Stuart Kells

Two insiders expose the shocking and shameful betrayal of Australia's regional heartland so international bankers and traders could make a quick buck. The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia's greatest environmental asset. The story of water in Australia is written into its ancient rivers, creeks and wetlands. It's home to more than forty Indigenous nations, and it covers an area bigger than...

Libraries are filled with magic. From the Bodleian, the Folger and the Smithsonian to the fabled libraries of Middle Earth, Umberto Eco's mediaeval library labyrinth, and libraries dreamed up by John Donne, Jorge Luis Borges, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Stuart Kells explores the bookish places, real and fictitious, that continue to capture our imaginations. The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders...

An inside look at effective policy making, realised through hard-won public policy battles. What does successful public policy look like, and how has it been achieved in Australia? What strategies are needed to overcome petty partisanship and narrow self-interest? And who gets to decide what a better Australia even looks like? In A Better Australia, John Brumby, Scott Hamilton and...

Red Earth is the remarkable history of the Mildura region – the northernmost part of Victoria. ‘Mildura’ is a Latje Latje word meaning ‘red earth’ or ‘red banks’, a reference to the intermittent stretches of red in the cliffs and banks of the Murray River near the junction with the Darling. Beginning with the region’s deep history, author and historian...

Around the world, the big department stores of the 1920s to the 1950s wielded great power in dictating national tastes and fashions; a visit to any of these stores was an event in itself and an important social outing. In Australia, Snow’s department store was a household name. Its leaders and their families could be seen as a commercial aristocracy...

Fragile Prosperity delivers an authoritative, historically informed critique of Australia's monetary policy, showing how flawed ideas on money, tax and inflation shaped today's economy. It reexamines deregulation, rising house prices and inequality, and reveals a system facing a stark policy dilemma with global relevance. ‘The thrust of this excellent work is that the process and consequences of the generation of...

Inside Australia's most venerable book publishing house. Australia's oldest university press is also one of our best known and most trusted publishers. Founded in 1921 as a bookshop for students at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press was soon publishing important works that contained the best of national scholarship. Landmark MUP books and series include The Australian Dictionary of...

What was behind the wall and the wire? The local people knew . . . fine courtyards . . . an old swimming pool . . . dilapidated tennis courts and a remnant garden, now wild and sprawling. The Abbotsford Convent was this haunted place, left to languish for years after the last of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd...