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Books & arts
Books & arts
Complex questions, simple answers
Martha Macintyre
28 March 2025
Can “tribal impulses” really be harnessed for the greater good?
Books & arts
Top Gere
Philippa Hawker
27 March 2025
Writer-director Paul Schrader is reunited with his
American Gigolo
star, Richard Gere, in a tale of mortality, morality and deception
Books & arts
The many meanings of Melanesia
Graeme Dobell
25 March 2025
An Australian journalist’s slow journey from Fiji to New Guinea
Books & arts
Stitches and holes
Anne-Marie Condé
24 March 2025
A new biography wrestles with the challenge of capturing a decade and a half of Miles Franklin’s life
Books & arts
Stuck in the middle
Michael Gill
17 March 2025
An American journalist lifts the veil on a company that might exemplify China’s future
Books & arts
Comfort ye my people
Andrew Ford
13 March 2025
For writer Charles King, Handel’s
Messiah
offers “the staggering possibility that the world might turn out all right”
Books & arts
A finishing school for the nation
Frank Bongiorno
11 March 2025
New, modern and international, the
Blue Poles
purchase helped open up the world to Australia
Books & arts
Amen to ignorance
Nick Haslam
11 March 2025
Is not knowing sometimes more rational than knowing?
Books & arts
Whispering in the reader’s ear
Cathy Perkins
7 March 2025
How did Joan Lindsay come to write
Picnic at Hanging Rock
?
Books & arts
Sister Lit
Zora Simic
4 March 2025
Josie McSkimming has written a rare kind of biography with sibling relationships at its core
Books & arts
Radical astonishment
Nicholas Brown
4 March 2025
Robert Manne tracks almost half a century of political and cultural flux through an intensely personal lens
Books & arts
Pith and moment?
Jane Goodall
27 February 2025
Thirty-five years later,
Media Watch
needs an overhaul
Books & arts
Mary wrote crime; George committed it
Ken Haley
27 February 2025
A dual biography probes the underbelly of nineteenth-century Melbourne
Books & arts
Silent terror
Jon Richardson
21 February 2025
A chilling account of occupied southeastern Ukraine reveals a systematic program of Russification combined with chaos, brutality and corruption
Books & arts
Why the humanities are worth fighting for
Kate Fullagar
21 February 2025
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum hasn’t quite nailed the problem, or the possible solutions
Books & arts
Freedom, served chilled
Gideon Haigh
20 February 2025
A high-profile lawyer defends employees’ rights to free speech, regardless of their politics
Books & arts
The real thing
Philippa Hawker
20 February 2025
Three striking new films rub the real against the fictional in different ways
Books & arts
Menzies hits his straps
Paul Rodan
14 February 2025
Much good luck and a degree of good management enabled the long-serving prime minister to ride the postwar boom
Books & arts
Of the sky, the birds
Sara Dowse
13 February 2025
A diary of a terminal illness becomes an intimate tribute to friendship
Books & arts
The outsiders
Antonia Finnane
11 February 2025
Has Guan Hu made a film about the feral dogs of Chixia — or about China itself?
Books & arts
“Give a woman a Kodak…”
Richard Johnstone
10 February 2025
From the late nineteenth century, new lightweight cameras opened up the world in ways their manufacturers didn’t anticipate
Books & arts
Innovation and reaction
Julian Disney
7 February 2025
A new history of Australia’s postwar welfare system provides plenty of lessons for a better future
Books & arts
Learning from Hefei
Michael Gill
5 February 2025
Economic and political pressures are pulling in different directions in Xi Jinping’s China
Books & arts
In Romancelandia
Jock Given
4 February 2025
Stigmatised in the publishing world’s past, romance writers were ready for its future
Books & arts
Secret world
Graeme Dobell
4 February 2025
The intelligencer who built Australia’s spy service
Books & arts
Before and after
Zora Simic
4 February 2025
Gisèle Pélicot’s daughter explores the repercussions of her father’s crimes
Books & arts
The unknowable Dylan
Andrew Ford
1 February 2025
Looking for the music in James Mangold’s biopic
Books & arts
Without Hemingway, no Bogart
Peter Marks
31 January 2025
What makes a twentieth-century novel?
Books & arts
Baby steps
Philippa Hawker
30 January 2025
Nicole Kidman is well-matched by Harris Dickinson in an exploration of pleasure, power and control
Books & arts
Blood quantum
Martha Macintyre
28 January 2025
Who is entitled to be a Native American?
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