by NRB | 14 May 2019 | Non-fiction |
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...
by NRB | 26 Mar 2019 | Non-fiction |
Award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent has written books about Beatrice Davis, Hephzibah Menuhin and Julia Gillard, but here she tells a much more personal story of her relationship with the writer Kenneth Cook. Jacqueline Kent’s memoir is the story of a love...
by NRB | 19 Jun 2018 | Non-fiction |
The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the new biography of Australia’s second, fifth and seventh Prime Minister, is a magnificent sweep of a book that demanded to be written. Deakin has been the subject of previous biographies and author Judith Brett quickly establishes her points...
by NRB | 20 Oct 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
This may seem to be an unusual heading given my stated political leanings and the observable political facts, but bear with me. It’s based on a single premise, which will become clear. Turnbull, although he claims to have been raised in somewhat straitened...
by NRB | 8 Nov 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I used to get the news from a combination of reading the broadsheets, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian, listening to ABC radio and watching the 7pm ABC television news. With my eyesight now making reading papers too difficult (I maintain, without objective...
by NRB | 11 Jul 2013 | Non-fiction |
Leaks, rumours, polls and deniability: Kerry-Anne Walsh paints an ugly picture of Kevin Rudd’s road back to the prime ministership. This book, which details the covert media campaign run by Kevin Rudd and his supporters over the course of the Gillard government, went...
by NRB | 11 Oct 2012 | Non-fiction |
He’s anti-abortion and his career owes a debt to Alan Jones. Does Tony Abbott have a problem with women? There’s an unsettling recent tradition of the political subjects of Quarterly Essays meeting with ill fortune. Think of Annabel Crabb’s profile of then-Opposition...