CHRISTOPHER RAJA Into the Suburbs: extract
This week’s extract is from Christopher Raja’s memoir Into the Suburbs, a story of immigration and family, ambition and tragedy. It is also a resonant portrait of Australia through the eyes of an outsider. Christopher Raja spent the first eleven years of his life in...
STEPHEN GARTON The Cost of War. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
This revised edition of Stephen Garton’s The Cost of War, on the impact of war on individuals and society, remains all too relevant. Let us begin with the proposition that war is hell; that those who become involved in it become agents of terror, or victims, or...
SOPHIE McNEILL: interviewed by Kurt Johnson
Kurt Johnson talks to Sophie McNeill about her new book We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know: Dispatches from an age of impunity. I interviewed ABC foreign correspondent Sophie McNeill about her new book We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know as she was driving with her children in the...
KATE LEAVER Good Dog. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
In Good Dog Kate Leaver writes in praise of having dogs in our lives, whether for their health benefits or their loyalty and companionship. When 65-year-old Andy Szasz ended up in hospital with pneumonia and influenza, the doctors put him in a medically induced coma...
ANDREW RM SMITH No Way But To Fight: George Foreman and the business of boxing. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Andrew RM Smith tells the story of George Foreman’s career in and out of the ring and reveals the workings of the business of boxing. George Foreman is a two-time heavyweight boxing champion. The first occasion was in 1973 when he knocked out Joe...
ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT How to be Australian: extract
This week we bring you an extract from Ashley Kalagian Blunt’s memoir How to be Australian: An outsider’s view of life and love Down Under. In 2011 Ashley convinced her husband Steve to leave their native Canada – specifically, the city of Winnipeg,...
TANYA HEASLIP An Alice Girl. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Tanya Heaslip is ‘An Alice Girl’ and she reveals what life was like growing up on a remote property north of Alice Springs. This new memoir from the author of Alice to Prague (reviewed here) starts dramatically. The author, her youngest brother,...
GRAEME DAVISON City Dreamers: The urban imagination in Australia. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Graeme Davison’s City Dreamers celebrates the visionaries of urban planning and looks at how their dreams have evolved. Historian Graeme Davison has spent much of his academic life thinking about cities, as is evident from his many essays, and especially from...
MALCOLM TURNBULL A Bigger Picture. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
Malcom Turnbull’s expansive autobiography, A Bigger Picture, is as much a rebuttal of critics of his prime ministership as it is a personal memoir. In it, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia defends his legacy, savages his opponents and describes a modern Australia...
TOM SEGEV A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion. Reviewed by Renee Bittoun
Tom Segev’s biography illuminates the life and complexities of David Ben-Gurion, a central but divisive figure in Israel’s history. Ask Jews in Australia their views on Ben-Gurion and you will often get the reply that he is ‘a lion’, ‘a hero’,...
ROGER BELL In Apartheid’s Shadow: Australian Race Politics and South Africa, 1945-1975. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
The anti-apartheid movement in Australia had more of an impact on policies at home than is usually recognised. In his prologue Roger Bell refers to his childhood in country New South Wales where Aborigines lived ‘on the fringes of town’; something akin to the...
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