TIMOTHY SNYDER On Freedom. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Historian Timothy Snyder asserts that freedom is something we must work for – and collective action is imperative to maintaining it. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Timothy Snyder was in Czechoslovakia, working as a graduate student in economics and studying...
SUE PRIDEAUX Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sue Prideaux separates the man from the myth in this new account of the controversial nineteenth-century French artist. Who was Paul Gauguin? Was he a ‘colonialist’; ‘the bad boy who spread syphilis around the South Seas’; a ‘defender of native vices’, a ‘subverter of...
JOE ASTON The Chairman’s Lounge. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
There’s more to Joe Aston’s book about Australia’s national carrier Qantas than access to a luxury airport lounge. From 2011 to 2023, Joe Aston wrote the highly entertaining ‘Rear Window’ column for The Australian Financial Review, and delighted in exposing the...
DAVID DUFTY Charles Todd’s Magnificent Obsession. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Many great men are remembered for only one thing, and for Charles Todd it is building the Overland Telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin in the 1870s. David Dufty’s book Charles Todd’s Magnificent Obsession is not a biography but rather a venture story set against...
AMITAV GHOSH Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s hidden histories. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Award-winning novelist Amitav Ghosh turns to non-fiction to chart the greed and racism at the heart of British and American opium sales to China. In researching his Ibis Trilogy novels – Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015) – which...
JESSICA FRIEDMANN Twenty-two Impressions: Notes from the Major Arcana. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Part memoir, part guidebook, part history, Twenty-Two Impressions shows the strangeness and wonder of the tarot. In 1442, an apprentice beats sheets of gold leaf out of a coin, 100 sheets to the florin, as dictated by the guild. This gold, together with paints made...
ERIC BEECHER The Men Who Killed the News. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
Eric Beecher’s vital new book provides a history of world journalism, good and bad, with a pessimistic view of the future. Beecher knows his territory. In his youth he was an investigative journalist at the Melbourne Age during the glory days of Graham Perkin’s...
STEVEN HAMILTON and RICHARD HOLDEN Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Australia’s Covid response may have had problems, but Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden argue that our country fared far better than others. A mere four years ago our lives were turned upside down by the Covid pandemic. For the overwhelming majority of us, Covid now...
GARETH GORE Opus. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Opus Dei likes to operate in the shadows; Gareth Gore brings its activities – including allegations of human trafficking – into the light. In 2017 Banco Popular Español, the sixth-largest bank in Spain, collapsed. Gareth Gore, a journalist with the International...
KATHERINE WILES No Autographs Please. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Katherine Wiles’ life as a professional opera singer seems glossed with sunshine in this memoir. You will sing and it will work out. You will find your place in the world. Just keep knocking on all those doors. Katherine Wiles has always had this voice in her head,...
LYNNE KELLY The Knowledge Gene. Reviewed by Lucy Sussex
Researcher Lynne Kelly explains the groundbreaking discovery of the gene that enables humans to store knowledge – and create art. What makes us human? The question is philosophic, but increasingly the answer concerns DNA. We share 98.7 per cent of our genetic matter...
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