New Releases by Tim Flannery

In the first Quarterly Essay of 2003, Tim Flannery launches an attack on the various lies that we tell ourselves about our resources, our past and our future. The lie of terra nullius that made us ignore the Aborigines'' knowledge of the environment. The lie of the Snowy Mountains Scheme that did untold damage to our river system for the sake of white immigration. The lie that rushing to preserve wilderness will save endangered species. Tim Flannery is also skeptical about the myths of multiculturalism, and he argues that we cannot sustain a larger population given our resources. In his conclusion, he asks how we can discharge our responsibility to the refugees who are the victims of American policies we collude with. ''This essay is written as a thundering no to the characteristic Australian assumption that ''She''ll be right'' ... This is a Quarterly Essay written in the passionate belief that we need a coherent policy on population ... If we do not have one, we will never be in a position to do justice to ... the dispossessed people of the earth; indeed our children''s children will ... think we have dishonoured their birthright.'' —Peter Craven, Introduction ''The refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol will almost certainly, in time, be remembered as the greatest failure of the Howard government - Tampa, detention camps and Iraq notwithstanding.'' —Tim Flannery, Beautiful Lies

In this illustrated ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humans, to the European colonizers and industrial society. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. Illustrations.

Details the author''s friendship with a New Guinea warrior and the fate of the indigenous peoples in the course of discovering species of mammals that science had yet to discover or classify.

The Birth of Sydney tells the story of the founding of one of the world''s greatest cities. Tim Flannery''s brilliant anthology reveals Sydney''s strange and secret life from its unruly beginnings as a dump for convicts to its arrival as the ''queen of the south'' a century later. In this compelling narrative history we hear the voices of everyone from Aboriginal women to Russian sailors, from Elizabeth Macarthur to Charles Darwin and a host of others.

Explains how fossils can unlock the mysteries of the past, and tell us what the dinosaurs and their surroundings were like.