by NRB | 26 Nov 2024 | Non-fiction |
There’s more to Joe Aston’s book about Australia’s national carrier Qantas than access to a luxury airport lounge. From 2011 to 2023, Joe Aston wrote the highly entertaining ‘Rear Window’ column for The Australian Financial Review, and delighted in exposing the...
by NRB | 20 Nov 2024 | Non-fiction |
Many great men are remembered for only one thing, and for Charles Todd it is building the Overland Telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin in the 1870s. David Dufty’s book Charles Todd’s Magnificent Obsession is not a biography but rather a venture story set against...
by NRB | 7 Nov 2024 | Non-fiction |
Award-winning novelist Amitav Ghosh turns to non-fiction to chart the greed and racism at the heart of British and American opium sales to China. In researching his Ibis Trilogy novels – Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015) – which...
by NRB | 31 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Part memoir, part guidebook, part history, Twenty-Two Impressions shows the strangeness and wonder of the tarot. In 1442, an apprentice beats sheets of gold leaf out of a coin, 100 sheets to the florin, as dictated by the guild. This gold, together with paints made...
by NRB | 29 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Eric Beecher’s vital new book provides a history of world journalism, good and bad, with a pessimistic view of the future. Beecher knows his territory. In his youth he was an investigative journalist at the Melbourne Age during the glory days of Graham Perkin’s...
by NRB | 17 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Australia’s Covid response may have had problems, but Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden argue that our country fared far better than others. A mere four years ago our lives were turned upside down by the Covid pandemic. For the overwhelming majority of us, Covid now...
by NRB | 8 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Opus Dei likes to operate in the shadows; Gareth Gore brings its activities – including allegations of human trafficking – into the light. In 2017 Banco Popular Español, the sixth-largest bank in Spain, collapsed. Gareth Gore, a journalist with the International...
by NRB | 2 Oct 2024 | Non-fiction |
Katherine Wiles’ life as a professional opera singer seems glossed with sunshine in this memoir. You will sing and it will work out. You will find your place in the world. Just keep knocking on all those doors. Katherine Wiles has always had this voice in her head,...
by NRB | 25 Sep 2024 | Non-fiction |
Researcher Lynne Kelly explains the groundbreaking discovery of the gene that enables humans to store knowledge – and create art. What makes us human? The question is philosophic, but increasingly the answer concerns DNA. We share 98.7 per cent of our genetic matter...
by NRB | 20 Aug 2024 | Non-fiction |
Maggie Walters’ memoir goes beyond the clichés of Hollywood to describe what it’s like living with mental illness. Maggie Walters was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder) 30 years ago. On the outside, she is like...
by NRB | 14 Aug 2024 | Non-fiction |
Fintan O’Toole takes a fresh look at the world’s most famous playwright and the resonances his plays hold for our own time. Fintan O’Toole takes issue with the way Shakespeare has commonly been taught and discussed since the nineteenth century. In particular, he...
by NRB | 13 Aug 2024 | Non-fiction |
Ariane Beeston’s memoir chronicles her experience of postpartum psychosis, a devastating but little-understood condition. Because I’m Not Myself, You See casts a spotlight on an issue I knew nothing about. Postpartum psychosis is the most severe form of postpartum...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]