Book Review: Long Half-life: The Nuclear Industry in Australia

Jessica Urwin reviews Ian Lowe’s new book, Long Half-life: The Nuclear Industry in Australia (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2021), $34.99, 248 pp. The long half-life of radioactive materials has presented a fundamental challenge to generations of scientists, politicians, and national and global communities alike. With a half-life of up to 4.5 billion years for uranium-238, […]

Q & A with Alexis Bergantz, author of French Connection

In this author Q&A, Bethany Keats interviews Alexis Bergantz about his latest book, French Connection According to the blurb, this is a “little known” history. Why hasn’t it been told before? Why is it worth telling now? For a long time ‘the French’ have been written about as part of an older historiography of […]

Author Q&A with Catherine Fisher

Bethany Keats interviews Catherine Fisher, the author of Sound Citizens: Australian Women Broadcasters Claim their Voice, 1923–1956 (ANU Press) Why has it taken so long to acknowledge the complex history of women in broadcasting in Australia? Like much of women’s history, the contributions of women to broadcasting have been largely ignored as they were not […]

Book Review – The New Academic: How to Write, Present and Profile Your Amazing Research to the World

Joshua Black reviews a new book by Simon Clews, The New Academic: How to Write, Present and Profile Your Amazing Research to the World. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2021. There are three questions that can trigger a deep panic on the part of a PhD candidate. The first is “when are you going to finish?” The […]

Q&A with Carolyn Collins, author of Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War

Jacqui Baker interviews Carolyn Collins about her new book Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War. Congratulations on the publication of your fascinating book, Carolyn! You wrote that you came across Save Our Sons while researching a different topic and time period. What were you researching at the time and how […]

Marama Whyte reviews Elizabeth Becker’s ‘You Don’t Belong Here’

Dr Marama Whyte reviews Elizabeth Becker’s new book about three women who reported on the Vietnam War, You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War (Carlton: Black Inc., 2021). There are countless places in Australian society where women have been told—explicitly or implicitly—that they don’t belong. The news media has […]

Graeme Davison reviews Elizabeth Farrelly’s ‘Killing Sydney’

In our latest article, Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison reviews Elizabeth Farrelly’s, Killing Sydney: The Fight for a City’s Soul. Elizabeth Farrelly is Sydney’s resident prophetess, its staunchest champion and fiercest critic. She is its eyes and ears, its questioning mind, tender heart and steely public conscience. For thirty years, as a columnist in […]

Book Review – The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands

Our Books Editor, Lyndon Megarrity, reviews a new collection edited by Graeme Smith and Terence Wesley-Smith, about Australia, China and the Pacific region: The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands, ANU Press, Canberra 2021. A nation’s foreign policy tends to be broad, consisting of strategies and objectives that sometimes complement each other, and, […]

Q&A with Barry Leithhead, author of A Vision for Australia’s Health: Dr Cecil Cook at Work

Cecil Evelyn Aufrere (known as ‘Mick’) Cook was born in Sussex, England in 1897 and moved with his family to Barcaldine in central Queensland at the turn of the twentieth century. Can you describe the main influences on Cook during his upbringing, and how they shaped his subsequent career in public health? Cook’s mother and […]

Book Review – A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia: Genesis, Impact and Future

As Australians have watched the crisis of democracy in the United States, we have begun to appreciate more fully our system of compulsory voting. Following Judith Brett’s excellent study From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage (see our interview with the author here), Matteo Bonotti and Paul Strangio have produced a new collection of essays about […]

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