Australian Books
Bedwetter’s lament
The trouble with political memoirs is that it’s very hard to get the balance right between the book-length version of…
Decency personified
The life of Paul Ramsay shows that business people don’t have to be ruthless to succeed. Many will find this…
Next year in Jerusalem
Alex Ryvchin’s book couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. On an almost daily basis, voices opposed to the…
A smaller man
Never trust a person who keeps a diary. After all, who keeps a diary other than someone who wants subsequently…
Women’s world
One of life’s perennial questions is what would the world look like if it was ruled by women. It’s an…
Smith not Mill
For a long time in this country, conservatism was the political creed that dare not speak its name. The term…
Stone not gathering moss
If you are part of that multitude of Australians who fear that our country is drifting backwards – becoming less…
White House gossip
When the brilliant American biographer, Robert A. Caro, first approached the task of writing a biography of the 36th President…
Religion of peace?
This easy-to-read volume of essays, each originally published in the journal of Catholic culture, Annals Australasia, is an important caveat…
Spy who came in from the EU
I read Mr le Carré’s latest spy novel, Agent Running in the Field last weekend, despite everything. What do I…
John Lennon’s friend imagines
For several years in the 1950s Peter Jones shared a desk with John Lennon at Quarry Bank High School for…
Quo vadis?
How did it come to this? When did the constitutional right of the US Senate to ‘advise and consent’ on…
What to do to grinning do-gooders
In the 1860s, Australian colonies adopted, virtually unaltered, the English Companies Act 1862. Despite initial distrust of this new corporate…
Blainey’s blarney
Geoffrey Blainey, Australia’s beloved history elder, has written 40 books and his terms like ‘tyranny of distance’ have pervaded our…
Vengeful pygmies
It says almost everything that needs to be said about Niki Savva’s latest book that its original title was Highway…
Unforgotten person
A newly-elected Australian Prime Minister was pleased to receive a letter of congratulations from Australia’s longest serving PM, Sir Robert…
Character building
Having fired off his first challenge in paragraph one (‘Read every word of this book, but don’t believe a word…
Financial eunuch
Teenagers are normally embarrassed by their mothers. Germaine Greer was particularly so. Elizabeth Kleinhenz in her new biography writes: ‘Germaine…
Into oblivion
Moribund for about nine years now, Clive James has released his newest transcription of the Grim Reaper’s call. You might…
Unis? Must try harder
‘I’m a revolutionary Marxist, and if you’re not one by the end of semester I haven’t done my job properly,’…
Undercurrents
Former Melbourne detective Colin McLaren’s cold case book into the 2009 disappearance of Bob Chappell and the 2010 conviction of…
Leftist wonderland
Kerry O’Brien in his mammoth memoir argues that his decades of ABC TV presenting were not Left-biased. It’s an easy…
Of the people
This must be the first occasion when a book on politics, written in Australia, has been listed among the year’s…
Are you an Innie or an Outie?
The Institute of Public Affairs infuriates the Left. The IPA’s success in being the public face of centre-right thinking, even…
How The West was run
There aren’t many histories or biographies written by Australians that sociologists and anthropologists will turn to in the future in…
