Scribe Publications: New Releases, Latest Scribe News and Henry's Blog

Occupying Wall Street: the inside story of an action that changed America

2012-01-30T00:00:00Z

For two months this fall, Zuccotti Park, squeezed deep in a canyon between bankers’ skyscrapers in lower Manhattan, was the site of an extraordinary political action. Home to the hundreds of anti-capitalist protestors who camped there overnight, and the thousands who visited to join the protest, the park became a magical place: a communion of sharing and consensus in the heart of a citadel defined by greed and oligarchy.

In the early hours of Tuesday November the 15th the occupiers’ camp was destroyed when police swept suddenly into the square, tearing down the tents, library, kitchen and medical centre, and arresting hundreds. For the multitude supporting the action it was a heart-rending moment. But if the occupation at Zuccotti was destroyed that night, the movement it spawned across America has only just begun. Issues of equality and democracy, absent from mainstream political discussion in the United States for decades, are today springing up everywhere.

Now, in a new book assembled by a group of writers active in support of the occupation, the story of Occupy Wall Street is being told. Occupying Wall Street draws on extensive interviews with those who took part in the action to bring an authentic, inside-the-square history to life. In these pages you will discover in rich detail how the protest was devised and planned, how its daily needs were met, and how it won overwhelming support across the nation.

In a vivid, fast-paced narrative, the key events of the occupation are described: the pepper spraying of young women corralled between plastic fences by the NYPD; the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge; the victory on October 14th when an announced 'clean up' of the square was abandoned by a mayor’s office fearful of a PR disaster; and the eventual storming of the occupation that brought it to an abrupt end. Woven throughout are stories of daily life in the square focusing on how the kitchen, library, media centre, clean-up, hospital, and decision-making at the General Assembly functioned, all in the words of the people who were there.

The future course of Occupy Wall Street remains unclear. But one thing is starkly evident: Under the banner 'We are the 99%' the protest has given birth to America’s most important progressive movement since the civil rights marches half a century ago. This is the story of that beginning.

Seize the Day: how the dying teach us to live: new foreword by the author

2012-01-25T00:00:00Z

Marie de Hennezel is a gifted psychologist who works as part of a remarkable team of doctors and nurses in a hospital for the terminally ill. In this eloquent book, she shares her unique perspective on what life and death really mean — and explores how talking about death, and facing up to it, can actually help us to lead more abundant lives.

The men and women who come to the palliative-care unit do not always know that they are dying. It is de Hennezel’s aim to bring them and their loved ones to this knowledge, and then to encourage them to live each day as fully and serenely as possible. Through her insight and humanity, and the unforgettable people she helps, we learn how precious the final days of a person’s life can be and how deeply moving it is to share these moments with someone else.

In an age where people hesitate to talk about dying, Seize the Day lends us the strength to confront the mysteries of death, gives us hope, and celebrates the courage of the human spirit.

Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: a neuroscientist examines his former life on drugs

2012-01-25T00:00:00Z

A gripping, triumphant memoir about the power of addiction and its effect on the brain

Marc Lewis knows addiction: that desperate ambition to get high accompanied him around the world for many years. In the 1960s, Lewis was a teenager in boarding school, experimenting with cough syrup and alcohol to assuage his depression. When he moved to Berkeley, California, the pulsing heart of the counter-cultural movement, he began using LSD and heroin. His spiralling journey of addiction eventually led him to Asia, where he sniffed nitrous oxide in the Malay jungle, took speed in Kuala Lumpur, and lost himself in the opium dens of Calcutta. This was the beginning of his descent into a moonlit world of crime, poverty, and desperation. Returning to Toronto, Lewis lived a double life: by day, he was a psychology student; and by night, he stole from homes and laboratories to get high.

Thirty-four years on, Lewis is a neuroscientist, and he studies the brains of troubled children. But he never forgets that he was once one of those kids — and that, no matter how many scientific conferences he attends, he always will be.

In this mesmerising memoir, Lewis recounts his relationship with drugs from the inside out, giving a revelatory analysis of the chemical changes in his brain that sustained his addiction. This is not just the story of a man who found his calling while fighting a habit that crossed continents and brought him in contact with the wilder edges of life. It is also a penetrating, powerful analysis of addiction, offering a fascinating insight into the human brain, and what drives it to self-destruction.

There Stands My House: a memoir

2012-01-25T00:00:00Z

The first English-language translation of the memoirs of Hans Keilson, one of Europe’s most masterful and remarkable writers

In this unique work, which was composed in the 1990s and only recently rediscovered, Keilson brings back a bygone era in snapshots from a life spanning one hundred years. The external stations of this life — his youth in Brandenburg, his student years and the fast life in Berlin, his exile in Holland, his survival in hiding, and the loss of his parents — are framed by economic crisis, anti-Semitism, and war, but also by friendship, music, and hope. Hans Keilson reveals these themes in gentle, quizzical reflections and fragments, producing an unforgettable portrait of his time.

The memoir is followed by a beguiling conversation about Keilson’s one hundred years of living and writing. It provides an incomparable insight into the man whom The New York Times recently hailed as ‘one of the world’s very greatest writers’.

The Power of Seven Frameworks: the key to business success

2012-01-25T00:00:00Z

Truly great businesspeople become leaders in their industry because of the quality of their ideas. In The Power of Seven Frameworks, bestselling business writer Kazuyo Katsuma synthesises the strategies of the world’s top business thinkers, distilling them into techniques to help you to hone your problem-solving ability and consistently produce exceptional ideas. Katsuma shows how learning to use the power of frameworks will release your creative potential and turn it into successful business practice.

The seven frameworks will help you to:

• interpret information quickly and make fast, effective decisions

• make accurate forecasts about a new business or venture

• communicate effectively with words, diagrams, and images

• understand statistics and use them to your advantage

• turn chance and coincidence into opportunities

As Katsuma demonstrates, the seven frameworks are the keys to achieving success, acquiring inspiration, and finding a healthy balance between work and life.

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner The Twin to be made into a film

2012-01-10T11:40:18Z

Next month filming will begin in Holland for a feature based on Gerbrand Bakker's novel The Twin. Bakker's book received international critical acclaim and won the world's most valuable literary prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, in 2010. Adapted for the screen and directed by Nanouk Leopold, the film will be distributed by Cinéart and is expected to appear in cinemas in February 2013.

Bakker's latest book, The Detour, will be published in Australia and New Zealand by Scribe in March this year.

Amy Espeseth wins the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize

2012-01-09T15:19:47Z

Scribe Publications is thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize for writers 35 and over is Amy Espeseth for ‘Trouble Telling the Weather’. Amy wins $15,000 and a book contract with Scribe. Amy Espeseth’s ‘Trouble Telling the Weather’ is a novel-in-stories that unfolds through the viewpoints of five characters who live in Siren, Wisconsin, and share a difficult past.

The judges were Blanche Clark (Books Editor, Herald Sun), Jon Page (CEO, Pages & Pages Bookstore, and President of the ABA) and Aviva Tuffield (Associate Publisher, Fiction, Scribe). Jon Page praised ‘Trouble Telling the Weather’ as ‘an accomplished and absorbing story that follows a cast of interconnected characters with skill and empathy’.

Blanche Clark said: ‘An assured tone and vivid descriptions bring to life the bleakness and beauty of Siren, Wisconsin, the setting for a poignant tale that compassionately, but unflinchingly, traverses the lives of five characters struggling with racial, economic and social disparity.’

Aviva Tuffield added: ‘Amy Espeseth is such a talented and assured writer, and the links between these stories make “Trouble Telling the Weather” much more than the sum of its parts. I’m very excited that Scribe will be publishing it.’

The other two shortlisted manuscripts in this year’s prize were ‘Manly’ by Andrew Lindsay and ‘The Reflection’ by Hugo Wilcken. We received 175 manuscripts in total from writers ranging in age from 35 to 85.

About Amy Espeseth
Amy Espeseth was born in rural Wisconsin and immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s. Her fiction has appeared in various journals including Wet Ink, antithesis, and The Death Mook. She was awarded the Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer in the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She is also the recipient of yhe Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature and the QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize.

Passionate Marriage: keeping love and intimacy alive in committed relationships: New edition

2012-01-03T00:00:00Z

The greatest sexual pleasure and emotional fulfilment in a person’s lifetime is possible in the middle and later years, when he or she has developed a mature sense of self and found genuine intimacy with another person. That’s the exciting message of this daring and pioneering work, which challenges couples to work together on the sexual and emotional blocks that hold them back from total satisfaction with each other.

As you open the pages of this book, you’ll meet couples who share the same predicaments and obstacles as you and your partner. With humour, compassion, and unusual candour, Dr Schnarch and the couples address the intimate secrets of their marriage, revealing ideas and techniques that are directly applicable to your own relationship.

With a new preface by the author for this updated edition, Passionate Marriage is a respectful, erotic, uplifting, and spiritual guide dedicated to making love and intimacy a reality for every couple. It’s a book to read and reread often for inspiration and enlightenment.

Making Your Home Sustainable: a guide to retrofitting: revised edition

2012-01-03T00:00:00Z

In 1991, architect and solar consultant Derek Wrigley moved into a townhouse in Canberra and faced a new design challenge how to retrofit an existing suburban house to use renewable energies rather than fossil fuels. Convinced that building design could do more to achieve sustainability, he developed a series of innovative devices to improve the energy efficiency of the house, and modified the existing design to work harmoniously with the local climate.

The house now generates its own solar electricity, ventilates and cools itself without cost or pollution, and treats its own grey water for irrigating the garden. It quickly attracted visitors who were keen to learn how to apply these sustainable designs to their own homes and wanted to know where to begin.

Making Your Home Sustainable is a practical and easy-to-follow guide for homeowners, builders and architects who are concerned about the effects of climate change and environmental degradation and want to do something about reversing the trend. Derek Wrigley shows how simple modifications to existing homes can help to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and utilise natural rather than imported energies and resources. He clearly explains how to:

Identify retrofitting potential when buying a home; Rationalise energy and water consumption; Provide sunshine in southern rooms, warmth in winter, and cool air in summer; Use ventilation and insulation to reduce the need for artificial heating or cooling; Install a solar hot-water system; Utilise wasted sunlight to heat and illuminate your home; Create a beautiful landscape which also contributes to your household energy efficiency; and *Install reflectors, sunshades, water recycling, heliostats, double-glazing, photovoltaics, water tanks, and other energy-saving and water-saving devices.

With detailed descriptions, 46 photographs, and over 100 diagrams, Making Your Home Sustainable is the retrofitter's bible an ideal, practical guide for anyone who wants to make their home more comfortable and save money on energy bills while increasing the value of their house and addressing the causes of global warming.

Good Health in the 21st Century: a family doctor's unconventional guide: New edition

2012-01-03T00:00:00Z

Western nations are worried about the problems of an ageing population. But if we take into account the health trends in younger generations we arrive at a frightening prediction: for the first time in history, we have produced a generation which may not outlive its parents.

Like a growing number of doctors throughout the developed world, general practitioner Carole Hungerford became concerned about these trends, and began to question a health industry based on a model of 'curing disease'.

The result is Good Health in the 21st Century, an encyclopaedic health guide that provides an extraordinary amount of easily understood information and a radically different way of maintaining well-being. Rejecting the routine cocktails of medication, with their complicated interactions and side effects, Dr Hungerford shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins, and essential fatty acids to do their health-giving work.

The subjects covered in Good Health in the 21st Century include asthma, arthritis, cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, mental health and neurological disorders; hormone-replacement therapy and vaccination; and macronutrients and minerals, vitamins, and essential fatty acids.

This monumental work will be used by parents, patients, and doctors for years to come.

Your Medical Choices: how to decide what is right for you

2012-01-03T00:00:00Z

The essential tools for making the best medical decisions, cutting through the confusion caused by the health-care system, the media, and gaps in our own reasoning

Making the right medical choices is harder than ever. Whether we’re deciding to take a cholesterol drug or choosing a cancer treatment, we are overwhelmed by information from all sides: doctors’ recommendations, dissenting expert opinions, confusing statistics, the advice of friends, and claims on the internet.

Your Medical Choices shows us how to chart a clear path through this sea of confusion. Drawing on scores of patient case studies, as well as insights from psychologists, economists, and other experts, Drs Groopman and Hartzband help us to better assess the impact of our decisions. They reveal how our personal beliefs profoundly influence our choices, and expose the external factors — such as misleading narratives or statistics — that can lead our thinking astray.

When conflicting information pulls us back and forth between options, when we feel pressured by doctors or loved ones to make a particular choice, or when we have no previous experience to guide us through a crisis, Your Medical Choices will prove an essential companion.

Summer Shorts

2011-12-16T00:00:00Z

Summer Shorts boasts stories from six of Australia’s finest writers, showcasing emerging talents alongside established names. There’s whimsical humour, drama, and even a thought-provoking vision of the future.

Whether you’re at the beach, on the train, or just lounging at home on a lazy afternoon, this lively story collection is the perfect e-read this summer.

Authors in this collection: Jon Bauer, Peggy Frew, Melanie Joosten, Cate Kennedy, Meg Mundell, Chris Womersley.

Best Australian Political Cartoons 2011 is almost sold out ... but we have a solution

2011-12-09T11:45:36Z

Due to unprecedented demand, we have sold out of Best Australian Political Cartoons 2011. We can't get a reprint in time, so whatever copies are still in bookshops is all that’s left of the print edition.

But we do have a digital alternative. If you’ve already given it as a gift, you can now indulge yourself by downloading it in glorious colour, exclusively on Apple devices — iPhone, iPad, or iPod — at the bargain price of $19.99.

Modigliani: a life

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

'People like us ... have different rights, different values than do ordinary people because we have different needs which put us ... above their moral standards.' — Modigliani

Amedeo ('Beloved of God') Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s, as well as the new approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso.

Jean Cocteau called Modigliani 'our aristocrat' and said, 'There was something like a curse on this very noble boy. He was beautiful. Alcohol and misfortune took their toll on him.'

In this major new biography, Meryle Secrest, one of our most admired biographers — whose work has been called 'enthralling' (The Wall Street Journal); 'rich in detail, scrupulously researched, and sympathetically written' (The New York Review of Books) — now gives us a fully realised portrait of one of the twentieth century’s master painters and sculptors: his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks ('How beautiful he was, my god how beautiful,' said one of his models) ... his training as an artist ... and his influences, including the Italian Renaissance, particularly the art of Botticelli; Nietzsche’s theories of the artist as Übermensch, divinely endowed, divinely inspired; the monochromatic backgrounds of van Gogh and Cézanne; the work of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi; and the sculptures of Africa and Oceania with their simplified, masklike triangular faces, elongated silhouettes, puckered lips, low foreheads, and heads on exaggeratedly long necks.

We see the ways in which Modigliani’s long-kept-secret illness from tuberculosis (it almost killed him as a young man) affected his work and his attitude toward life; how consumption caused him to embrace fatalism and idealism, creativity and death; and how he used alcohol and opium with laudanum as an antispasmodic to hide the symptoms of the disease and how, because of it, he came to be seen as a dissolute alcoholic.

And throughout, we see the Paris that Modigliani lived in, a city in dynamic flux where art was still a noble cause, and how Modigliani became part of a life in the streets and a world of art and artists then in a transforming revolution; Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, et al. — and others more radical — Matisse, Derain, etc., all living within blocks of one another.

Secrest’s book, written with unprecedented access to letters, diaries, and photographs, is an extraordinary revelation of a life lived in art ... Here is Modigliani, the man and the artist, seemingly shy, delicate, a man on a desperate mission, masquerading as an alcoholic, cheating death again and again, and calculating what he had to do in order to go on working and concealing his secret for however much time remained ...

Rocks in the Belly: a novel: New edition

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

How far can you push a child?

Rocks in the Belly follows a precocious eight-year-old boy and the volatile adult he becomes. During childhood his mother fosters boys despite the jealous turmoil it arouses in her son. Jealousy that reaches unmanageable proportions when she fosters Robert, and triggers an event that profoundly changes everyone. Especially Robert.

At twenty-eight the son returns to face his mother. He hasn’t forgiven her for what happened. But now she’s the dependent one and he the dominant force — a power he can’t help but abuse.

The Low Road: New edition

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

A young petty criminal, Lee, wakes in a seedy motel to find a bullet in his side and a suitcase of stolen money next to him, with only the haziest memory of exactly how he got there. Soon he meets Wild, a morphine-addicted doctor who is escaping his own disastrous life. The two men form an unwilling, unlikely alliance and set out for the safety of a country estate owned by a former colleague of Wild’s named Sherman.

As they flee the city, they develop an uneasy intimacy, inevitably revisiting their pasts even as they desperately seek to evade them. Lee is haunted by a brief stint in jail, while Wild is on the run from the legacy of medical malpractice. But Lee and Wild are not alone: they are pursued through an increasingly alien and gothic landscape by the ageing gangster Josef, who must retrieve the stolen money and deal with Lee to ensure his own survival. By the time Josef finally catches up to them, all three men have been forced to confront the parts of themselves they sought to outrun.

Part classic film-noir crime-thriller, part modern tale of despair and desperation, The Low Road seduces the reader into a story that unfolds and deepens hypnotically. This is a brilliant debut novel.

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: the best of Joe Bageant

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

‘Essentially, it comes down to the fact that a very large portion of Americans are crazier than shithouse rats and are being led by a gang of pathological misfits, most of whom are preachers and politicians.’

In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and started submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites.

Joe’s essays soon gained a wide following for his forceful style, his sense of humour, and his willingness to discuss the American white underclass — a taboo topic for the mainstream media. Joe called himself a ‘redneck socialist’, and he initially thought most of his readers would be very much like himself. So he was pleasantly surprised when the emails started filling his inbox. There were indeed many letters from men about Joe’s age who had escaped rural poverty. But there were also emails from younger men and women readers, from affluent people who agreed that the political and economic system needed an overhaul, from readers in dozens of countries expressing thanks for an alternative view of American life, and from working-class Americans in all parts of the country.

Joe Bageant died in March 2011, having published 89 essays online. The 25 essays presented in Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball have been selected by Ken Smith, who managed Joe’s website and disseminated his work to the wider media and to Joe’s dedicated fans and followers.

Who Repo'd My Jet?: the manic millionaires and why they’ll lead us to the next boom and bust

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

Through intimate portraits of people who are named and on the record, Who Repo’d My Jet? chronicles the decline of the newly moneyed class: their mortgaged mansions, blown-up balance sheets, repossessed Bentleys and Gulfstreams, and wrecked lives and relationships.

But who cares about the sudden discomfort of the rich amidst so much real mass hardship? Aside from eliciting pure schadenfreude, this engrossing book explains the deeper economic shocks that come from such precipitous losses at the top. The wealthy dominated the consumer economy at the beginning of the millennium, and their fall is likely to prolong any downturn. Their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts of the stock market wreaks havoc on our communities, employment opportunities, and government finances.

With vivid storytelling and insightful analysis, Robert Frank illuminates the impact that the ‘high-beta rich’ have had upon the broader landscape of the global economy. In a time when cycles of wealth are getting faster and more extreme, Who Repo’d My Jet? is a cautionary tale with lessons for every reader.

Parlour Games for Modern Families: New edition

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

Winner of the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)

Parlour Games for Modern Families sets out to revive the tradition of indoor family games: push aside the consoles, turn off the telly, and bring some mental stimulation, silliness and laughter, joy and connection back into your living room.

This book is bursting with games of logic and memory, wordplay, card games, role-play, and rough and tumble. Not a single game requires equipment that you won’t find in your average home: a pack of cards, a dictionary, an hourglass, dice, paper and pen.

Games are organised thematically and referenced for age appropriateness. All are set out with clear rules and instructions. There are games that will challenge and stimulate you, and games that will have you in fits; games that can last all night, and games to fill that empty half-hour before tea; games for adults and older children, and games for your four-year-old’s birthday party.

Parlour Games for Modern Families, a book for fun-lovers aged four to 104, winds back the clock to remind you of games you’d forgotten and then a whole lot more. Whether you dip into it as the urge takes you or read it from cover to cover, a very good time is guaranteed.

The Existential Jesus: New edition

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

Jesus is the man who made the West. What kind of man was he? Is he relevant to a modern world shaken by crises of meaning?

The churches have mainly projected him as Jesus the carer and comforter, Jesus meek and mild, friend of the weak. This is Jesus the Good Shepherd, who preaches on sin and forgiveness. He is Lord and Saviour.

But this church Jesus is not remotely like the existential hero portrayed in the first and most potent telling of his life-story — that of Mark. Mark's Jesus is a lonely and restless, mysterious stranger. His mission is dark and obscure. Everything he tries fails. By the end there is no God, no loyal followers — just torture by crucifixion, climaxing in a colossal death-scream. The story closes without a resurrection from the dead. There is just an empty tomb, and three women fleeing in terror.

The existential Jesus speaks today. He does not spout doctrine; he has no interest in sin; his focus is not on some after-life. He gestures enigmatically from within his own gruelling experience, inviting the reader to walk in his shoes.

He singles out everybody's central question: 'Who am I?' The truth lies within individual identity, resounding in the depths of the inner self. The existential Jesus is the West's great teacher on the nature of being.

This book tells his story, and reveals what he had to say.