Tributes to Jean Bedford
Writer and editor Jean Bedford died after a long illness on 11 December 2025. She leaves a considerable literary legacy. Author of eight novels, including Sister Kate and a trio of Anna Southwood detective novels, two collections of short stories (one written with...
LUKE KEMP Goliath’s Curse: The history and future of societal collapse. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Human history has seen many civilisations rise and fall. Luke Kemp contemplates the fate of ours in Goliath’s Curse. This is a monumental work of scholarship that raises fundamental questions about who we are, where we are going, and whether or not the next few...
RICHARD DENNISS Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Richard Denniss provides a chilling analysis of the ploys our politicians use to govern in the interests of everyone but the public. Public choice theory employs basic economic analysis to posit that public officials, such as politicians, are self-interested. There is...
MARIANA ENRIQUEZ Somebody is Walking on Your Grave. Reviewed by Ann Skea
No casual tombstone tourist, Mariana Enriquez details her fascination with cemeteries, their histories and their famous residents. Mariana Enriquez is a self-confessed connoisseur of cemeteries: a taphophile. Since 1979, she has travelled the world, visiting...
DAVID PRICE The Shameful Isles. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
David Price’s history of Western Australia’s lock hospitals and the ‘treatments’ meted out to Aboriginal people is shocking and important. There are large areas of our nation’s history that non-Indigenous Australians prefer not to think about, regarding them as merely...
BRIAN STODDART Playing the Game: How cricket made Barbados. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Brian Stoddart’s multi-faceted account of a small island’s cricket history is a tribute to a time when it was the powerhouse of the game. The peak years of West Indies cricket, both in the mid-1960s and in a period of unbroken dominance from 1976 to 1995, saw plenty...
GRAEME TURNER Broken: Universities, politics and the public good. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Australia’s universities are in crisis; in Broken Graeme Turner provides a diagnosis and a proposal for reform. Monash University has begun publishing a series of short monographs under the general title In The National Interest, which address contemporary...
EVAN OSNOS The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the ultrarich. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
In these essays Evan Osnos makes the case that the ultrarich, solely focussed on themselves and their wealth, have abandoned America. Evan Osnos is a staff writer with the New Yorker who began his career as a commentator on politics and foreign affairs. In more recent...
JENNETTE MCCURDY I’m Glad My Mom Died. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Jennette McCurdy was a child star, but behind the scenes her mother’s ambition manifested in control and abuse. It would be apt to describe Jennette McCurdy’s memoir about growing up as a child star in Los Angeles as a rollercoaster because Disneyland features often....
OWEN CLAYTON and IAIN MCINTYRE (eds) The Popular Wobbly: Selected writings of T-Bone Slim. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
T-Bone Slim’s critiques of early twentieth-century America resonate with contemporary US attacks on healthcare, unions, and immigrants. Born Matti Valentin Huhta in 1880 to Finnish immigrant parents in Ashtabula, Ohio, T-Bone Slim was a man who lived on the margins –...
TRACEY LEE HOLMES The Eye of the Dragonfly. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
In this memoir of her life as a sports journalist, Tracey Holmes views the human condition through the lens of sport. Tracey Lee Holmes has had a long and distinguished career as a sports broadcaster. She began her career with the ABC in the late 1980s, and has...
Recent Posts
FIONA WRIGHT Kill Your Boomers. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell16 April 2026Poet and essayist Fiona Wright’s funny and furious debut novel tackles [ … ]
INGA SIMPSON Once We Were Wildlife. Reviewed by Ann Skea14 April 2026These stories from the author of The Thinning and Understory are driven by [ … ]
ALAN FYFE The Cross Thieves. Reviewed by Paul Anderson9 April 2026Alan Fyfe’s second novel is a zany, punchy, circuitous literary picaresque set [ … ]
RACHEL PERKINS, STEPHEN GAPPS, MINA MURRAY and HENRY REYNOLDS (Eds) The Australian Wars. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck7 April 2026The Australian Wars presents the confronting facts of white settlement, the [ … ]