PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE London Falling. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell
The award-winning author investigates the mysterious death of a teenage boy in London, and uncovers the dark side of the city itself. Patrick Radden Keefe’s books are so deeply researched, and his storytelling so compelling, that readers might feel they are in...
RACHEL PERKINS, STEPHEN GAPPS, MINA MURRAY and HENRY REYNOLDS (Eds) The Australian Wars. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
The Australian Wars presents the confronting facts of white settlement, the massacres of First Nations Australians, and their resistance. This is a difficult book to read. Its subject matter is the killing of hundreds of thousands of First Nations people by Europeans...
GEMMA PARKER The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
For Gemma Parker, Nietzsche and nihilism were surprisingly liberating during lockdown, as she recounts in her memoir. I’ve long been interested in nihilism because I find the concept of a meaningless existence intoxicating, liberating. The Mother is Restless opens...
JANE MESSER Raven Mother. Reviewed by Sandra Hogan
In searching for the truth about her grandmother, Jane Messer brings together both Jewish and Palestinian histories. Michael Messer was sure his mother never loved him. She had abandoned him twice, leaving him with strangers for years on end. His father told him that...
HELEN PITT Luna Park. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Helen Pitt uncovers the history of Sydney’s iconic Luna Park and the history of amusement parks from world fairs to Coney Island and beyond. Like many Sydneysiders, Helen Pitt has vivid memories of a childhood trip to Luna Park. She and her friends got giddy and fell...
AARON ROBERTSON The Black Utopians: Visions of hope and resistance in America. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
What might utopia look like for African Americans? Aaron Robertson examines how Black communities have striven for a better life. In his preface to Black Utopians, Aaron Robertson asks, ‘How [do] the disillusioned, the betrayed, the confined, the forgotten, and the...
DENNIS ALTMAN Righting My World: Essays from the past half-century. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Dennis Altman’s splendid essays span the gay liberation movement, sexual politics, AIDS activism, and glimpses of his personal life. Dennis Altman was born in 1943 and has been a leading gay intellectual and activist for more than half a century. With degrees from the...
WRIGHT THOMPSON The Barn: The murder of Emmett Till and the cradle of American racism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Wright Thompson’s account of the 1950s murder of a Black teenager in Mississippi is also a reckoning with the history of his own family. Wright Thompson was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1976, about 35 kilometres from the barn in Drew where Emmett...
JOSHUA BLACKBURN The Language-Lover’s Lexipedia. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Joshua Blackburn has compiled a treasure-trove of the humorous, the obscure, the trivial and the surprising in this survey of our language. The Language-Lovers Lexipedia: An A to Z of Linguistic Curiosities began as a quiz game invented by Joshua Blackburn to relieve...
MARIAN WILKINSON Woodside vs The Planet: How a company captured a country. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Australian governments are addicted to fossil-fuel exports that harm the climate and return little to the country. How did this happen? In this Quarterly Essay Marian Wilkinson examines Australia’s contribution to global warming and greenhouse pollution, in particular...
CHRISTOPH BAUMER and THERESE WEBER Rock Art and its Legacy in Myth and Art. Reviewed by Ann Skea
This account of ancient rock art in Eurasia, Arabia and the Sahara attempts to discover the beliefs of the people who created it. This is a big, beautiful and fascinating book. It is a weighty tome, not just because there are large colour images on most of its glossy...
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