Dancing Before Storms

Five revolutions that made today’s world.

Dancing Before Storms is about times of anger and upheaval, the connections between them, and the personal stories of men and women who had power and influence but were overtaken by events.

Robert T. Harris

Rock Bottom Publishing recognizes the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, traditional guardians of the land. We pay our respect to elders past, present and emerging.

We support the Uluru Statement from the Heart

Our Story

Rock Bottom Publishing was founded in 2020 as a family company with the goal of helping new projects to get off the ground. It works in partnership with other publishers, including Wakefield Press in Adelaide Australia, and SayZanSha Publications in Tokyo Japan.

As the name indicates, the company aims to build from the bottom up. It takes inspiration from a speech by Harry Potter author JK Rowling to Harvard University students in 2008, when she said:
“.. rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

1 J.K. Rowling: ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’; The Harvard Gazette, Boston, June 5, 2008

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Publications

Dancing Before Storms

America 1776
France 1789
Europe 1848
China 1911
Russia 1917

These five revolutions shaped the power structures of our modern world. Each time, the elites of the day ignored the warning signs. Each time they continued ‘dancing before storms’.

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'The scope is ambitious ... the author pulls it off well by focusing on particular historical characters and pointing to links that have often been obscured.'

Professor Peter Monteath

'What an extraordinarily insightful, well researched and superbly told narrative.'

John Riddell
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Our Team

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Yuko Matsuoka Harris

Yuko is President of SayZanSha Holdings, Japan; she introduced the Harry Potter series of JK Rowling to Japan 22 years ago, and was named Japanese businesswoman of the year by Nikkei in 2000. With her husband, she has founded the Swiss Magic Libraries Foundation to promote reading for disadvantaged children in Asia and Australasia, and the Matsuoka Book Heritage Foundation in Japan.

Ronald J Harris (Resident Director)

After a background in public sector employment leading to Airport Administration at Adelaide International Airport, Ron had responsibilities in the South Australian private health sector for medical supplies. A Past President of his Rotary Club he continues to work actively with his wife Jenny for causes supported by Rotary locally and internationally.

Robert T Harris

Bob is co-Founder of Education International, with 32 million members in more than 160 countries. As a widely recognized leader of civil society, he chaired NGO conferences at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, at UNESCO and at the OECD in Paris, and participated in the work of the World Economic Forum in Davos and Dubai.

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