Non-Fiction Books
John Birmingham has lived with eighty-nine people and kept notes on all of them. This is their story.A rat died in the room at King Street and we didn't know. There was at least six inches of compacted rubbish between our feet and the floor. Old Ratty must have crawled in there and died of pleasure. A visitor uncovered him while groping about for a beer.A very entertaining freak show ¦ an epic of squalor and degradation. The GuardianOne of the funniest books ever. Loaded
John Birmingham and Dirk Flinthart have learned the hard way how to be civilized, successful and cool. Now they make it easy for the uninitiated Australian Male to achieve unimagined heights of sophistication, expertise and personal magnetism. In this book they answer questions many men are just too embarrassed to ask, How do you swallow a sword? How do you dress well without looking like a complete goose? And how do you talk intelligently about Salvador Dali, Copernicus and Simone de Beauvoir without sounding like a pompous git? In tackling these and hundreds of other seirous subjects, Birmingham and Flinthart enlist the aid of experts as diverse as Alex Buzo, Paul Barry, Len Evans and Helen Wellings.
'To peer deeply into this ghost city, the one lying beneath the surface, is to understand that Sydney has a soul and that it is a very dark place indeed.'Beneath the shining harbour, amid the towers of global greed and deep inside the bad-drugs madness of the suburban wastelands, lies Sydney's shadow history. Terrifying tsunamis, corpse-robbing morgue staff, killer cops, neo-Nazis, power junkies and bumbling SWOS teams electrify this epic tale of a city with a cold vacuum for a moral core.Birmingham drills beneath the cover story of a successful multicultural metropolis and melts the boundaries between past and present to reveal a ghost city beneath the surface of concrete and glass. In Birmingham's alternative history of Sydney, the yawning chasm between the megarich and the lumpen masses is as evident in the insane wealth of the new elites as it was in the head-spinning rapacity of the NSW Rum Corps. This is a city shattered by the nexus between government, big money and the underworld, where the glittering prizes go to the strong, not the just.Combining intensive research with the pace of a techno-thriller, John Birmingham creates a rich portrait of a city too dazzled by its own gorgeous reflection to caremuch for what lies at its dark, corrupted heart. Illuminated by wild flashes of black humour, violent, ghoulish and utterly compelling, Leviathan is history for the Tarantino generation.
On his publisher-financed tour, the author meets the dope smokers of Australia. The sci-fi geeks, student activists and obligatory Nimbin ferals. The conservative politicians, lawyers, cops, bankers and school teachers. And the tea-drinking, sausage-loving, lumpy-looking white folk of Tasmania. Dopeland is for anyone who's ever fired up a choice fatty, wondered whether you can drink the bong water, gone on a Mars Bar run, or just considered watching daytime TV a worthwhile way to spend your twenties. With danger, disaster and madness always threatening to derail the fabulous Dopeland Tour, you can safely sit back and enjoy the ride.
‘Beauty is good, but coin is better. You can't eat artistic integrity. It tastes like sawdust.’ This gonzo guide is a lesson in the practicalities of writing: how to be productive, professional and maybe one day even pay the rent. Topics covered include ‘How to slay writer’s block’, ‘What the hell is workflow?’, ‘How to write 10,000 words in a day’ and ‘The best apps for writers’. How to Be a Writer is a kick-ass writing guide with a tough-love approach, written for the internet generation. John Birmingham is lauded as a prolific writer working across multiple genres. Here he shares his secrets. And some hard-core, real-world practical advice. And a few excellent descriptions of explosions.
John Birmingham is a master of good writing and funny lines. He has written a thousand stories, some true, some not so much. These are the best ones and they’re so good, and so funny, there has been no barrel-scraping involved. Really, this book could have been much longer. The pieces contained within these pages run the gamut from the early felafel days to the shiny age we live in where Donald Trump is the President of the USA. And it does not shy away from the greatest controversy of our age: potato cake vs potato scallop. These hilarious pieces cover a wide range of topics from food to fitness and politics to pork, in all its glories. And, of course, fashion. Ever the equal opportunist, John Birmingham skewers them all.
Drinking martinis happens to all of us at some point in our lives. You wake up one day, the sun is shining, you have plans, dreams, and a bright path leading toward them. Next thing you know, your ass is planted on a bar stool and instead of learning that second language, or hiking the Andes to Machu Picchu, you’re getting yourself on the outside of your second martini. Or perhaps you are a Super Villain who has never quite pulled off that insane scheme to destroy the world. Or you've been foolish enough to order a parcel delivery from the Elder Gods and worry that your important package has been lost in the space between the stars. Whatever your dilemma, this book has the answer. Maybe not to your dilemma, but it still has answers, damn it. How to keep the romance alive as a zombie. How to say No to mindfulness. And all the things Conan the Barbarian thinks best in life. If you're in need of a break from the grim realities of life here at the end of our civilisation, pour yourself a cold one and crack the digital spine on the best pieces from award-winning satirist John Birmingham's private column, previously available only to subscribers.
John Birmingham's father died. And his life fell apart. The next six months were spent grinding through the dark forests of depression until he finally emerged out of the darkness onto sunlit upland. A unique yet universal story, On Father reaches out to everyone who has battled the black dog.