Book Review – Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism

Richard Scully reviews Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, (Melbourne: Text, 2024). The understanding of French Impressionism has always been bound up with biography and with history. The reaction against an older way of doing things was crucial to the development of the ‘art of light’: a genre […]

Book Review – Preparing a Nation? The New Deal in the Villages of Papua New Guinea

Rosita Henry reviews Brad Underhill’s Preparing a Nation? The New Deal in the Villages of Papua New Guinea, (Canberra: ANU Press, 2024). I find most policy histories rather dry reading, so was a little reluctant to review this book when approached, but I have no regrets! I found the book compelling to read and […]

Carolyn Holbrook’s Address at the Ballarat Reform League Charter’s 170th Anniversary

This is an edited version of a speech given by Associate Professor Carolyn Holbrook to the Ballarat Reform League Charter 170th Anniversary St Paul’s Church Ballarat, Monday 11 November 2024 Thank you very much for this invitation to address you on this important occasion of the 170th anniversary of the declaration of the Ballarat […]

Book Review – Rex Patterson: A Voice for the North

Sybil Nolan reviews Lyndon Megarrity’s Rex Patterson: A Voice for the North (Connor Court Publishing, 2024) Gough Whitlam made the early 1970s an exciting time to be an idealistic teenager in country Queensland. Whenever his large head loomed into view on our small black-and-white TV at home, we waited for him to say something […]

Book Review – Repeat: A Warning from History

Wayne Bradshaw reviews Dennis Glover’s Repeat: A Warning from History (Black Inc, 2024) Dennis Glover’s new book, Repeat: A Warning from History, is the latest work to take its place in the committed tradition of polemical writing against the resurgence of a worldview that Umberto Eco called ‘Ur-Fascism’ in his 1997 essay of the […]

Book Review – Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities

Andrew G. Bonnell reviews Andrew Saniga and Robert Freestone’s (eds) Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities, (Crawley, WA: UWA Publishing, 2023). There is a growing literature on the history of Australian universities, albeit one that is uneven in quality, with some recent commemorative works closer to public relations puffery than scholarly history. In this literature, […]

Q&A with Rose Butler and Eve Vincent, authors of Love Across Class

Jacquelyn Baker interviews Rose Butler and Eve Vincent about their book Love Across Class (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2024). Congratulation on the publication of your book, Rose and Eve! I found it to be an insightful and thought-provoking read that sparked conversations about class with my partner. This is not just a book about […]

‘Survival sex’, ‘mob justice’ and more: the first independent study of abuse in the Australian Defence Force is damning

Mia Martin Hobbs, Deakin University “Participants expected the costs of war, but they were not prepared for the costs of service,” explain Ben Wadham and James Connor in their new book, the first independent study of military institutional abuse in the Australian Defence Force. Warrior, Soldier, Brigand draws on interviews with nearly 70 survivors and […]

Book Review – The Chinese in Papua New Guinea: Past, Present and Future

Claire Lowrie reviews Anna Hayes, Rosita Henry and Michael Wood’s (eds) The Chinese in Papua New Guinea: Past, Present and Future, (Canberra: ANU Press, 2024) China’s increasing engagement with countries across the Pacific region is cause for concern amongst policy makers in Australia and the US. It is also the subject of regular, and […]

Book Review – Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague

Richard Trembath reviews Philippa Nicole Barr’s Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague*, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). ISSN 2632-1068 (online) I was unaware of the Cambridge Element series until I accepted the offer of reviewing this recent addition to their program. Having taught for many years in university courses based on the […]

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