Ebookshelf

Did you know that the Library has a huge range of free nonfiction ebooks – 16,000 and counting! – which you can either read online or download for up to seven days?

To get started, browse our latest selection of ebooks and watch this space for new additions. You can also scan the list of past Ebookshelf titles or browse for even more free ebooks! For tips and advice, watch our video on using ebooks.

To access ebooks from home, you need to be a State Library member with a Victorian home address. (Terms and conditions of use apply.)

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire

Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson
Biteback Publishing, 2019

In Rule Britainnia, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson take an in-depth look at Britain's Brexit future. They argue that the EU referendum was part of a last gasp of an empire working its way out of the British psyche, an empire largely based on myth and nostalgia.

The authors suggest that whatever the next year brings, Britain will be much diminished by the EU exit process. There will be no welcoming Empire, Commonwealth or other set of countries, ready to quickly embrace new trading relationships.

Looking into the future rather than the past, and a different world order, they recognise the potential to reshape a post-Brexit Britain.

Spending time: The most valuable resource

Daniel S Hamermesh
Oxford University Press, 2019

Sleeping, eating, watching TV, working – how much time we dedicate to each activity, and why we do so, is intriguing. No one is better placed to shed light on similarities and differences than Daniel S Hamermesh, the leading authority on time-use.

In his book, Hamermesh explores how people use their time, across countries, regions, cultures, class and gender. He argues that higher incomes lead people to hurry more, both on and off the job, and that being stressed for time is central to modern life.

With Americans working more than people in France, Germany, the UK, Japan and other affluent countries, his book offers a simple but radical proposal for changing lives and reducing stress about time.

Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry: The secrets of history's most famous embroidery hidden in plain sight

Arthur Colin Wright
Frontline Books, 2019

Over the last 200 years, hundreds of books have looked at the meaning behind the Bayeux Tapestry, but until now one aspect has been ignored: the details in the margins.

The fables shown in the margins of the tapestry are not just part of a decorative ribbon: they are sequential, and elaborate on or explain the action shown in the body of the artwork.

In this ground-breaking study, Arthur Wright reveals for the first time the significance of the images in the margins, and allows us to see the 'whole' story as never before. With the benefit of this complete view, the author reveals that a number of basic assumptions have been conjecture and that there remains a lot to uncover in the tapestry.

The beachcomber's guide to marine debris

Michael Stachowitsch
Springer, 2019

Forget seashells and other fauna and flora – here, you will find what a beachcomber is actually most likely to encounter these days: glass, plastic, wood, metal, paper, oil and other sources of marine pollution.

Complete with nearly 700 photographs, this guide shows the full range of marine debris encountered, each presented with insight and a pinch of humour. In addition, the author looks at the threat each item poses to these beautiful environments as well as prevention strategies, clean-up recommendations, alternative products, and recycling and upcycling ideas.

Beyond the aesthetic issue, marine debris poses a threat to wildlife, human health and economic welfare. This book arms you with the knowledge you need to combat these disgraceful and often hazardous eyesores.

The shipwreck hunter: A lifetime of extraordinary discovery and adventure in the deep seas

David L Mearns
Allen & Unwin, 2017

David Mearns has found some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. His deep-water searches have solved the 66-year mystery of HMAS Sydney, discovered the final resting place of the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood and revealed the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur in the narrow underwater canyon that served as its grave.

The shipwreck hunter is the compelling story of David's life and work in the seas, focusing on some of his most intriguing discoveries. It details the extraordinary techniques, the courage needed to find a wreck kilometres beneath the sea, and the moving stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies.

Part detective story, part history and part deep ocean adventure, the book provides unique insight into a hidden, underwater world.

One last spin

Drew Rooke
Scribe Publications, 2018

One last spin is a poignant and compassionate work of literary journalism that tackles Australia's most controversial pastime: the pokies.

Poker machines are considered the most harmful form of gambling, the cause of the majority of gambling addictions. So how did Australia evolve into a pokie nation? Drew Rooke searches for answers in a range of startlingly candid interviews from gambling addicts, politicians, manufacturers, neuroscientists, counsellors, anti-gambling campaigners and gambling advocates.

A confronting tale about the human cost of addiction, this is also the story of governments pandering to corporate interests, and of the insidious power of the industry's PR spin.

Start up wise: Your step-by-step guide to the seven stages of success

Jonathan Reuvid (editor)
Legend Press, 2019

In this comprehensive guide, business writer Jonathan Reuvid provides everything you need to know if you're starting a new business, providing seven key steps on how to start, manage and develop your start-up.

He looks at generating, developing and confirming your business ideas; implementing the correct legal structure and brand identity; developing a realistic business plan; meeting your financial and tax obligations; understanding your funding options; cost and time-effective business systems; and building and growing your business for the future.

Crucially, he argues that it's important to understand why you are starting a business, and to then focus on ideas and steps that will build your ideal growing and successful business.

There is no Planet B: A handbook for the make or break years

Mike Berners-Lee
Cambridge University Press, 2019

Feeding the world, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics – the list of concerns that face us right now seems endless. But what is most pressing, what are the knock-on effects of our actions, and what should we do first?

Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly in a low-carbon world? Should we frack? How can we take control of technology? Does it all come down to population? And, given the global nature of the challenges we now face, what on earth can any of us do?

Fortunately, Mike Berners-Lee provides some answers. He puts a big-picture perspective on the environmental and economic challenges of our day, and looks at the underlying questions of how we live and think. This book will shock you, surprise you – and then make you laugh. And you'll find practical and even inspiring ideas for what you can actually do to help humanity thrive on this – our only – planet.

Everyday chaos: Technology, complexity and how we’re thriving in a new world of possibility

David Weinberger
Harvard Business Review Press, 2019

Artificial intelligence, big data, modern science and the internet are all revealing a fundamental truth: the world is vastly more complex and unpredictable than we've allowed ourselves to see.

Now that technology is enabling us to take advantage of all the chaos it's revealing, and enabling us to harness the complexity of an immense amount of data around us, our understanding of how things happen is changing – and with it our deepest strategies for predicting, preparing for and managing our world.

Through stories from history, business and technology, philosopher and technologist David Weinberger finds the unifying truths lying below the surface of the tools we take for granted.

Breaking and entering: The extraordinary story of a hacker called 'Alien'

Jeremy N Smith
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019

Hackers know everything about us. We know almost nothing about them. Until now...

The hacker now known as Alien entered MIT in 1998, intending to major in aerospace engineering. Almost immediately, she was recruited to join a secret student group scaling walls, breaking into buildings, pulling elaborate pranks and exploring computer systems. Within a year, one of her hall mates was dead and two others were arraigned. And Alien's adventures were only beginning.

Breaking and entering is a whirlwind history of the last 20 years of hacking and cybersecurity. As Alien develops from teenage novice to international expert, she joins the secret vanguard of our digitised world, and reveals the forces at work behind our everyday technology.

And in the end: The last days of the Beatles

The life and times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation

Todd James Pierce
University Press of Mississippi, 2019

Besides Walt Disney, no one seemed more key to the development of animation at the Disney Studios than Disney's friend and confidant, Ward Kimball (1914–2002).

In this engaging, cradle-to-grave biography, award-winning author Todd James Pierce explores the life of perhaps the most influential animator of the 20th century, who worked on characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter.

From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Kimball established a highly graphic, idiosyncratic approach to animation and became the only animator to run his own in-studio production team largely outside of Walt Disney's direction. The studio allowed Kimball's work to incorporate high art and graphic design as a means of creating new animated forms, which resulted in films that received multiple Academy Award nominations and two awards.

Old days, old ways: Stories from my radio days in the bush

Alex Nicol
Allen & Unwin, 2019

Alex Nicol takes us back to the old days in the bush, when booking into a country pub was likely to turn into an adventure, and when radio was the glue that held far-flung communities together.

From the wartime mates who helped each other build farms on their soldier settler blocks, to Possum, the legendary bush hermit who lived off the land on his own for 60 years, these stories are classically Australian, full of colourful characters and bush ingenuity.

With a bush yarn, it's all about the way you tell it – and as the voice of rural Australia for over two decades on ABC radio, Alex Nicol can tell a yarn with a punchline that will keep you grinning for the rest of the day.

Out-of-style: An illustrated guide to vintage fashions: 19th–21st centuries

Betty Kreisel Shubert
Dover Publications, 2018

Ranging decade by decade from the 19th through 20th centuries, this book offers a simple way to date photographs and clothing. It also provides background that makes less-accessible histories of costume easier to understand.

This second edition, enhanced with a selection of new photographs, is a valuable resource for costumers, vintage fashion enthusiasts, social historians, genealogists and collectors of nostalgia items. The easy-to-follow format makes it a great browsing book for those unversed in fashion design and history.

The author is a noted fashion historian who has designed clothes and costumes for stage and screen as well as hotels, restaurants and casinos all over the world.

Public art encounters: Art, space and identity

The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia