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In the tradition of Wild and Tracks, one woman's story of how she left the city and found her soul. Disillusioned and burnt out by her job, Claire Dunn quits a comfortable life to spend a year off the grid in a wilderness survival program. Her new forest home swings between ally and enemy as reality - and the rain - sets in. Claire's adventure unfolds over four seasons and in the essential order of survival: shelter, water, fire and food. She arrives in summer, buoyant with idealism, and is initially confronted with physical challenges: building a shelter, escaping the vicious insects and making fire without matches. By winter, however, her emotional landscape has become the toughest terrain of all. Can she connect with her inner spirit to guide her journey onwards? Brimming with earthy charm and hard-won wisdom, My Year Without Matches is one woman's quest for belonging, to the land and to herself. When Claire finally cracks life in the bush wide open, she discovers a wild heart to warm the coldest night. "A brave and adventurous book ... Claire's writing is full of life and profound surprises." - Anne Deveson "An entertaining look at how Dunn survived for four seasons in a 'hundred acres of baking scrubland" - Sun Herald "With earthy, expressive honesty she shares her struggles [and] the swooping highs of crafting life out of a block of unforgiving scrub... by sharing such an intimate journey, Claire has given us all a gift." - WellBeing Magazine

If the goal of our justice system is to reduce crime and create a safer society, then we must do better. According to conventional wisdom, severely punishing offenders reduces the likelihood that they'll offend again. Why, then, do so many who go to prison continue to commit crimes after their release? What do we actually know about offenders and the reasons they break the law? In Crime & Punishment, Russell Marks argues that the lives of most criminal offenders - and indeed of many victims of crime - are marked by often staggering disadvantage. For many offenders, prison only increases their chances of committing further crimes. And despite what some media outlets and politicians want us to believe, harsher sentences do not help most victims to heal. Drawing on his experience as a lawyer, Marks eloquently makes the case for restorative justice and community correction, whereby offenders are obliged to engage with victims and make amends. Crime & Punishment is a provocative call for change to a justice system in desperate need of renewal.

How well do you write? Good communication is a skill required by all professionals. Whether you're preparing reports, conducting reviews or simply writing emails, expressing your ideas clearly and persuasively is fundamental to your success in the workplace. Susan McKerihan has spent over twenty years assisting corporate clients to perfect their written communications. In Clear & Concise she shares her secrets, using real-world examples to show how to avoid common writing traps, such as wordiness, ambiguity and repetition. By eliminating these habitual errors from your work and by using a logical top-down structure, you can improve the readability of your writing. And when your words are lucid and focused, your thinking becomes sharper, and you become more impressive and more productive. Clear & Concise is the only writing guide you will ever need.

Over the next two years, Australians will decide if and how Aboriginal people will be recognised in the Constitution. Professor Greg Craven writes: 'We have a committed Prime Minister, and a committed opposition. We have a receptive electorate. There will never be a better time. We have no choice but to address the question.

Winner of the 2013 ACT Book of the Year Award Cross-dressing convicts, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes - here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day. In this fascinating social history, Frank Bongiorno uses striking examples to chart the changing sex lives of Australians. Tracing the story up to the present, Bongiorno shows how the quest for respectability always has another side to it. Along the way he deals with some intriguing questions - What did it mean to be a 'mate'? How did modern warfare affect soldiers' attitudes to sex? Why did the law ignore lesbianism for so long? - and introduces some remarkable characters both reformers and radicals. This is a thought-provoking and enlightening journey through the history of sex in Australia. With a foreword by Michael Kirby, AC CMG. Praise for The Sex Lives of Australians: 'Remarkable and highly readable' - Michael Kirby 'A great book, a compound of wit and tragedy, as you'd expect from the subject matter, plus wide learning and common sense.' - Alan Atkinson, author of The Europeans in Australia 'The Sex Lives of Australians is such a treasure trove that it is hard to do it justice ... a work of real significance that makes a fresh contribution to understanding our culture.' - the Australian 'This is highly readable, serious history about our most intimate yet most culturally sensitive selves.' - the Canberra Times 'A fascinating tale.' - the Sydney Morning Herald 'An engaging book...both educational and entertaining' - the Daily Telegraph 'Entertaining, enlightening, infuriating and frequently hilarious. Highly recommended.' - MX Sydney Awards: Winner of the 2013 ACT Book of the Year Award. Shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the 2013 NSW Premier's History Awards.

Good drinkers, bad swimmers and unlikely heroes Since Australia's birth in 1901, twenty-eight politicians have run the national show. Their time at the top has ranged from eight days for Frank Forde to eighteen years for Bob Menzies. But whatever the length of their term, each Prime Minister has a story worth sharing.

Whether we're aware of it or not, we spend much of our time in this globalised world lost in translation. Language is a big part of it, of course, as anyone who has fumbled with a phrasebook in a foreign country will know, but behind language is something far more challenging to translate: culture.

Cardinal George Pell is the most prominent Catholic leader in Australia at a time when Church's handling of sexual abuse is being closely investigated. He is also the confessor of prime-minister-in-waiting Tony Abbott. A news-breaking and definitive portrait of Pell, at a time of maximum tension and scrutiny for both him and the church.

Is Australia fair enough? And why does inequality matter anyway? In Battlers and Billionaires, Andrew Leigh weaves together vivid stories, interesting history and powerful statistics to discuss why inequality matters -- both why it can be good, and why it can be harmful. This is economics writing at its best.

A powerful and impressive debut from one of Australia's most exciting young writers -- for fans of Alice Munro, Nam Le, Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan

Western women today have unprecedented freedom and power. In Australia we have a female prime minister and governor-general; women are at the forefront of almost every area of public life. Yet when Julia Gillard's misogyny speech ricocheted around the world, it clearly touched a nerve.

This essay is both a wake-up call to the consequences of unrestrained development, and an examination of the underlying thinking -- the view of the natural world that sees it as something either to be put to use or traded off. By contrast, Flannery asks, how might we best understand, conserve and co-exist with the natural world?

Quarterly Essay is a trailblazing Australian journal of politics and culture. Each issue contains a single essay written at a length of about 25,000 words, followed by correspondence on previous essays.

In Mine-Field, Paul Cleary counts the true human and economic costs of Australia's short-term mineral addiction.

Is there an Australian national character? What are its distinguishing features? Over the years, how have insiders and outsiders summed up this country and its people? John Hirst gathers together the key assessments of the national character, on topics as diverse as sport, war, mateship, humour, put-downs, suburbia and going native.

Although a self-proclaimed conservative, Hirst's work has received high praise from historians ranging from Don Watson to Stuart MacIntyre. This book collects key pieces on convict society, the pioneer legend, Australian egalitarianism, the republican movement and more.

This is a roller-coaster ride through the history and present of popular music. Robert Forster was a Go-Between and now has an acclaimed solo career. But in recent times he has established himself as one of the finest music critics in the business. This book gathers that writing into an entertaining whole and also includes several new pieces.

Respected journalist Laura Tingle writes on politics, affluence and an angry nation.

In this dazzling piece of reportage, Anna Krien investigates the contemporary animal kingdom and our place in it. From pets to food, from wildness to science experiments, Krien also reveals how animals are faring in this new world order. Examples range from the joyful to the deeply unsettling.

The essential work on Tony Abbott is now an expanded, updated short book - and a crucial election-year companion. Australians want to know: what kind of man is Tony Abbott, and how would he perform as prime minister? In this dramatic portrait, David Marr shows that as a young Catholic warrior at university, Abbott was already a brutally effective politician. He later led the way in defeating the republic and, as the self-proclaimed 'political love child' of John Howard, rose rapidly in the Liberal Party. Marr shows that Abbott thrives on chaos and conflict. Part fighter and part charmer, he is deeply religious and deeply political. What happens, then, when his values clash with his need to win? This is the great puzzle of his career, but the closer he is to taking power, the more guarded he has become. Political Animal's release as a Quarterly Essay in 2012, with its revelations of 'the punch, ' triggered intense scrutiny of Abbott's character, which culminated in Gillard's memorable speech accusing him of misogyny and, soon after, Abbott's worst ever public approval rating. This significantly expanded and updated short book gives the clearest picture yet of the man Abbott is and the prime minister he would be. 'Since witnessing the Hewson catastrophe at first hand, Abbott has worn a mask. He has grown and changed. Life and politics have taught him a great deal. But how this has shaped the fundamental Abbott is carefully obscured. What has been abandoned? What is merely hidden on the road to power? What makes people so uneasy about Abbott is the sense that he is biding his time, that there is a very hard operator somewhere behind that mask, waiting for power.' -David Marr, Political Animal "It's a more fair-minded and more generous assessment than many people, perhaps myself included, had expected. We have very different perspectives on the world but, to his credit, to some extent David Marr was able to step outside the standard leftist critique and appreciate that here was a more nuanced and complex character than perhaps many of the standard left-leaning critics would concede. Having said all of that, I certainly don't think all of his judgments were fair and I don¹t think all of his interpretations were correct." -Tony Abbott

'During the term of the Rudd and Gillard governments, criticism of the Labor Party became a national pastime.' So writes Mark Latham, a one-time leader of the party and still its most perceptive - and fiercest - critic. In Quarterly Essay 49 , Latham argues that the time has come to go beyond criticism to solutions.