American Journeys by Don Watson

$38.00 NZD

Category: Non-fiction

A superb book about Don Watson's journeys around America. Featured as one of Newsweek's 50 'What to Read Now and Why' titles.Only in America - the most powerful democracy on earth, home to the best and worst of everything - are the most extreme contradictions possible. In a series of journeys acclaimed A superb book about Don Watson's journeys around America. Featured as one of Newsweek's 50 'What to Read Now and Why' titles.Only in America - the most powerful democracy on earth, home to the best and worst of everything - are the most extreme contradictions possible. In a series of journeys acclaimed author Don Watson set out to explore the nation that has influenced him more than any other.Travelling by rail gave Watson a unique and seductive means of peering into the United States, a way to experience life with its citizens- long days with the American landscape and American towns and American history unfolding on the outside, while inside a tiny particle of the American people talked among themselves.Watson's experiences are profoundly affecting- he witnesses the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; explores the savage history of the Deep South, the heartland of the Civil War; and journeys to the remarkable wilderness of Yellowstone National Park.Yet it is through the people he meets that Watson discovers the incomparable genius of America, its optimism, sophistication and riches - and also its darker side, its disavowal of failure and uncertainty.Beautifully written, with gentle power and sly humour, American Journeysinvestigates the meaning of the United States- its confidence, its religion, its heroes, its violence, and its material obsessions. The things that make America great are also its greatest flaws. ...Show more

Bendable Learnings: The Wisdom of Modern Management by Don Watson

$29.99 NZD

Category: Business

Mission statements are everywhere: you have to have one, whether you're a Fortune 500 company, a hedge fund, a primary school, a church or a hockey club. Without a mission statement, who would know what your values are, or what your culture is? And how then, going forward, will you get buy-in on your st Mission statements are everywhere: you have to have one, whether you're a Fortune 500 company, a hedge fund, a primary school, a church or a hockey club. Without a mission statement, who would know what your values are, or what your culture is? And how then, going forward, will you get buy-in on your strategy and uptake of your brand? The language of modern management has triumphed, transforming clear, everyday communication into meaningless sludge. To sound professional, you must express everything in abstract nouns, and each noun in terms of another one; you must talk about synergy and strategy, uptake and outcomes and outputs and inputs, key performance indicators and drivers and customer experience - even if your 'customers' are in fact patients in your hospital. This language is deliberately obscure and falsely scientific; what is more worrying, those who use it have lost the very ability to think clearly. From Don Watson comes this new assortment of noxious management drivel and financial market blather. Read them aloud - then try the exercises. The disease may not yet have run its course, but Watson's acerbic wit restores hope in the power of well-chosen words to entertain and to inspire. ...Show more

Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language by Don Watson

$28.00 NZD

Category: Fiction

Part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, Don Watson's Death Sentenceis scathing, funny and brilliant.' ... in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politic Part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, Don Watson's Death Sentenceis scathing, funny and brilliant.' ... in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.'Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politicians - speak to each other and to us in cliched, impenetrable, lifeless sludge.Don Watson can bear it no longer. In Death Sentence, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words - and their users - who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentenceis a small book of profound weight - and timeliness. ...Show more

On Indignation (On Series) by Don Watson

$19.99 NZD

Category: Cultural Studies | Series: On Ser.

Corrosive, mad and frequently fatal, indignation is a great destructive force in human affairs, and just as often a wellspring of mirth and merriment. Don Watson traces this seemingly ineradicable emotion in a journey that takes us, via his forebears, Flaubert and The Sopranos, from the Old Testament to Corrosive, mad and frequently fatal, indignation is a great destructive force in human affairs, and just as often a wellspring of mirth and merriment. Don Watson traces this seemingly ineradicable emotion in a journey that takes us, via his forebears, Flaubert and The Sopranos, from the Old Testament to Donald Trump.Trump's pitch had less to do with offering voters money and security than with offering them vengeance. He exploited the anger we feel when we are slighted or taken for granted, turning the politics of a sophisticated democracy into something more like a blood feud. He promised to restore dignity, slay enemies, re-make the world according to old rites and customs. He stirred indignation into tribal rage and rode it into the White House.It was a scam, of course, but wherever there is indignation, stupidity and lies abound. ...Show more

The Bush by Don Watson

$24.99 NZD

$30.00 (16% off)

Category: No Category

While most of us live in cities clinging to the coastal fringe, our sense of what an Australian is, or should be, is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us? Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a livi While most of us live in cities clinging to the coastal fringe, our sense of what an Australian is, or should be, is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us? Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a living from the land, Don Watson explores the bush as it was and as it now is- the triumphs and the ruination, the commonplace and the bizarre, the stories we like to tell about ourselves and the national character, and those we don't. A milestone work of memoir, travel writing and history, The Bushtakes us on a profoundly revelatory and entertaining journey through the Australian landscape and character. ...Show more

The Bush - Travels in the Heart of Australia by Don Watson

$45.00 NZD

$55.00 (18% off)

Category: Abbatiae | Reading Level: very good

Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is - or should be - is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us? Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is - or should be - is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us? Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a living from the land, Don Watson explores the bush as it was and as it now is: the triumphs and the ruination, the commonplace and the bizarre, the stories we like to tell about ourselves and the national character, and those we don't. Via mountain ash and mallee, the birds and the beasts, slaughter, fire, flood and drought, swagmen, sheep and their shepherds, the strange and the familiar, the tragedies and the follies, the crimes and the myths and the hope - here is a journey that only our leading writer of non-fiction could take us on. At once magisterial in scope and alive with telling, wry detail, The Bush lets us see our landscape and its inhabitants afresh, examining what we have made, what we have destroyed, and what we have become in the process. No one who reads it will look at this country the same way again. 'Nothing he has written quite matches the wonders of The Bush ...There is no dull page or even lifeless sentence between its covers and my urge is that if anyone wants a full blast of what Australia is, was, or might be, thrust The Bush into their hands. Watson seems to have been preparing to write it all his life, from when he was a small boy (born 1949) open to wonders on his family's Gippsland dairy farm ...It's the unalloyed wonder of that small boy ...that guides the reader most of all ...a fountaining freshness of spirit that gives everything he sees and does the vivacity of being sighted for the first time.' Roger McDonald, The Age 'Flawlessly elegant writing ...But this is excellent, hard-headed history, too ...Utterly mesmerising and entrancing ...A challenge to contemplate what it really is about this country that makes us who we think we are ...A literary-historical odyssey.' Paul Daley, The Guardian (Australia) 'A loving rumination on Australia, the landmass, and those who live on it and from it ...Watson refuses to be captured by easy categorisations or received opinion ...The writing is crisp, witty and sardonic ...Watson is an original, with an authentic, prophetic voice. ' John Hirst, The Monthly 'An overwhelmingly affectionate portrait, one that's never sentimental or indulgently nostalgic, and one that defiantly resists lamentation ...There is no doubt that The Bush stands with Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth as one of the most important books published on the history of this country in recent years ...The Bush is the crown in Watson's oeuvre, a magnificent, sprawling ode to the best in Australia, a challenge to us all to find new ways of loving the country.' The Saturday Paper 'Don Watson's magnificent, celebratory, contradictory study of the Australian bush will challenge the national imagination ...An amiable, learned, playful and engrossing book ...[A] great, succulent magic pudding of a book ...Most of what we read is nothing like we would have expected ...There is a sense that an amiable and eloquent uncle is telling us everything piquant he knows about theology and culture and land use and the beasts and flora and families of the bush.' Thomas Keneally, Weekend Australian 'The power of this book does come from the way Watson positions himself as both an insider and outsider to the Australian bush ...A meditation on Australia itself through a reflection on the bush. ' Frank Bongiorno, Australian Book Review 'Elegant, intricate, sprawl ...Show more

The Passion of Private White by Don Watson

$40.00 NZD

Category: No Category

From the bestselling author of The Bush, the highly acclaimed story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and an isolated clan in north-east Arnhem Land – a unique window into Australia’s deep past and precarious present, by one of our master storytellers. ‘How to sum up this story? It’ From the bestselling author of The Bush, the highly acclaimed story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and an isolated clan in north-east Arnhem Land – a unique window into Australia’s deep past and precarious present, by one of our master storytellers. ‘How to sum up this story? It’s uncontainable. It wrangles worlds. It keeps getting wider and deeper like a stone in a pond. At its heart – an extraordinary telling of an extraordinary friendship.’ Paul Kelly Now in trade paperback, one of Australia’s favourite writers on ‘questions at the heart of Australian history, politics and identity’ (ABR). Fascinating, funny, challenging and beautifully written – ‘a truly remarkable achievement’ (Peter Carey). The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: that of the intensely driven anthropologist Neville White, and the world of hunter-gatherer clans in remote northern Australia with whom he has lived and worked for half a century, mapping their culture and history in breathtaking detail. As White began to understand this ancient culture struggling between the demands of Western modernity and the equally pressing need to preserve their lands, customs, laws and language, he was also trying to transcend the mental scars inflicted on the battlefields of Vietnam. Eventually, scholarly observer crossed the line into activist, advocate and defender of the clans’ effort to create a safe and healthy homeland, a seat both of traditional culture and contemporary skills and education. The enterprise meant overcoming everything from insatiable mining companies and official incompetence and neglect, to customs that were fundamental in the old way of life but dysfunctional in the transition to the new. When White began taking his old platoon mates to the homeland, two wildly different groups found in each other some of the solutions and some of the therapy they both needed. Don Watson has had his own fifty-year relationship with Neville White, since meeting him as an undergraduate in Melbourne. This book is the result: moving, enlightening, devastating and inspiring, it is a towering achievement, a profound insight into both our recent and our deep history, the coloniser and colonised – indeed into the human condition itself. 'A truly magnificent achievement' – Peter Carey ‘Remarkable, wholly unexpected and original … [by] one of Australia’s finest writers. It sounds like a lugubrious farce and sometimes it reads that way. But it is a deeply serious enquiry into questions at the heart of Australian history, politics and identity. – Tom Griffiths, Australian Book Review ‘This is the tale of two tribes – one ancient, one modern, both wounded and alienated – and how they came together. It is not, thankfully, a white saviour story: in many ways, it’s Donydji who saves the vets. But it’s also a tale far messier and more interesting than that … about tenacity, commitment, listening – and humanity itself.’ – Linda Jaivin, The Saturday Paper 'A witty and compassionate book about friendship, Indigenous self-determination and people under stress.' – The Conversation ...Show more

Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Cliches, Cant & Management Jargon by Don Watson

$37.99 NZD

Category: Languages & Reference | Reading Level: very good

At last, the longed-for and much-requested companion volume to DEATH SENTENCE, Don Watson

Worst Words: A Compendium for Our Times by Don Watson; Helen Smith (Contribution by)

$37.00 NZD

Category: Non-fiction

Dr Don Watson - with his trademark wit and wisdom - says enough already! The English language is complex and evolving, and can win minds, hearts and nations. Why don't we try using it?Depending where you are on the change continuum, a quick pulse check will be in order and a scan of the forthcoming weat Dr Don Watson - with his trademark wit and wisdom - says enough already! The English language is complex and evolving, and can win minds, hearts and nations. Why don't we try using it?Depending where you are on the change continuum, a quick pulse check will be in order and a scan of the forthcoming weather events before you move forward with your shark mitigation strategies.Were any animals were harmed in the above statement?The level of customer-centric vigilance remains below acceptable benchmarks and weasel words continue to fill our mailboxes, inboxes, ears and minds. Don Watson will make you cringe with recognition, and perhaps shame, and encourage you to rise up against this language that is obliterating all song, meaning and beauty from communication. ...Show more