{"title":"Historical Biographies","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"king-of-the-air-the-turbulent-life-of-charles-kingsford-smithhardback","title":"King of the Air by Ann Blainey","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharles Kingsford Smith was the most commanding flyer of the golden age of aviation. In three short years, he broke records with his astounding and daring voyages: the first trans-Pacific flight from America to Australia, the first circumnavigation around the equator, the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland. He did it all with such courage, modesty and charm that Australia and the world fell in love with him. A tickertape parade was held in his honour on New York’s Fifth Avenue. At home, he became a national hero, ‘Our Smithy’.\u003cbr\u003e\n      \u003cbr\u003e\nYet his achievements belied a traumatic past. He had witnessed the horror of World War I – first as a soldier at Gallipoli, later as a combat pilot with the Royal Flying Corps – and, like so many of his generation, he bore physical and emotional scars. The public saw the derring-do; only those close to him knew the anxious man who pushed himself to the edge of health and sanity. In November 1935, Kingsford Smith’s plane crashed and he was lost at sea near Burma, his body never to be recovered.\u003cbr\u003e\n      \u003cbr\u003e\nThis brilliant work from one of Australia’s foremost biographers reveals the complicated, tumultuous life of a fascinating figure, who pursued his obsession to the greatest heights of fame and catastrophe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619590750343,"sku":"9781760641078","price":49.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/King_20of_20the_20Air_20_28online_29_a3c09a09-5c32-41e6-bb8e-43f61f45c0bc.jpg?v=1636455277"},{"product_id":"king-of-the-air-the-turbulent-life-of-charles-kingsford-smithtrade-paperback","title":"King of the Air by Ann Blainey","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharles Kingsford Smith was the most commanding flyer of the golden age of aviation. In three short years, he broke records with his astounding and daring voyages: the first trans-Pacific flight from America to Australia, the first circumnavigation around the equator, the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland. He did it all with such courage, modesty and charm that Australia and the world fell in love with him. He became a national hero, ‘Our Smithy’.\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\u003cbr\u003e\nYet his achievements belied a traumatic past. He had witnessed the horror of World War I – first as a soldier at Gallipoli, later as a combat pilot with the Royal Flying Corps – and, like so many of his generation, he bore physical and emotional scars. The public saw the derring-do; only those close to him knew the anxious man who pushed himself to the edge of health and sanity. In November 1935, Kingsford Smith’s plane crashed and he was lost at sea near Burma, his body never to be recovered.\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\u003cbr\u003e\nThis brilliant work from one of Australia’s foremost biographers reveals the complicated, tumultuous life of a fascinating figure, who pursued his obsession to the greatest heights of fame and catastrophe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39619590783111,"sku":"9781760641924","price":36.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/products\/King_20of_20the_20Air_20_28online_29.jpg?v=1636455276"},{"product_id":"a-d-hope-by-susan-lever-preorder","title":"A.D. Hope by Susan Lever","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAlec Derwent Hope (1907–2000) was one of Australia's most acclaimed poets. His first collection was not published until he was forty-eight years old, mainly because of its sexual nature and fears of censorship, but its release cemented his reputation as the pre-eminent Australian poet of his time.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis biography recounts Hope's early life in rural Tasmania, the influences of his education at Sydney and Oxford universities, his notoriety as a critic and wit in the 1940s and '50s, and his career as a poet and academic, which placed him at the centre of Australian literary life for over fifty years.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDrawing on Hope's poetry, notebooks and surviving letters to friends, biographer Susan Lever examines the many contrasts and contradictions of Hope's life: a polite, softly spoken man with a savage wit; a professor who refused to confine himself to the narrow specialisations of the academy; an intellectual with an emotionally complex inner life who lived in an outwardly conventional way in ordinary Australian suburbia; a poet responding to the major cultural shifts of the twentieth century and concluding that the contemporary poet's task was the renewal of tradition.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Trobe University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43258491568263,"sku":"9781760645885","price":36.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0313\/7211\/6103\/files\/9781743824535_FC.jpg?v=1759383092"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.schwartzbooks.com.au\/collections\/historical-biographies.oembed","provider":"Schwartz Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}