Here are 93 books that Killing for Country fans have personally recommended if you like
Killing for Country.
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As a full-time travel writer for 30 years, I’ve travelled all over Australia and am still constantly surprised and thrilled by new places. Ask me what my favourite place is, and it’s impossible to choose! From the grandeur of Western Australia’s Kimberley and the red ochre colours of the Outback to the deep blue of the oceans and lush rainforests...I love it all and I love sharing my discoveries – both in cities and on the long and winding roads – with readers. When I’m not travelling or writing about it, I’m usually planning the next trip!
Far from an ordinary guidebook, Loving Country, A Guide to Sacred Australia gets to the heart of this ancient continent through the eyes and stories of Australia’s First Nations people. Beautifully designed and illustrated with photographs, the book opens up an Australia that many visitors never – sadly – see. Exploring Australia’s Indigenous culture is one of the best ways to understand this country, and there are many ways of doing that, if you seek them out. After consultation with Indigenous communities and elders, the authors have chosen just 18 places to feature, telling the stories of the Dreaming, explaining traditional cultural practices, and outlining tours that will open a new world to those who care to dive deep into the culture.
Loving Country is a powerful and essential guidebook that offers a new way to travel and discover Australia through an Indigenous narrative. In this beautifully designed and photographed edition, co-authors Bruce Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou show travellers how to see the country as herself, to know her whole and old story, and to find the way to fall in love with her, our home.
Featuring 18 places in detail, from the ingenious fish traps at Brewarrina and the rivers that feed the Great Barrier Reef, to the love stories of Wiluna and the whale story of Margaret River, there…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
As an independent traveller, and throughout a career supporting international nature conservation, I’ve been fortunate to see many far-flung places of the world. Over the years, technology (eg. smartphones, internet, social media) has radically changed the way we travel, and indeed our expectations. Nowadays we want instant access, instant answers, instant results; we hate waiting for anything. However, long-haul travel still demands us to wait... in airport lounges, at train stations, bus stops, and onboard our transport while we endure long hours before reaching our destination. While some aspects have changed, patience, humour, and a good book still remain the best companions for any long journey.
Bryson’s various travelogues give you such colourful views of the places he visits and, if you’re journeying to Australia, Down Underis a must-read. Expertly combining sharp observations, unusual factual snippets, and incisive wit, the pictures he paints will inspire you to travel and see it for yourself... or alternatively, persuade you to avoid it at all cost. Whichever the result, you will be amply entertained.
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion up, down, and over the Appalachian Trail (well, most of it) resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. Now he has traveled across the world and all the way Down Under to Australia, a shockingly under-discovered country with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. In a Sunburned Country is his report on what he found there--a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a…
I am an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections, and a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. I was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. I have a master's degree with distinction in distributed computer systems, a master's degree in creative writing, and a PhD in creative writing. The short story is my sweetest spot. I have a deep passion for the literary speculative, and I write across genres and forms, with award-winning genre-bending works. I am especially curious about stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
Sometimes uncanny stories are the best place to start in discovering your new author. Lisa Hannett’s Songs for Dark Seasonsis a literary degustation that gives more than a hint of what to expect from this author. Her stories are clever and full of twists, wretched with longing yet swathed in hope. Fast-paced, tense, and transforming—all the reasons to familiarise yourself with South Australian Lisa Hannett’s magic.
With a twang in its heart and a song for luck on its tongue, Songs for Dark Seasons takes readers back to the lonesome dream counties introduced in the World Fantasy Award-nominated collection, Bluegrass Symphony.
Trailer parks and graves are only temporary homes for souls in these tales, where gods dwell in churches and parking lot groves. Friday night football stars mingle with sirens; hunters’ wives help their kids not to shoot, but to fly; Chanticleers spar their way into local government; and rash-afflicted men take dryads for lovers. In backwater towns, some witches have the know-how to pin pageant…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I love learning about how the world we know came to be the way it is. That’s another way of saying I love history. But not the dry, boring history we all remember from school. I want to know more about the entrepreneurial risk-takers, eccentric inventors, and strange circumstances that somehow shaped the world we know today. I want to be fascinated. What’s more, I want to laugh and be entertained while I’m reading and learning. I want every page to reward my attention with some amazing fact or a hearty laugh. That’s what the books on my list do. I hope you love them as much as I have!
I love this book so much it made me want to write books. Seriously. This is the book that inspired me. Until I read this book (way back in 2000), I didn’t know non-fiction could be so informative, compelling, AND funny—all at once. But Bryson showed me it’s possible. Sure, he’s a witty writer. But I think Bryson’s real weapon is that he does his research.
He digs up the fascinating, bizarre, and downright unbelievable facts about his subject—in this case, the continent of Australia—then seamlessly weaves them into a compelling narrative that keeps readers looking forward to each intriguing nugget of information waiting for them to discover next. It wasn’t until the end that I realized I’d learned as much as I’d laughed.
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. This time in Australia.
His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines…
I’ve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. I’ve learned — and am still learning! — that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, we’ve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Let’s change the ways we think about so-called “definitive” histories of music.
There are incredible and powerful queer musicians making country music, but you wouldn’t know it given the ways a lot of journalism works.
This book is absolutely essential reading if you’re interested in untold stories of country music, and queer artists working against the grain and despite rampant discrimination.
Also, the University of Illinois Press is doing amazingthings for bringing smart books to public readers—don’t assume this book isn’t for you because it was published by an academic press! The opposite is true. This book is brilliant and accessible.
A Variety Best Music Book of 2022 A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022 A Library Journal Best Arts and Humanities Book of 2022 A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2022 A Boot Best Music Book of 2022 A Ticketmaster Best Music Book of 2022 A Happy Magazine Best Music Book of 2022
Though frequently ignored by the music mainstream, queer and transgender country and Americana artists have made essential contributions as musicians, performers, songwriters, and producers. Queer Country blends ethnographic research with analysis and history to provide the first in-depth study of these artists and their work.…
I am a storyteller, a radio producer, and a psychotherapist. My thirty years as a therapist enabled me to witness the healing that comes from exploring our stories and family history. My clients’ courage inspired me to write my own story. My mother-daughter story explores the interplay of the personal with social movements. In the 1950s, my family was devastated by homophobia and conversion therapy. I am profoundly grateful for the women’s and gay liberation movements of the 1970s, which transformed our lives. Both my mother and I were able to recover from trauma and come to joy, connection, and activism.
Native Country of the Heart is, like my memoir, a mother-daughter story. Queer Chicana feminist Cherríe Moraga intertwines her own story with her mother Elvira from childhood onward. Her resilient mother had a rough life, starting with being hired out as a child by her dad to pick cotton in the California fields. I learned so much about Chicano culture and the Mexican diaspora that we never get in school. One stunning fact: when Dust Bowl survivors came to California, two million Mexicans were repatriated to Mexico to let the white immigrants work the same fields. Moraga beautifully layers her personal story with cultural insights and reflection. I was very moved by Moraga’s grief during the slow loss of Elvira to dementia and her death from Alzheimer's.
Native Country of the Heart: A Mexican American Geography is, at its core, a mother-daughter story. The mother, Elvira, was hired out as a child by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The daughter, Cherrie L. Moraga, is a brilliant, pioneering, queer Latina feminist. The story of these two women, and of their people, is woven together in an intimate memoir of critical reflection and deep personal revelation.
As a young woman, Elvira left California to work as a cigarette girl in glamorous late-1920s Tijuana, where an ambiguous relationship with a wealthy white man taught her…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
As an experienced teacher I was fascinated by how writing personal stories helped to develop confidence as well as oral and written self-expression at different levels of complexity in children across the primary school age range. This encouraged me to embark on a MA in creative writing where I wrote an extended autobiographical piece that focused on how the relationship between my father and myself affected my childhood. I continued this research into my doctoral studies in Irish autobiography. I explored the history of Irish autobiography, memory, and identity formation. This research provided the context to write my own childhood memoir I Am Patrick.
Edna O’Brien’s 2012 autobiography Country Girl is a blunt, gripping, lyrical and non-self-pitying depiction of her early life in the west of Ireland. It exposes the stultifying conformity imposed by the Catholic Church, family and community which I experienced myself. She rebelled as she sought freedom and self-expression from a domineering mother and drunken father. Edna’s escape to Dublin, London and New York as well as her exile from Ireland reflects an individual addicted to drugs and alcohol who seeks acknowledgement, liberty and success through many failed relationships. Edna’s autobiography resonates with many of my own experiences of the 1960’s. Country Girl demonstrates how one Irish female writer broke the cultural silence so that others would not feel alone. Her writing was an inspiration to me for my own memoir.
The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.
I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter ...
Born in Ireland in 1930 and driven into exile after publication of her controversial first novel, The Country Girls, Edna O'Brien is now hailed as one of the most majestic writers of her era - and Country Girl is her fabulous memoir.
Born in rural Ireland, O'Brien weaves the tale of her life from convent school…
I'm a Mexican writer and illustrator based in Los Angeles. I was always a bookish kid! Growing up I loved reading contemporary books, mostly about fearless girls trying to change the world! In my career, I’ve had the privilege to work creating cover artwork for a lot of middle-grade books, which in turn leads me to read a lot of really great stories. As a bonus, as the industry has become more diverse, so have the stories of outstanding girls, making the middle-grade space even more amazing than it was when I was a kid.
This is an odd one out, because it’s in audiobook form. Margarita is a part of her uber-famous country star sister and gets thrown into the limelight when the label gets into hot water for not being inclusive enough. This audible original truly shines with its amazing story and wonderful music! Personally, I liked the way the story tackles Margarita’s struggles to figure out her place within Latin culture and processing the feelings of what that means for her.
This middle grade story has it all: humor, heart, and country music - including original songs!
Margarita McCoy plays banjo and sings backup in her stepsister Stephanie McCoy’s wildly popular country music band.
Margarita isn’t particularly passionate about music, but she loves Stephanie and would do anything to help her - and that includes being thrust into the media spotlight after an article in the New York Times calls out country music for its lack of diversity. Since Margarita’s father is Mexican American, the McCoys' record label wants to use her to show that they aren’t as whitewashed as the…
My research and writing about music, particularly country and other Southern genres, began with the "Louisiana Hayride", a radio barn dance in the post-World War II era that launched both Hank Williams and Elvis Presley to prominence. From there, I turned to the long-running PBS music showcase Austin City Limits, which now names a huge music festival as well. In both projects, understanding music encompassed larger contexts of region, media, and meaning, all of which bear on understanding Dolly Parton as a musician and songwriter; as Appalachian; as a recording, TV, and movie star; and as a global cultural icon. I’ve never known life without Dolly Parton in it. Of this, I’m glad.
Musicologist Lydia Hamessley delved into Dolly’s songwriting corpus over the course of a decade, analyzing her tremendous output of songs, according to different categories.
“Coat of Many Colors,” for example, is the most beloved from among Dolly’s autobiographical songs. Lydia breaks down the harmony, and relationships between melody and lyrics to explain why the song works so well.
Songs about women’s lives, in another section, includes deeply affecting vignettes like “Down from Dover,” about a pregnant young woman’s despair after being abandoned by her lover and rejected by family.
Lydia’s book systematically unpacks the musical heart of Dolly’s creative genius, a quality that can at times be overshadowed in writings about her by the outsized nature of Dolly’s public persona.
Dolly Parton's success as a performer and pop culture phenomenon has overshadowed her achievements as a songwriter. But she sees herself as a songwriter first, and with good reason. Parton's compositions like "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" have become American standards with an impact far beyond country music.
Lydia R. Hamessley's expert analysis and Parton's characteristically straightforward input inform this comprehensive look at the process, influences, and themes that have shaped the superstar's songwriting artistry. Hamessley reveals how Parton's loving, hardscrabble childhood in the Smoky Mountains provided the musical language, rhythms, and memories of old-time music that resonate…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
As the Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University, I’m excited to stay on top of all that’s being done in the field of Texas Music and let me assure you that it is a great way to spend one’s days. Texas music and culture reflect the state’s diverse and contested past, and every month, it seems that there is not only a new artist appearing on the stage to sing her or his truth but a writer helping us to understand how those truths fit into the larger narratives of Texas history.
If the Armadillo World Headquarters is one central node of countercultural country music in Texas, Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnics was the other. Where the Armadillo closed down in 1980, though, Willie’s picnics persist as an annual institution to this day. Author Dave Thomas has extensively researched the phenomenon and crafts its half-century history well.
The resulting volume is a riveting account that uses the sun-baked Texas ritual as a launching pad for stories encompassing all of America. A newspaper journalist, Thomas has an eye for detail and an ear for turns of phrase that kept me turning the pages long after I should have turned out the lights. If you ever wanted to read about a sort of country music, Woodstock Groundhog Day, this is that book.
In 1973, a forty-year-old country musician named Willie Nelson, inspired by a failed music festival the year before, decided he was going to hold his own party. He would stage it in the same remote and rocky field where the previous festival had withered. And he’d do it in July: not the hottest part of the Central Texas summer, but “damn sure close enough,” according to music journalist Dave Dalton Thomas. As unlikely as it seemed in 1973, Willie kept the event going, minus a year off here and there, for half a century.
