by NRB | 29 Apr 2014 | Non-fiction |
This book details what may be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. There is nothing more terrifying than the irreversible. Whether it’s an old family photo lost in a move, the death of a loved one, or the trust...
by NRB | 24 Apr 2014 | Non-fiction |
The English class system helped Cold War spy Kim Philby, who used his friendships with other agents to thwart their operations. Back when I was working at the National Times, I had the good fortune to meet two men – David Leitch and Phillip Knightley – who’d written...
by NRB | 17 Apr 2014 | Non-fiction |
Gabrielle Carey searches for clues to the life of Randolph Stow in this treasure hunt of family memoir and literary history. In her determination to ‘know’ Julian Randolph Stow – ‘Mick’ to his family and friends – Carey journeys through both...
by NRB | 15 Apr 2014 | Non-fiction |
Should religion be part of children’s education? And what kinds of religion are being taught in schools? Marion Maddox makes her case for a more secular system. Australians have never been satisfied with the way religion has been handled in education, but we have...
by NRB | 27 Mar 2014 | Non-fiction |
‘Fantastic nude profile plastered in central Tassie’: (13 letters)* – if you don’t know where to start, or even if you do, this is the book for you. David Astle – better known perhaps as the Sydney Morning Herald’s cryptic crossword devil-incarnate ‘DA’ – has been...
by NRB | 13 Mar 2014 | Non-fiction |
More social history than biography, this fascinating book brings to life the glamorous years between the world wars. Born in 1895 on a property near Goulburn, New South Wales, Sheila Chisholm spent her childhood like most other Australians: cavorting outdoors, getting...
by NRB | 11 Mar 2014 | Non-fiction |
The full significance of the security documents Edward Snowden leaked has yet to emerge; this fast-paced account tells the story so far. No one knew who Edward Snowden was in May 2013 when he scraped 1.7 million classified documents from the National Security Agency...
by NRB | 4 Mar 2014 | Non-fiction |
David Malouf’s absorbing essays, full of erudition and with his trademark lucid prose, engage with the troubled issue of Australian identity. In this fascinating collection of essays, written between 1984 and 2010, David Malouf circles around that Australian...
by NRB | 10 Feb 2014 | Non-fiction |
This ‘shatteringly beautiful’ memoir of a mother forcibly separated from her baby son won the Non-Fiction prize at the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards. It is the summer of 1950. On a railway station in Cairns, in broad daylight, an infant is snatched from...
by NRB | 6 Feb 2014 | Non-fiction |
Paul Ham provides a readable and fair-minded corrective to the history wars being waged in the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. If you have ever stood by the grave of an Australian, or any other soldier, who died in the First World War and wondered at the...
by NRB | 4 Feb 2014 | Non-fiction |
The award-winning author of Velocity and Dreamtime Alice returns with the searing, soul-baring memoir of her marriage to Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Mandy Sayer is 22 and still tap-dancing on street corners when she meets Yusef Komunyakaa during...
by NRB | 21 Jan 2014 | Non-fiction |
Goths, zines and inner-city life: this memoir of 1990s Sydney is nostalgic and multi-layered – and fun. One of the ways I love to torture myself is by reading about people who are immensely more creative, daring and productive than me. Writerly envy can be delicious,...
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