Authors & editors

ANU Press has collaborated with a diverse range of authors and editors across a wide variety of academic disciplines. Browse the ANU Press collection by author or editor.

Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 1 »

Publication date: 1977
Since 1977, the journal Aboriginal History has pioneered interdisciplinary historical studies of Australian Aboriginal people’s and Torres Strait Islander’s interactions with non-Indigenous peoples. It has promoted publication of Indigenous oral traditions, biographies, languages, archival and bibliographic guides, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, critiques of current events, and research and reviews in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, linguistics, demography, law, geography and cultural, political and economic history. Aboriginal History Inc. is a publishing organisation based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra. For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Reforming Australian government: the Coombs report and beyond »

Publication date: 1977
This book makes it possible for those who need to know and think about the issues raised by the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration to do so without having to read all the Commission's formidable documentation. It also includes the full text of the Commission's own summary of its findings and recommendations - here published for the first time.

Rambles around Canberra: an illustrated collection of short interesting walks in the Canberra region »

Publication date: 1977
Here are details, carefully mapped and described, of seventeen walks in the Canberra area. The walks are stimulating but not strenuous. Most have been chosen with the family group in mind and are deliberately in the easy category. As well as a clear description of the route the reader's attention is drawn to interesting physical features and to details of the flora and fauna likely to be encountered. The text is illustrated with appropriate photographs and botanical drawings.

Factory waste potential in Sydney »

Publication date: 1977
Published Press Archives http://press.anu.edu.au/node/3785 1885_114838.jpg ANU Press Factory waste potential in Sydney Thursday, 18 August, 1977 Not available Archive Scholarly Information Services

Change and movement: readings on internal migration in Papua New Guinea »

Publication date: 1977
Large scale internal migration is comparatively recent in Papua New Guinea and the proportion of the population living in towns is small. Already, however, migration and urbanisation pose serious problems for social and economic policy makers. This book brings together a number of important papers on internal migration in Papua New Guinea. The fifteen contributions, some reprints of major articles and others written especially for this volume, represent a significant part of the data at present available. The introduction surveys the Papua New Guinea literature on the subject and relates it to overseas studies. Not only will this collection be valuable to all concerned with the policy implications of internal migration and urbanisation in Papua New Guinea; it will be essential reading for anthropologists, demographers, economists and geographers interested in migration in developing countries.

State and local taxation »

Publication date: 1977
Though taxation is a subject of interest to everyone, and many books have been written on reform of the Australian Government's taxation system, State and local taxation is a relatively neglected field. This book attempts to fill the gap by extending the range of theoretical and empirical studies on State and local taxation and by presenting an analysis of major policy issues. The first part deals mainly with theoretical and conceptual questions. Part Two compares State and local taxation in Canada, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. Part Three contrasts them with the systems in Australia and surveys the most important individual State and local taxes. State and local taxation is regionally significant but it is also increasingly important in national economic and political events. The value of this book cannot, therefore, be over-stressed.

The Melanesian environment: [papers presented at and arising from the ninth Waigani Seminar, Port Moresby, 2-8 May 1975] »

Publication date: 1977
Expatriate and multinational businessmen and companies have, over the last hundred years, drastically changed the environments of some of the islands of Melanesia. In some, like Fiji and parts of New Caledonia, the changes have taken place over a long period of foreign exploitation. In others, like the island of New Guinea, large-scale forestry, mining, hydroelectric, agricultural and fishing projects are more recent. In both, poorly planned and insensitive {u2018}development{u2019} has destroyed or is threatening to destroy the people{u2019}s economic, spiritual and aesthetic relationship with the land and, indeed, the land itself. The seminar from which this book was born was held in Papua New Guinea in 1975, its year of independence. The only other independent nation in the Melanesian region is Fiji. While Fiji tends the wounds caused to its environment by foreign business, Papua New Guinea warily plans for an expanded economic base that does not jeopardise the subsistence base of the majority of the people. They and their Melanesian neighbours will avoid such destruction partly by heeding the experiences of one another and of other third world countries. This book records some of those experiences, ranging from situations in which the subsistence economy has been destroyed to make profit to take out of the country to others in which the people have successfully defended their subsistence way of life against such exploitation.

Tin roofs and palm trees: a report on the new South Seas »

Publication date: 1977
"From the eighteenth-century accounts of Captain James Cook to the writings of James A. Michener, enraptured descriptions of the Pacific islands have identified the term 'South Seas{u2019} with visions of a blissful life in perpetual summer on white beaches shaded by swaying palm trees. {u2026} Since the arrival of Western civilization, however, more of the virgin landscapes admired by Cook and later visitors have sprouted incongruous masonry hotels, and countless palms cast their shade on tin roofs in villages where metal was unknown in Cook{u2019}s time." Such are the changes encountered throughout Tin Roofs and Palm Trees, a portrait of the emerging island states and territories of the South Pacific painted by a journalist who has scrutinized the developments in this romantic yet increasingly troubled area for thirty-five years. Robert Trumbull joined the staff of The New York Times in 1941 as Honolulu correspondent and served throughout World War II as a war correspondent in the Central Pacific arena. In covering the South Pacific for the Times in later years, Trumbull visited all of the major islands, as well as several out-of-the-way spots rarely seen by travelers. Drawing upon this background, Trumbull tells the story of each major island group, tracing its history, describing its current problems and prospects for the future, in an anecdotal style highlighted with the many colorful and significant figures he has come to know personally over the years. Each chapter brings together elements which give that island population its individual identity. Yet as one reads these accounts - from Papua New Guinea through the Solomons, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue and the Tokelaus, the Samoas, Nauru, Gilbert and Ellice (now Tuvalu) Islands, to the Trust T erritory of the Pacific Islands - one discerns common traits that bind these diverse entities into an awareness of community. Perhaps most important today, the different cultures presented are all faced with the problems of modernization, of reconciling Western values with their traditional way of life; and even though the islands' generally thin economic bases preclude hope of immediate self-sufficiency, the peoples of the South Pacific are demanding more and more claim to their rightful place in the world. Tin Roofs and Palm Trees is anauthoritative and readable introduction to the South Seas today. From the strange cargo cults of New Guinea to the plight of tiny Nauru, whose terrain is daily being digested by phosphate-gobbling steamshovels, the story is alive, personal, and important.

Geomorphology of Papua New Guinea »

Publication date: 1977
Papua New Guinea's rugged terrain, dense rain forest, extensive swamps and adverse climatic conditions present formidable barriers to scientific exploration and field research. In spite of this remarkable progress has been made in the last two decades and scientists have filled many of the 'blank spaces' on the map and have greatly increased knowledge of the country. This book is the first major synthesis of our present knowledge of Papua New Guinea's land forms, their distribution, origin and development, the processes that acted on them - and are continuing to act. Such things as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, and subaerial and subsurface erosion processes, changing river systems and their role in the formation of plains can be better understood by those who read this book: those working in Papua New Guinea and directly concerned with its development and environment such as geologists, agriculturalists, engineers and conservationists, and scholars generally concerned with problems of the geomorphology of the humid tropics. Particularly valuable are the illustrations, which cover a wide range of land forms and illustrate vividly the often dramatic topography.

Australian economic development in the nineteenth century »

Publication date: 1977
The book is a comprehensive survey of nineteenth-century economic development in Australia. Lucidly written and with extensive illustrations, the text deals with fundamental aspects of development - population, export and the balance of payments, transport, urbanisation, manufacturing, money and banking - set against a broad outline of development to 1900 and with a valuable chapter on the role of government in the economy. Written by a practical teacher and designed for readers without formal training in economics or statistics, this book will be as valuable to general historians as it will be to students of economic history in schools or at university.

The Fiji Indians: challenge to European dominance 1920-1946 »

Publication date: 1977
Today the descendants of immigrants from India in Fiji outnumber the original Fijians. They are an integral and vital part of Fiji's multi-racial population. In this book, a sequel to the author's, Fiji's Indian Migrants, Dr Gillion deals with the very important period when there were strikes, boycotts and communal disputes as the Indian community sought dignity, identity and acceptance in its new home.

China and the world »

Publication date: 1977
Dr Stephen FitzGerald is Professorial Fellow in Modern Chinese History, Head of the Department of Far Eastern History and Head of the Contemporary China Centre in The Australian National University. He was formerly a member of the (then) External Affairs Department from which he resigned to enter academic life. In 1971 he accompanied the then-Leader of the Opposition, E. G. Whitlam, to China and in 1973 he was appointed first Australian ambassador to the People's Republic of China. During his tour of duty from 1973 to 1976 he established Australia's first embassy in China and has served under both Labor and Liberal ministries. Dr FitzGerald's knowledge of China and Chinese has greatly enhanced Chinese-Australian understanding. This book achieves a difficult feat of interpretation: to explain, from the Chinese point of view as its author understands it, China's approach to the world outside its own boundaries and the difficulties most western governments experience in coming to terms with China. Against the background of past and contemporary Chinese history Dr FitzGerald builds an analysis of present-day China's approach to other countries of the world: the United States and the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia. He believes there is a stability and a subtle and continuing theme unbroken even by the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the overthrow of the 'Gang of Four'. This book - which embodies the revised ANU Convocation Lectures for 1977, given throughout Australia and broadcast by the ABC, and the 1977 Arthur Yencken Memorial Lectures - is unusually wide in the interest it will attract from 'China Watchers', academics, diplomats, businessmen, students of history and inter national relations; above all, from those concerned to know and understand China. A transcript of the questions and answers at the lectures is available from Secretary, Contemporary China Centre, Australian National University, Canberra.

Humid landforms »

Publication date: 1977
Landscapes which contain moving water are perhaps the most sccnically attractive, and to a geomorphologist have long been a central focus for landform studies. Humid Landformsexamines from a novel angle the effects of running water on the landscape, emphasising the processes changing valleys and rivers. The author takes the humid tropics as the most characteristic case of landform evolution through water erosion and deposition and treats humid temperate lands, previously accepted as the 'normal' pattern of landform evolution, as a variation of the situation in the humid tropics. The book emphasises the basic principles of chemical, physical and biotic interrelationships which affect the pattern of landform evolution and provides the reader with a greater understanding of the changes, sometimes dramatic, that moving water makes to the surrounding countryside.

Tropical shrubs »

Publication date: 1977
Hawaii is the home of one of the world{u2019}s greatest collections of tropical and subtropical plants. The Islands' benign and varied microclimates have accepted plants from many different places, ranging from humid jungle rain forests to arid deserts, and from seacoasts sprayed with salt to mountainsides of almost Andean heights. With the enormous variety of plants that have made Hawaii one great botanical garden, comes also a great curiosity and search for knowledge about them. Everywhere people ask, when they see a new one they like, "What plant is that?" "Where will it grow?" "How do I care for it?" The Hawai'i Garden is a series of books written to help the plant lover and amateur gardener identify, select, install, and care for the whole fascinating range of beautiful, interesting plants that are available in modern Hawaii and other mild-climate areas. Magnificent color photographs, each a work of art in interpreting the special qualities of the plant illustrated, will delight armchair gardeners and active gardeners alike. For anyone who appreciates the col orful plants associated with the tropics, these large-format volumes offer both visual enjoyment and a comprehensive practical guide. Tropical Shrubs is the first fully illustrated book on the subject to be published in the United States. The authors describe those shrubs under eighteen feet in height which they recommend for creative use as screen, accent, or border hedge. Unusual selections include Wheeler's dwarf pittosporum, Okinawan holly, dwarf geometry tree, bell flower from Dominica - 103 useful and decorative shrubs altogether. Each plant discussed is illustrated with a full-page color photograph by Rick Golt. The accompanying text gives a complete description of the plant, the origin of its name, its practical uses, required growing conditions, horticultural and landscape uses, propagation, insect and disease control, pruning, fertilizing, and significant disadvantages.

The diaries and correspondence of David Cargill, 1832-1843 »

Publication date: 1977
The diaries and correspondence of David Cargill, Wesleyan missionary in the Pacific, reveal the story of a tragic life. His greatest success came early in his life in the 1830s, when he achieved a mass conversion of thousands of Tongans. His story in Tonga was a happy one, for there he found satisfaction in the fellowship of his colleagues and his achievements as the only trained linguist at the mission. In 1835 he was transferred to Fiji as the first Wesleyan missionary. Here he found life increasingly bitter; four years of work on translations were wasted because the dialect he used was not appropriate as a lingua franca. He quarrelled with his colleagues. He was nauseated by horrifying scenes of widow-strangling, cannibalism and warfare. His beloved wife and one of his children died. Cargill returned to England, remarried, and went back to Tonga and to disappointment: many of his converts had reverted to their old ways. Now known by his colleagues as an alcoholic, sick, and depressed as the aftermath of dengue fever, he committed suicide. Cargill{u2019}s diaries and letters show in graphic detail the impact of two alien cultures on a sensitive man unable to come to grips with these two cultures, a man of high ideals who died a tragic failure.

Climates of hunger: mankind and the world's changing weather »

Publication date: 1977
Climate is changing. Parts of our world have been cooling. Rain belts and food-growing areas have shifted. People are starving. And we have been too slow to realize what is happening and why. In recent years, world climate changes have drawn more attention than at any other time in history. What we once called "crazy weather," just a few years ago, is now beginning to be seen as part of a logical and, in part, predictable pattern, an awesome natural force that we must deal with if man is to avoid disaster of unprecedented proportions. Along with drought in some places and floods in others, both caused by changing wind patterns, average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere have been falling. The old-fashioned winters our grandfathers spoke of might be returning. In England, the growing season has already been cut by as much as two weeks. The selection of food crop varieties in both North America and Europe is in for sharp reappraisal, in view of the shrinking frost-free agricultural season and other climatic changes. Climate has always had profound effects upon human history, helping both to build and to destroy great civilizations. Until now, we have not had the knowledge to react intelligently to the signs of shifting climate. Today, even though we remain essentially powerless to affect climate purposefully, we are ready to recognize the signs of change and we are somewhat better able to predict the effects of those changes. This book will help. Here, climatologist Reid A. Bryson and science writer Thomas J. Murray present a broad view of climatic change, examining the past in order to view the future. The prospects are not bright. Bryson, whom Fortune magazine called "the most outspoken perceiver of climatological danger signals" in the United States, says that world temperatures since the sixteenth century have been significantly cooler than those of the first half of the present century. Temperatures now seem to be falling, and many of the weather irregularities we have experienced in recent years are, in great part, an expression of this broad reversal. Unfortunately, we came to view the recent warm period as "normal," and based many of our institutions upon it. The world added a billion people to its population during that time, thanks in part to an unusually favorable agricultural climate. Now we must be able to adjust quickly to climatic changes or face the potentially tragic consequences of inaction. The climatic problems Bryson and Murray speak of are not in some vague geological future. They are upon us now, and we are not prepared. Climates o f Hunger is a book of paramount importance for our time. It will be essential reading not only for professionals in the field - including agricultural meteorologists, political scientists, geographers, sociologists, and business counselors - but for all who are concerned in any way with environmental trends, world and domestic food supplies, and their effects on human institutions.

Data base management systems: proceedings of the joint ANU/ACS one-day seminar held at the Computer Centre of the Australian National University, 17 November, 1976 »

Publication date: 1977
Proceedings of the joint ANU/ACS one-day seminar held at the Computer Centre of The Australian National University, 17th November, 1976.

The premiers' conference: an essay in federal state interaction »

Publication date: 1977
Published Press Archives http://press.anu.edu.au/node/3551 1885_115119.jpg ANU Press The premiers' conference: an essay in federal state interaction Thursday, 18 August, 1977 Not available Archive Scholarly Information Services Sharman, Campbell

An autobiography; or, Tales and legends of Canberra pioneers »

Publication date: 1977
In 1856, at the age of six, Samuel Shumack came to the Duntroon Estate in Canberra. He farmed in the district until 1915. Forced by injury to retire from active farming, Shumack, at the age of 59, began to record his memories of old Canberra. He was an acute and accurate observer. His stories move freely from one episode to the next. The text is enhanced by eight colour plates by artist Gray Smith. This fascinating book will be treasured by all who have an interest in Canberra's history. Chap. 11, 148-151.; Account of Aborigines in Canberra area, 1856 to 1900; Local Aborigines said to number about 70 in 1856; Mentions visit of 3-400 South Coast Aborigines in 1862 of 1863; Measles epidemic c. 1862; Depredations, etc

Sanuki no Suke nikki: a translation of The Emperor Horikawa diary »

Publication date: 1977
In Japan the Heian period (A.D. 794 to 1185) was characterised by a great volume of published works of literature written by women - an event brought about by the coincidence of the development of a Japanese script at a time when women were enjoying a freedom unparalleled till the present and when the country was at peace. One of the most popular forms adopted was the nikki, a diary form which women turned into a masterful combination of poetry and prose. Sanuki no Suke Nikki tells of the life of the court attendant Lady Sanuki during the reign of the young Emperor Horikawa, who died at the early age of 29, and subsequently of her life for a brief period serving his son, who became Emperor at the age of four. It is a moving story of Lady Sanuki's devotion to the Emperor, her faithful attendance him during his last illness and the grief of the whole court after his death. It tells in retrospect of Lady Sanuki{u2019}s many happy hours at court with Emperor Horikawa and of court ceremonies and festivals. This is the first English translation of an important work which provides insight into the court life of the period.

Grass huts and warehouses: Pacific beach communities of the nineteenth century »

Publication date: 1977
Pacific beach communities have long been thought of by the romantics as tropical paradises away from the cares of the everyday world. But were they? From the examination of the political, economic, and social developments o f five small port towns - Honolulu, Papeete, Kororareka, Levuka, and Apia - the picture that emerges falls short of paradise. Jealousies, petty quarrels, political manoeuverings, followed the early settlers to their island havens. This book examines the shifts in community power, the development of trade and commerce, race relations, and daily life in the five towns before formal Western control was imposed. Written in the belief that the study of Pacific history is more informative when it moves beyond an individual island or island group, this book with its wide perspective reveals a pattern of remarkable similarity of development in the beach communities.

Fiji Hindi: a basic course and reference grammar »

Publication date: 1977
Published Press Archives http://press.anu.edu.au/node/3593 1885_115135.jpg ANU Press Fiji Hindi: a basic course and reference grammar Thursday, 18 August, 1977 Not available Archive Scholarly Information Services Moag, Rodney F

'A world of its own': poems by J. McAuley, Paintings by P. Giles »

Publication date: 1977
A World of its Own is a sustained lyric, an enchanted and enchanting song that captures in words and colour the simplicity, the beauty, the aloneness of a little-known, unspoilt world. Poet and painter viewed this world with independent eyes, neither seeking to interpret for the other. In an unusual collaboration they have captured a subtlety of impression and recreated a wholeness of experience difficult for either to achieve alone. The poems have a rare visual quality about them and the paintings and sketches a lyrical eloquence as though each art was about to spill over into the other. In the last poem in this book McAuley writes: all things visible, Become a treasure hoarded in the heart Till brought forth by the artist{u2019}s hand, transformed, Into an image. A World of its Own is a treasure hoarded in the heart and transformed by its artist's hands.

Desert landforms »

Publication date: 1977
About one-third of the earth's land surface is desert. Yet, despite a large and varied literature, Desert Landforms is the first book arranged around landforms rather than geomorphic processes. A reeurrent theme is that desert landforms occur in assemblages that are profoundly influenced by geology and major relief. Accordingly, landforms are discussed within a number of fractional groupings in a downslope sequence of settings, ranging from desert upland to plain, an approach influenced by the author's experience in mapping such landform groupings in arid Australia. Professor Mabbutt draws on the world's deserts for his examples (with some bias towards Australia to remedy general neglect in the literature), illustrating them with an excellent and numerous collection of judiciously chosen plates. Desert Landforms is one volume in the series An Introduction to Systematic Geomorphology, designed for use at university level, which has found ready welcome also in schools and among the many people geologists and scientists included who find interest in the what and the why of natural scenery. The examples and discussions are wide-ranging and stimulating enough to encourage readers towards further sources and, above all, to attract them into the desert to see and enjoy for themselves.

Why poor people stay poor: a study of urban bias in world development »

Publication date: 1977
The great division in the world today, says Michael Lipton in this outstandingly important book, is not between capitalist and communist, black and white, east and west, or even between rich and poor nations. It exists within the poor countries themselves, and it is the division between city and country. In developing countries especially, wealth is drained from the country, where a little investment would produce big increases in desperately needed food production, and channelled into the cities where people who are often far better off put it to far less productive uses. As a result, while many of the poorest countries have considerably increased their output of wealth since 1945, the poorest people have grown no richer and have sometimes been thrust into even deeper poverty. We now pay lip-service to the need to develop agriculture, but Professor Lipton shows how biased the distribution of wealth still is. The income gap between city and country is much larger in the Third World today than it was in the early development in Europe and Japan. Moreover public policy - on investment, education and prices - pushes urban and rural incomes even further apart. Even when resources are made available to farmers, they all too often go to the big land- owners producing crops for the city dweller to eat, rather than to smaller farmers who, by allying intensive labour to even a small inflow of capital, could create a much higher increase in production. Why Poor People Stay Poor examines how this unhappy situation came about. Politicians, planners and experts are not {u2018}wicked{u2019}, but respond to pressures, which are strongest from their articulate, organised, concentrated urban neighbours. Ideologies - liberal, Marxist, populist - have also helped national leaders to convince themselves that such an inequitable process was right and necessary. In reality, in terms of efficiency as well as justice, it has had terrible consequences in hunger and thwarted development. Why Poor People Stay Poor analyses one of the great problems of the present-day world in an astute and original fashion, and it sets out guidelines for a future that could hold out hope to many millions of oppressed and impoverished people.