RICHARD DENNISS Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Richard Denniss provides a chilling analysis of the ploys our politicians use to govern in the interests of everyone but the public. Public choice theory employs basic economic analysis to posit that public officials, such as politicians, are self-interested. There is...
IAN McEWAN What We Can Know. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
How will the future judge us? Ian McEwan’s new novel looks back at our world from the perspective of 2119. In a year that has already delivered some fascinating climate fiction, one of England’s best, Ian McEwan, enters the fray. What We Can Know is a book about a...
JENNIFER MILLS Salvage. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
The new novel from the author of Dyschronia and The Airways is climate fiction focussed on human adaptability. There is plenty going on in Australia at the moment that reflects the impacts of climate change. Massive bushfires, years-long droughts, tropical cyclones...
DAVID LINDENMAYER The Great Forest; MEG LOWMAN The Arbornaut. Reviewed by Ann Skea
David Lindenmayer’s homage to the beauty of the Victorian Central Highlands and Meg Lowman’s memoir of a career spent among the treetops both explore the importance of our forests. These two books are very different but the purpose of both is the same: to...
CLARE MOLETA Unsheltered. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Clare Moleta’s novel canvases big questions as a mother searches for her child in a hostile landscape. The opening scene of Clare Moleta’s debut novel describes two farmers standing in the rain. Their daughter runs towards them – she’s scared; she’s five years...
JAMES BRADLEY Ghost Species. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
Ghost Species, James Bradley’s terrifyingly relevant seventh novel, is On the Beach for a globally warmed generation. Its proposed roadmap of where humankind’s false belief we’re in control will lead us is bleak but beautiful, its climate mayday embedded within a...
PHILIP CHUBB Power Failure: The inside story of climate politics under Rudd and Gillard. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
How did the politics of climate change become so intractable? Power Failure gives an account of the Rudd–Gillard years – a pertinent reminder as Australia goes to the polls in 2019. Again, something is in the air. It is the acrid tang of a looming election. With it...
ROBERT MANNE On Borrowed Time. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
From asylum seekers to politics, climate change and the personal challenges of dealing with cancer, Robert Manne’s essays are a rich canvas and urge us to interrogate prejudice and injustice wherever they threaten to take root. When Robert Manne, Emeritus...
TIM FLANNERY Sunlight and Seaweed: An argument for how to feed, power and clean up the world. Reviewed by Tom Patterson
Tim Flannery sends us an urgent but optimistic message in Sunlight and Seaweed. Out of the ashes of investigative newspaper journalism little books have arisen: non-fiction, novella-length essays on topical subjects. Tim Flannery isn’t a journalist,...
JAMES BRADLEY Clade. Reviewed by Keith Stevenson
James Bradley’s new novel reveals a frightening future that grows more possible day by day. A near-future novel that uses the devastating effects of climate change as its setting and yet isn’t a complete downer: that’s quite an achievement, particularly as it also...
ELIZABETH KOLBERT The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history. Reviewed by Bec Crew
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...
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