BRADLEY TREVOR GREIVE and CAROLINE LANER BREURE Broken Girl. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
This memoir of a young woman’s recovery from a traumatic brain injury becomes an unputdownable detective story. Broken Girl, Caroline Laner Breure’s memoir written with Bradley Trevor Greive, opens with light, breezy snapshots of a young woman ready to burst forth...
MARY GARDEN My Father’s Suitcase. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
Mary Garden’s memoir reveals her physical and mental abuse at the hands of her sister – and an extraordinary case of plagiarism. Mary Garden has written a fascinating and brutally frank memoir of her troubled relationship with her sister and the impact it has had on...
RORY STEWART Politics on the Edge. Reviewed by Tom Patterson
Rory Stewart’s memoir of his ten years as a Conservative MP reveals the instability of UK politics in the decade to 2020. At the age of 36, after stints as the deputy governor of two provinces in Iraq, having founded a successful charity in Afghanistan, written a...
MELINDA HAM The Lucky Ones. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
These stories of refugees who have found new lives in Australia encompass enormous suffering, courage, and determination to survive. ‘We are not numbers or statistics. We fled from our homelands because we were standing up for what we believed was right. We had...
SCOTT EYMAN Charlie Chaplin vs America. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Cancel culture is nothing new: Scott Eyman’s biography shows how Charlie Chaplin’s fame was no protection when the tide turned against him. I flip-flopped into success from being a frightened, lonely person … Success brought life into focus and showed me the...
CHRISTOPHER POLLON Pitfall: The race to mine the world’s most vulnerable places. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Renewable energy requires significant quantities of minerals. Can mining companies be trusted to supply them responsibly? Christopher Pollon is a Canadian journalist who has spent the past two decades ‘writing about natural resources, including the environmental and...
GRAEME DAVISON My Grandfather’s Clock: Four centuries of a British-Australian family. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Graeme Davison’s book is an elegant waltz through one family’s history and its connection to large events, from immigration to world wars. One of Australia’s leading historians, Graeme Davison notes in his introduction that ‘history is usually written forwards’...
SARAH OGILVIE The Dictionary People. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sarah Ogilvie tells the stories of the thousands of volunteers whose assiduous reporting created the Oxford English Dictionary. About eight years ago, Sarah Ogilvie was making a nostalgic visit to the Dictionary archive in the basement of the Oxford University Press....
LOL TOLHURST Goth: A history. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
Lol Tolhurst reflects on Goth as a post-punk cultural movement, its resonance with the Romantic era, and its enduring appeal. Lol Tolhurst’s first memoir, Cured: The tale of two imaginary boys, was his account of The Cure’s early days. Tolhurst was one of the band’s...
RACHEL MADDOW Prequel: An American fight against fascism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Rachel Maddow’s account of how Nazism gained a foothold among US politicians in the 1930s holds lessons for the present. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in early 1933, he embarked on a long-term plan not only to keep the United States out of a future...
VIET THANH NGUYEN A Man of Two Faces: A memoir, a history, a memorial. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
The Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer reflects on his life and what it means to be a Vietnamese refugee in America. In 2015 Viet Thanh Nguyen published The Sympathizer, a novel that explored the Viet Nam war, particularly the involvement of America,...
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