It is time to reassess the work of Geoffrey Blainey, and consider his role in Australian history, politics and public life. Geoffrey Blainey has steered Australian history into the nation's conversation. No one would dispute that he is a courageous public intellectual, a writer of rare grace and a master storyteller. And he has indeed provoked a rare fuss, both public and professional, with some of his comments on Asian immigration and Aboriginal land rights. Blainey has challenged the academic history profession, not only with his ideas but also by his practice. A brilliant student, he looked set for Oxford but chose instead the austere west coast of Tasmania for his postgraduate research. For the next decade he earned a living with his pen. And instead of political history in the traditional academic mould, he wrote corporate histories that dispensed with footnotes. Always probing and speculative, Blainey has dislodged many of the keystones in our understandings of Australia's past. He was one of the first to write about the expansive social history of this land before 1788; he questioned whether Botany Bay was founded primarily as a convict colony; he argued that the Eureka uprising had economic rather than political causes; and he identified sport as a neglected key to the Australian character. His controversial views earned such newspaper headlines as 'Brave Man Set Upon by Thugs for Telling Truth'. In The Fuss That Never Ended a lively and distinguished assembly of fellow historiansandmdash;of various ages, interests and political stancesandmdash;take a fresh look at Blainey's remarkable and sometimes controversial career.

It followed every major military victory in ancient Rome: the successful general drove through the streets to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill; behind him streamed his raucous soldiers; in front were his most glamorous prisoners, as well as the booty he’d captured, from enemy ships and precious statues to plants and animals from the conquered territory. Occasionally there was so much on display that the show lasted two or three days. A radical reexamination of this most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman triumph, but also its darker side. What did it mean when the axle broke under Julius Caesar’s chariot? Or when Pompey’s elephants got stuck trying to squeeze through an arch? Or when exotic or pathetic prisoners stole the general’s show? And what are the implications of the Roman triumph, as a celebration of imperialism and military might, for questions about military power and “victory” in our own day? The triumph, Mary Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory. Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture—and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since. But how can we re-create the ceremony as it was celebrated in Rome? How can we piece together its elusive traces in art and literature? Beard addresses these questions, opening a window on the intriguing process of sifting through and making sense of what constitutes “history.”

Imperial Triumph presents the history of Rome at the height of its imperial power. Beginning with the reign of Hadrian in Rome and ending with the death of Julian the Apostate on campaign in Persia, it offers an intimate account of the twists and often deadly turns of imperial politics in which successive emperors rose and fell with sometimes bewildering rapidity. Yet, despite this volatility, the Romans were able to see off successive attacks by Parthians, Germans, Persians and Goths and to extend and entrench their position as masters of Europe and the Mediterranean. This books shows how they managed to do it. Professor Michael Kulikowski describes the empire's cultural integration in the second century, the political crises of the third when Rome's Mediterranean world became subject to the larger forces of Eurasian history, and the remaking of Roman imperial institutions in the fourth century under Constantine and his son Constantius II. The Constantinian revolution, Professor Kulikowski argues, was the pivot on which imperial fortunes turned - and the beginning of the parting of ways between the eastern and western empires. This sweeping account of one of the world's greatest empires at its magnificent peak is incisive, authoritative and utterly gripping.

Jason Wander is ready to lead the final charge into battle. After forty years of fighting the Slugs, mankind's reunited planets control the vital crossroad that secures their uneasy union. The doomsday weapon that can end the war, and the mighty fleet that will carry it to the Slug homeworld, lie within humanity's grasp. Since the Slug Blitz orphaned Jason Wander, he has risen from infantry recruit to commander of Earth's garrisons on the emerging allied planets. But four decades of service have cost Jason not just his friends and family, but his innocence. When an enemy counter stroke threatens to reverse the war and destroy mankind, Jason must finally confront not only his lifelong alien enemy, but the reality of what a lifetime as a soldier has made him.

Down in the continent of Loh many expeditions have ventured below the City of Eternal Twilight into the Realm of the Drums in search of one of the rubies of the Skantiklar. A Wizard of Loh, Na-Si-Fantong, is collecting the rubies, and it is believed he wants them for no good purpose. He has succeeded in obtaining a ruby and vanishes into the maze of tunnels under the city. Not really convinced of the importance of the Skantiklar, Prescot has to go in pursuit. Alone, he threads his way through the labyrinth, already feeling he will never catch Na-Si-Fantong... This edition includes a glossary to the Lohvian cycle. Scorpio Triumph is the forty-third book in the epic fifty-two book saga of Dray Prescot of Earth and of Kregen by Kenneth Bulmer, writing as Alan Burt Akers. The series continues with Intrigue of Antares.

Michael Kulikowski takes readers into the political heart of imperial Rome, beginning with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created stable frontiers, to the decades after Constantine the Great, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome.