by NRB | 29 Jun 2021 | Non-fiction |
Save Our Sons and Radicals remind us that the anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s were many and varied, and so too were their campaigns. These two books canvass the decade 1965-75, during which the Vietnam War dominated political life in Australia. We had...
by NRB | 4 May 2021 | Non-fiction |
Cassandra Pybus places Truganini centre stage in Tasmania’s history, restoring the truth of what happened to her and her people. The subtitle Cassandra Pybus has chosen is a powerful pointer to how she sees Truganini: not as the ‘last of the Tasmanian...
by NRB | 21 Apr 2020 | Non-fiction |
Anne Scrimgeour’s history of the Pilbara Aboriginal Strike recounts a pivotal moment in Australian history when white pastoralists had to start paying their Aboriginal workers. In 1946 Aboriginal workers on the remote sheep stations of the Pilbara walked off the...
by NRB | 27 Aug 2019 | Non-fiction |
In this lively and affectionate social history of place, Pam Menzies reveals Port Kembla to be both remarkable and ordinary – a driver of the nation as well as being, like so many places in Australia, on the receiving end of change and globalisation. The book is...
by NRB | 30 Jul 2019 | Non-fiction |
Australian politicians might rank low in public esteem but as this incisive book from Judith Brett reveals, our system of voting is admirable compared to the rest of the world’s democracies and certainly superior to those of the United Kingdom and the United States....
by NRB | 31 Jan 2019 | Non-fiction |
The stories here of the European settlers’ progress from trespassers to squatters to established pastoralists are absorbing, fascinating and well-told. The Squatters tells the stories of the newcomers who, from the time of the First Fleet’s arrival in Australia,...
by NRB | 30 Oct 2018 | Non-fiction |
In this book Henry Reynolds shows that today’s white activists for justice for Indigenous people are inheritors of a long tradition. Reynolds’s first book about Aboriginal and white relations, The Other Side of the Frontier, was published in 1981. For many people it...
by NRB | 21 Aug 2018 | Non-fiction |
Nowra’s affection for his suburb is all through this book – offering Woolloomooloo as both a place of refuge and an ideal to aspire to. In the mid-19th century, a new type of dandy appeared in Paris. They were rich enough to be idle and could be found...
by NRB | 7 Aug 2018 | Non-fiction |
Leviathan and Girt are engaging because they do what official histories shy away from – they spin a ripping yarn. We Australians have a strained relationship with our past. As the ongoing culture wars rage ever louder, it might seem that we respond to our history...
by NRB | 12 Apr 2018 | Fiction |
An Australian Pride and Prejudice? This love story spans race and class in colonial Australia. In Kim Kelly’s new novel, her seventh, a simple scaffold of romantic historical fiction allows for a more sophisticated commentary on race, privilege and the place...
by NRB | 13 Dec 2016 | Non-fiction |
In True Girt Hunt successfully blends his tongue-in-cheekiness and sometimes dark humour with detailed research. Following on from the death of Governor Macquarie, the cliffhanger ending of his 2013 bestseller Girt, Hunt’s new volume opens with the colonisation of...
by NRB | 6 Sep 2016 | Fiction |
Ben Pobjie’s Error Australis gives new insights into the reality show of Australian history. Professional recapper Ben Pobjie has summarised the entirety of the long-running series Australia, which remains on-air and popular around the world. This...