Bruce Pascoe's ground-breaking account of the birth of agriculture in Australia, which challenged the idea Aboriginal people were merely hunter-gatherers was the first pick of the inaugural Parliamentary Book Club.

Federal parliamentarians will read the 2014 awarding-winning non-fiction book after the public has been given the chance to nominate books written by an Australian and published in the past five years.

Public nominations came via 16 politicians, including Independent MP Dr Helen Haines, Minister for Education Dan Tehan, Labor Senator Kim Carr, Greens leader Richard Di Natale and Senator Rex Patrick from South Australia's Centre Alliance Party.

Parliamentary Book Club co-chair Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes, who along with Labor's Graham Perrett led the initiative, said Dark Emu had been a front runner from the start.