Book Review: “Total Defense” and “The Contest over National Security”

Andrew Preston, Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma, 2025; and Peter Roady, The Contest over National Security: FDR, Conservatives and the struggle to claim the most powerful phrase in American politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Ma, 2024. We are fortunate […]

Book Review: No Power Greater

Liam Byrne, No Power Greater: A History of Union Action in Australia Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2025. As a labour law academic who has recently developed a strong interest in the history of labour regulation and policy in Australia, I have recently been exploring and enjoying the extensive and rich labour history literature. The […]

Book Review: Debating the Nation

Review, Debating the Nation: Speeches from the House of Assembly, 1972-1975, edited by Brad Underhill, Keimelo Gima and Helen Gardner Today, 16 September, Papua New Guinea (PNG) celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence from Australian administration. Amidst the anniversary celebrations, many will look back to the events surrounding the achievement of independence and […]

Book review – Vaccine Nation

Peter Hobbins reviews Raina MacIntyre’s Vaccine Nation: Science, Reason and the Threat to 200 Years of Progress (NewSouth Publishing, 2025). Pandemics are not rational affairs. Transforming a ‘pandemic’ into a ‘panic’ seemingly takes little more than deleting three letters. Cultural and emotional shifts can be similarly rapid. Yet as we have re-learned in the […]

Book review: Albert Palazzo on the ‘Big Fix’ for Australia’s national security

Mia Martin Hobbs reviews The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security (Melbourne University Press, 2025) Six months into the second Trump presidency, Australia’s ‘great and powerful friend’ has imposed tariffs on Australian imports and stood up the Prime Minister at their only face-to-face meeting. Meanwhile, the AUKUS agreement – conceptualised by Australian politicians as the backbone […]

Book Review – Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism

Peter Hobbins reviews Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden’s Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How We Crushed the Curve but Lost the Race (UNSW Press, 2024). It makes for interesting reading when you realise that a book’s subtitle should have been ‘we told you so’. In Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism, academic economists Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden historicise […]

Book Review – Beyond the Broken Years: Australian Military History in 1000 Books

One can’t change the past, but you can choose who you get your History from. Stanley’s guidance and wisdom is an indispensable guide to navigating a crowded and often perilous field

Book review: Working for the Brand: How corporations are destroying free speech

Josh Bornstein, Working for the Brand: How corporations are destroying free speech, Scribe, 2024. On 20 December 2013, Justine Sacco, a public relations executive for InterActiveCorp, was passing through Heathrow on a flight from New York to Cape Town when she tweeted: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m white!’ […]

Book review: On Xi Jinping

Kevin Rudd, On Xi Jinping. How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024) In On Xi Jinping, a work based upon his PhD research, Kevin Rudd has provided perhaps the most thorough account yet available of the rise to dominance in China of Xi Jinping’s ideological thinking. […]

Book Review – The Cubbies: the Battle for Australia’s First Adventure Playground

The Cubbies offers a healthy reminder to educators and parents/carers alike, that patience is key as time is needed for kids to try different approaches and engage in trial and error to construct their own knowledge, work out solutions and carve out their own path.

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