Book Review – The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it

Book Review – The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it

Christopher Waters reviews Graeme Turner’s The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2023).   In the last fifteen years several books have been published which start from the position that Australia has run off the rails as a nation over the last […]
Book Review – Australia’s Pivot to India

Book Review – Australia’s Pivot to India

Liam Detering reviews Andrew Charlton’s Australia’s Pivot to India, (Collingwood: Black Inc, 2023).   Australia and India’s relationship has shown signs of maturation over the last decade after a history of false starts in the relationship between the two countries. Therefore, Andrew Charlton’s Australia’s Pivot to India, comes at a timely juncture in the Australia-India […]
Book Review – Killing for Country: A Family History

Book Review – Killing for Country: A Family History

Jonathan Richards reviews David Marr’s Killing for Country: A Family History (Melbourne: Black Inc Books, 2023).   Racial violence is a touchy subject in settler-colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) because some non-Indigenous people seem more concerned by the accusation than the action. Perhaps this can be explained by lived experience: the […]
Book Review – Double Nation: A History of Australian Art

Book Review – Double Nation: A History of Australian Art

Emerita Professor Catherine Speck reviews Ian McLean’s Double Nation: A History of Australian Art, (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 303pp.   Ian McLean’s new history of Australian art, Double Nation, a companion volume to his 2016 book Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art, is a refreshing and engaging read. He hasn’t attempted to do […]
Book Review – My Father’s Shadow

Book Review – My Father’s Shadow

Professor Emerita Joan Beaumont reviews Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo’s My Father’s Shadow: A Memoir, (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2023). ISBN 9781922979186   Samuel Goldbloom (1919-1999) was a prominent figure in Australian left-wing politics during the Cold War decades. A professed socialist, he was also a covert and deeply loyal member of the Communist Party. Other radicals […]
Book Reviews – Revealing Secrets and The Factory

Book Reviews – Revealing Secrets and The Factory

Peter Edwards reviews John Blaxland and Clare Birgin’s Revealing Secrets: An Unofficial History of Australian Signals Intelligence & The Advent of Cyber (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2023) and John Fahey’s The Factory: The Official History of the Australian Signals Directorate, Volume 1, 1947 to 1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2023).   The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), […]
Q&A with Jordana Silverstein, author of Cruel Care: A History of Children at Our Borders

Q&A with Jordana Silverstein, author of Cruel Care: A History of Children at Our Borders

Jacquelyn Baker interviews Jordana Silverstein about her book, Cruel Care: A History of Children at Our Borders (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2023).   Congratulations on the publication of Cruel Care, Jordy! I learnt so much about the history of Australia’s immigration policies and found it difficult to put down. The back cover of your book […]
Book Review – Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country

Book Review – Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country

James Watson reviews Ryan Cropp’s Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country (Collingwood: La Trobe University Press, 2023)   Did Donald Horne have anything meaningful to say? It’s a harsh question of a man who wrote more than two dozen books, edited multiple literary journals at once, and published countless articles, essays, and reviews; […]
Book Review – Everything you need to know about the Voice

Book Review – Everything you need to know about the Voice

Tim Rowse reviews Megan Davis and George Williams’s Everything you need to know about the Voice (NewSouth Publishing 2023).   This book is a sequel to the authors’ Everything you need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2021). The ‘Voice’ sequel includes much that was in the ‘Statement’ book: a history of […]
Book Review – Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires

Book Review – Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires

Lyndon Megarrity reviews Sally Young’s Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2023).   The underlying theme of this fine publication is “Perception becomes reality”. Whereas twenty-first century journalists and media moguls have created a self-fulfilling prophecy by repeatedly talking down newspapers as “a dying medium”, newspaper owners between 1941 and […]
Book Review – Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity?

Book Review – Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity?

Joshua Black reviews Richard King, Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity? (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2023).   “I don’t know how to rearrange society to make it just and sustainable” says author, critic and poet Richard King in the final chapter of his new philosophical treatise Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our […]
Book Review – The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022: Australian Commonwealth Administration Series

Book Review – The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022: Australian Commonwealth Administration Series

Lyndon Megarrity reviews Brendan McCaffrie, Michelle Grattan and Chris Wallace’s (eds) The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022: Australian Commonwealth Administration Series, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2023), pp. viii +304.   The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022 is the fourteenth volume in the Australian Commonwealth Administration series of publications. This series brings together the contributions […]