This funny and insightful book is written by a professor of economics who wonders what it would be like to apply key economic principles to raising his own three gorgeous children. Can incentives and rewards help to get them to do things like sleep through the night, eat healthy meals, clean up their rooms, do their homework? Can economics help the smart, caring, welladjusted, high-achieving little person that we know is in there to emerge? From the birthing class to the birthday party and the parent-teacher interview, Joshua Gans tells stories about everyday issues and conundrums that will be familiar to all parents. His fresh insights and highly original questions will have parents everywhere nodding in agreement and chuckling to themselves. Parentonomics shows that bringing together the hard questions of economics with the chaos, mess and love that children inspire is a wonderful combination.

Forgetting Aborigines explores a central paradox in Australian history: Aborigines are often remembered as absent in the face of a continuing and actual indigenous historical presence. Chris Healy argues that in the ways we remember our history, Aborigines keep disappearing. They are present and central at certain moments but then fade from memory. Aboriginal issues can be on the front page for weeks prompting white Australians to ask questions like ‘why weren’t we told?’ and then recede again. The book examines ways in which we can stop this dishonest and destructive cycle.

We think of retirement as something to be celebrated, even envied, a time when you are finally free to do your own thing. But what do people do for twenty or thirty years without the structures and restrictions of work? Does it mean someone is no longer important if they are not an active member of the workforce? Or is retirement a time for reinvention and refocussing? When I’m 64 explores the experience of retirement from the point of view of those not yet retired, those newly retired, and those who are further down the track. Donna Gibbs’ conversations, insights and reflections on her own experiences offer a window into the new retirement with all its contradictions and complexities. With warmth, humour and insight she shows the upsides and downsides, the challenges to your sense of identity and issues for couples and singles. It is an inspiring guide to the ways people deal with this new phase of their lives.

Kew Cottages has long been an iconic symbol for many Australians. Opened in 1887 by the Victorian Government, it was Australia’s first and largest specialised institution for people with intellectual disability. Over its 121-year history, Kew Cottages often struggled to provide a high level of care for its residents. Persistent overcrowding, inadequate funding, and government and public apathy, resulted in many residents enduring lives of hardship and neglect. Bye-Bye Charlie is a rare glimpse into the world of Kew Cottages. Combining oral testimony from a range of people including residents, families, staff, policy makers, and visitors, as well as documentary evidence, it offers a moving account of the path to institutional living, the complex emotions felt by people associated with the institution, and the facility’s eventual closure. Most importantly, it celebrates the lives of people who have long been silenced or forgotten, turning them into active participants of their own history making.

Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts takes you on an intimate journey into the lives of people armed with the task of ending Australian Aboriginal disadvantage in the frontier north of Australia. Taking a fresh look at longstanding issues, Lea examines the culture of bureaucracy, its need to create the look of action, how intelligent inhabitants uphold the apparatus of government even whilst they critique it, and how benevolent efforts to improve health have brought about unexpected co-dependencies and tragic failures. She paints a sympathetic yet discomforting portrait of those who, working on behalf of and for Aboriginal health, fiercely defend the ideas and principles that paradoxically reinstate the primary need for greater levels of government intervention.