JUDITH BRETT From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Australian politicians might rank low in public esteem but as this incisive book from Judith Brett reveals, our system of voting is admirable compared to the rest of the world’s democracies and certainly superior to those of the United Kingdom and the United States....
PETER LEWIS Webtopia: The world wide wreck of tech and how to make the net work. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Peter Lewis examines the history and impact of the internet in Australia, and what might happen next. It is curious how often the story of the Soviet Union is invoked to anchor the story of the internet. There are many parallels between the two. For one, their...
BEHROUZ BOOCHANI No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
This award-winning memoir is a cry from the heart, revealing, through poetry and prose, the brutality of indefinite detention on Manus Island. Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish/Iranian asylum seeker who sought to come to Australia on a leaky, unseaworthy boat. He was...
ROY HAY Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century: They did not come from nowhere. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
The high visibility of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League is well recognised and their skills admired. But as Roy Hay argues in the pithy subtitle of his penetrating new history, they did not come from nowhere. At the outset I should disclose that...
PHILIP CHUBB Power Failure: The inside story of climate politics under Rudd and Gillard. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
How did the politics of climate change become so intractable? Power Failure gives an account of the Rudd–Gillard years – a pertinent reminder as Australia goes to the polls in 2019. Again, something is in the air. It is the acrid tang of a looming election. With it...
WENDY ELLIOTT Grit and Grace in a World Gone Mad: Humanitarianism in Talas, Turkey, 1908–1923. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
The early 20th century saw terrible suffering as the Ottoman Empire came to an end; these accounts of American and Canadian relief workers bear witness to events in Turkey during this period, including the Armenian genocide. The Young Turk Revolution succeeded...
MICHELLE ARROW The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia. Reviewed by Kathy Gollan
The 1970s in Australia was more than flared jeans and satin pantsuits: in this overview Michelle Arrow charts the decade’s transformation of the social and political landscape. The seventies was a decade of upheavals in political, economic and industrial life....
JESSICA NORTH Esther. Reviewed by Ann Skea
This biography recounts how Esther went from being convicted in London’s Old Bailey and transported to Botany Bay with the First Fleet, to becoming First Lady of the colony. Do not be misled, as I was, by the cover of this book, which shows a young...
JACQUELINE KENT Beyond Words: A year with Kenneth Cook. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
Award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent has written books about Beatrice Davis, Hephzibah Menuhin and Julia Gillard, but here she tells a much more personal story of her relationship with the writer Kenneth Cook. Jacqueline Kent’s memoir is the story of a love...
ROYCE KURMELOVS Boom and Bust: The rise and fall of the mining industry, greed and the impact on everyday Australians. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Royce Kurmelovs shines a light on recent history, exploring the personal stories of those directly involved in mining and the wider impacts of the industry in Australia. You would be hard pressed to find an Australian who has not invested in mining. Some have...
ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Miss Muriel Matters: The Australian actress who became one of London’s most famous suffragists. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Robert Wainwright’s life of Muriel Matters follows her from success on the Australian stage to becoming a leading suffragist in the UK campaign for votes for women. On 22 August 1905, a few hours after her last successful performance in Adelaide, Miss Muriel...
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