uninformed people are quick to criticize, and this book will give them much to chew on but little easy comfort; it is an unapologetic insider's look told from the perspective of the people who faced awesome responsibilities head on, in the moment. How did American intelligence respond to terrorism, a major war and the most sweeping technological revolution in the last 500 years? What was NSA before 9/11 and how did it change in its aftermath? Why did NSA begin the controversial terrorist surveillance program that included the acquisition of domestic phone records? What else was set in motion during this period that formed the backdrop for the infamous Snowden revelations in 2013? As Director of CIA in the last three years of the Bush administration, Hayden had to deal with the rendition, detention and interrogation program as bequeathed to him by his predecessors. He also had to ramp up the agency to support its role in the targeted killing program that began to dramatically increase in July 2008. This was a time of great crisis at CIA, and some agency veterans have credited Hayden with actually saving the agency. He himself won't go that far, but he freely acknowledges that CIA helped turn the American security establishment into the most effective killing machine in the history of armed conflict. For 10 years, then, General Michael Hayden was a participant in some of the most telling events in the annals of American national security. General Hayden's goals are in writing this book are simple and unwavering: No apologies. No excuses. Just what happened. And why. As he writes, "There is a story here that deserves to be told, without varnish and without spin. My view is my view, and others will certainly have different perspectives, but this view deserves to be told to create as complete a history as possible of these turbulent times. I bear no grudges, or at least not many, but I do want this to be a straightforward and readable history for that slice of the American population who depend on and appreciate intelligence, but who do not have the time to master its many obscure characteristics."

Poetry. Indigenous Australian Poetry. When Teena McCarthy told me she had constructed this book from poems, lines, phrases and images that she had written on odd-sized pieces of paper and had gathered them until they formed a manuscript, I immediately thought of Emily Dickinson, who also wrote many of her poems on the backs of envelopes and scraps that had been used as shopping lists. The connection is not far-fetched: McCarthy connects startling images to form intense visions that vibrate with arresting music. The poems in BUSH MARY work on multiple levels 'Äì woven from history, life experience and metaphor are visionary chords made of words. Images appear gradually, sometimes over several pages, like photographic prints forming in developing chemicals. I want to use the word--mystical' here--harsh and beautiful, these poems ache with reality and seem to bring poetry back to life again. This book reads as if written by a poet working before the last century of modernism; albeit aware of that era, it comes from the pre-dawn of poetry before it became clogged with the 'Äòanxiety of influence' and experimental verse. Maybe the poems trace mystic notes. McCarthy's visions and dreams--abstract stories--bristle with a technique and meaning that became a triumph. It's the confidence of a poet who has nailed it, then shaped her season in hell into an instrument that sings. It is poetry created from transformed traumas, and importantly, effortless praise, for both survivors and old ghosts that flash behind the present moment or line from the past. As we read, yesterday, today and tomorrow mix, and a generous spirit is revealed that doesn't grow bitter even after every rotten deal has been broken and served up to the poet and her people. There's only the poem, only the new life to be written and lived out, only the song that strikes into your soul, reinventing love and compassion by its flashing words and naked statements. In the fifth century, Saint Augustine said, A virgin conceives, yet remains a virgin: a virgin is heavy with child; a virgin brings forth her child, yet she is always a virgin. McCarthy, almost 2000 years later, replies, We can no longer escape / into the truth of Bush Mary, / we're non-virgin, / used by carnal. / She is every body. / Bush Mary blood'. Then, like Eurydice, 'ÄòShe has no voice. McCarthy creates that voice in profoundly visual poems, and answers the colonising First Fleet and its following Christians: She is a single mother / with a bush / She is the fucking Holy Ghost. Robert Adamson

"For those who loved Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior comes a new climate-themed, Shakespeare-inspired novel from bestselling author Catherine Bush. The time is now or an alternate near now, the world close to our own. A mammoth Category Five hurricane sweeps up the eastern seaboard of North America, leaving devastation in its wake, its outer wings brushing over tiny Blaze Island in the North Atlantic. Just as the storm disrupts the present, it stirs up the past: Miranda's memories of growing up in an isolated, wind-swept cove and the events of long ago that her father will not allow her to speak of. In the aftermath of the storm, she finds herself in a world altered so quickly and so radically that she hardly knows what has happened. As Miranda says, change is clear after it happens."--

Winner of The CAA–Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography The 2000 Ottawa-Carlton Book Award The (U.S.) Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness Book “A portrait of a true original.”—The Hamilton Spectator In 1929, at the age of twenty-two, Duncan MacGregor, the son of a lumberman, great-grandson of a voyageur, and an avid reader and baseball fan, headed off into the largest tract of preserved bush in the world: Ontario’s Algonquin Park. When he got there, he was home for the rest of his life. From the true nature of fishing to the harsh realities of raising a family in the woods, from the role of fear in the bush to the small nuances of family relationships, A Life in the Bush is painted on a canvas both vast and richly detailed. A story that captures the tough physical demands, the rich life of the senses, and the unselfconscious freedom that comes from living apart from town and city. In this beautifully crafted memoir of his father, Roy MacGregor paints an intimate portrait of an unusual man and spins a spellbinding tale of a boy’s complex relationship with his father. He also evokes, perhaps for the first time in Canadian literature, the bush the way bush people see it, an insider's view of life in the totemic Canadian wilderness.