by NRB | 1 Aug 2023 | Non-fiction |
Walter Marsh charts the origins of Murdoch’s media playbook and political connections in 1950s Adelaide. Walter Marsh is a journalist based in Adelaide, the city where Rupert Murdoch’s empire began when he took control of Adelaide’s afternoon daily paper The...
by NRB | 27 Jul 2023 | Non-fiction |
Frieda Hughes’ memoir of life with magpie George includes a generous dose of magpie mayhem. George, the baby magpie Frieda Hughes rescues and falls in love with, is, as she readily admits, ‘a little eating-shitting machine’. ‘Don’t write the grotty stuff,’ said a...
by NRB | 18 Jul 2023 | Non-fiction |
Two new books explore the issues behind the forthcoming referendum to create a Voice to Parliament for First Nations Australians. Later this year we will be asked to participate in a referendum to alter the Australian Constitution to include the following (Section...
by NRB | 11 Jul 2023 | Non-fiction |
Jennifer Ackerman provides insights into owl-human relations and what we know about these storied birds. The wise old owl lived in the oak The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke the more he heard, Why can’t we be like that wise old bird? How wise is an...
by NRB | 29 Jun 2023 | Non-fiction |
Stan Grant remains committed to responding with love as he interrogates Whiteness in Australia and around the world. In The Queen is Dead Stan Grant uses the death of the person he calls ‘The White Queen’ as a springboard to discuss not only fundamental questions...
by NRB | 20 Jun 2023 | Non-fiction |
Like its predecessors Girt and True Girt, David Hunt’s third volume is a riotous romp through Australian history. Covering the late 19th century in the lead up to Federation, Girt Nation brings the makers and shapers of our country to not-so-glorious life as it notes...
by NRB | 30 May 2023 | Non-fiction |
David Scrimgeour charts local successes and government failures for Aboriginal people in the Western Desert. While there has been a growing awareness over recent decades, it would still be reasonable to suggest that most non-Indigenous Australians have only limited...
by NRB | 18 May 2023 | Non-fiction |
Josephine Baker, the most glamorous and highly paid female entertainer of her time, was also an Allied spy in World War II. In The Flame of Resistance Damien Lewis has drawn on a profusion of new historical material, including previously undisclosed letters and...
by NRB | 12 May 2023 | Flashback Friday, Non-fiction |
First published in 2008, Esther Woolfson’s Corvus is part memoir, part natural history, and conveys her fascination with the birds living in her home. As I write, the bird is behind me on her branch. From time to time she mutters, a sound softly bearing the imprint of...
by NRB | 20 Apr 2023 | Non-fiction |
Julianne Schultz finds difficult truths – and some hope – in her examination of the Australian psyche. Is it a good thing to be racist? For one group of people to believe they are superior to others and to act accordingly in the name of creating a ‘perfect society’?...
by NRB | 2 Mar 2023 | Non-fiction |
Dreamers and Schemers provides an expert overview of Australia’s political history. There is always a place for big history such as this. Near the end of his introduction, author Frank Bongiorno outlines his approach: The book begins in deep time, among Indigenous...
by NRB | 9 Feb 2023 | Non-fiction |
The author of The Magician is also a skilled essayist, ranging across the personal, religion, and literature. In the first essay in this collection, ‘Cancer: My Part in Its Downfall’, Colm Toibin describes being diagnosed with testicular cancer. At first he ignores...
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