LEAH KAMINSKY We’re all going to die: A joyful book about death. Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
Leah Kaminsky invites us to ask questions about our own attitudes and behaviours in the face of death, with the promise of a more fully lived life. To be a doctor terrified of death, writes Kaminsky, is like being a pizza chef terrified of dough. This is the problem...
Kurt Johnson The Red Wake: A hybrid of travel, history and journalism. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
The Red Wake explores the Soviet Union’s complex legacies, exposing both the West’s totalitarian narrative and Russia’s increasingly revisionist history. It was the USSR that built the world’s first power-producing nuclear reactor, beginning a period of nuclear...
HENRY REYNOLDS Unnecessary Wars. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Unnecessary Wars provides a powerful antidote to the pervasive militarising of Australian history over the past 20 years. Not how, but why, is the most compelling question posed by Henry Reynolds in this book, which examines Australian debates about war and peace,...
MELANIE JOOSTEN A Long Time Coming: Essays on old age. Reviewed by Shelley McInnis
Old age may be a long time coming, but it is coming. This eloquent collection advocates for the elderly. It was a Doris Lessing novel – specifically, Diary of a Good Neighbour – that inspired Melanie Joosten to take up social work with the idea of working with older...
COLLEEN Z BURKE The Waves Turn: a memoir. Reviewed by Jeannette Delamoir
The Waves Turn provides a valuable lens though which to explore the intertwined histories of folk music, Irish heritage, and political activism. Poet Colleen Z Burke writes in her Prologue that her autobiography offers readers a glimpse into: … the elusive,...
JOHN HILL On Being a Minister: Behind the mask. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
On Being a Minister is an ideal primer for the political class. We’re in election mode and it’s a long campaign. Plenty of politicians (aspiring and actual) are waiting to be either elected or re-elected. I think of one of my all-time favourite political quotes from...
SAMANTHA TRENOWETH (Ed) Better Than Sex: Women talk about sex and romance in the digital age. Reviewed by Annette Hughes
Better Than Sex is not just a book about the effect of the internet on relationships, but a close look at all the ways of being, meeting, relating and finding love. When I read Samantha Trenoweth’s introduction to her latest anthology Better Than Sex, I had to do a...
HELEN GARNER Everywhere I Look. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
The Helen Garner of Everywhere I Look is as contradictory as she’s ever been in this collection brimming with highlights. At the opening event of the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival, Helen Garner read from her then newly released book about the trial of Robert...
SARAH BAKEWELL At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, being, and apricot cocktails. Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
At the Existentialist Café takes us into the lives and minds of the famous European philosophers of the 20th century. John-Paul Sartre had bulgy eyes that looked off in different directions. When you sat down with him in a Paris café for a yarn about philosophy,...
VICKEN BABKENIAN and PETER STANLEY Armenia, Australia & the Great War. Reviewed by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Armenia, Australia & the Great War is a rigorously researched history that focuses on Australians’ experiences of the Armenian genocide. In 1915, just hours before the Anzac soldiers began their attack on Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire put in motion the world’s...
ALICIA SOMETIMES and NICOLE HAYES (Eds) From the Outer: Footy like you’ve never heard it. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
From the Outer, a collection of tributes to and critiques of Aussie Rules, canvasses fresh perspectives on the game its fans just call ‘footy’. This book is well named. In AFL parlance the Outer was the uncovered, and usually unfavourably vantaged, spectator...
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