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Books & arts
Books & arts
Dizzying paralysis
Dean Ashenden
17 October 2024
Two sociologists and a teacher wrestle with meritocracy
Books & arts
Man in the middle
Paul Rodan
16 October 2024
A new biography assesses the record of Labor’s first prime minister
Books & arts
The impress of war
Gary Werskey
12 October 2024
How Paris’s “Terrible Year” shaped impressionist art
Books & arts
Presidential power, and its limits
Michael Gill
9 October 2024
Canny coalition-building fuelled the ascendancy of Indonesia’s Joko Widodo. But does his chosen successor represent continuity or change?
Books & arts
Imperial reckoning
Ann Curthoys
8 October 2024
A new collections of essays critiques a high-profile defence of the British Empire
Books & arts
Could this be how it sounded in Mozart’s time?
Andrew Ford
8 October 2024
Authenticity isn’t quite the right word for what Neal Peres Da Costa is aiming to achieve
Books & arts
A chasm of need
Alecia Simmonds
4 October 2024
A new account of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial focuses on the victims of an unfathomed perpetrator
Books & arts
No laughing matter
Philippa Hawker
2 October 2024
The Joker’s journey becomes a jukebox musical
Books & arts
Mao’s suave controller — or enabler?
Linda Jaivin
1 October 2024
Once described as the Zelig of Chinese politics, Zhou Enlai had an uneasy relationship with the Great Helmsman
Books & arts
Pelosi in power
Lesley Russell
24 September 2024
Memoirs of “a weaver at the loom” through four presidencies
Books & arts
Disability transcended
Jim Davidson
23 September 2024
A double biography reveals the creative partnership between Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson
Books & arts
Musk’s mirror
Margaret Simons
20 September 2024
The erratic owner might have delivered the fatal blows, but he didn’t destroy Twitter on his own
Books & arts
Stylometric Shakespeare
Robert White
19 September 2024
An immense database of early modern plays reveals “a veritable avian community, a magpie nest, each writer borrowing from each other”
Books & arts
Chill winds
Graeme Dobell
19 September 2024
The great geopolitical struggle of our time, cold war 2.0, is cyber war and proxy war and tech war, economic face-off and nuclear brinkmanship
Books & arts
Where Cook saw a camel
Marian Quartly
16 September 2024
Two journeys up the east coast of Australia
Books & arts
Fitzroy’s young junkologists
Ian McShane
13 September 2024
The rise and fall of an experiment in self-directed learning
Books & arts
War of the worlds
Hamish McDonald
12 September 2024
Silk Road sceptic William Dalrymple argues for the centrality of India in ancient times
Books & arts
Unhealthy ambitions
Mark Edele
12 September 2024
A fine-grained and often funny new history of the Soviet cold war reveals an imperial power promoting itself as a friend of the global liberation struggle
Books & arts
“That’s all I can do”
Andrew Ford
10 September 2024
Composer Alexander Goehr swam against the postwar tide
Books & arts
Is it all going to happen again?
Peter Marks
10 September 2024
Dennis Glover turns to twentieth-century history in his call to arms against authoritarian populism
Books & arts
Tomorrow’s women
Barbara Keys
10 September 2024
How ten Australian women made lives in the country that epitomised modernity
Books & arts
Down the rabbit hole
Jane Goodall
9 September 2024
Drawing on experiences of personal threat, three women probe the world of online conspiracies
Books & arts
Speak, memory
Nick Haslam
5 September 2024
Gideon Haigh explores a “submerged continent”
Books & arts
Remaking citizenship
Marilyn Lake
4 September 2024
Campaigners have repudiated “maternal citizenship” in favour of a continuing quest for “sexual citizenship”
Books & arts
The kin red line
Robin Jeffrey
4 September 2024
Excavating family histories in India, Pakistan and Australia
Books & arts
In Germany, “it’s not over yet”
Klaus Neumann
30 August 2024
An 800-page book and a four-hour film raise uncomfortable questions about an enduring Nazi past
Books & arts
Breaking better
Nick Haslam
28 August 2024
A compelling exploration of mental distress moves beyond psychiatric categories
Books & arts
Hawke agonistes
Brett Evans
27 August 2024
The making of a paradoxical prime minister
Books & arts
That slippery zeitgeist
Andrew Bonnell
23 August 2024
Harald Jähner traces the forces and emotions that shaped the Weimar Republic
Books & arts
Marvellous Melbourne’s Madame Brussels
Marian Quartly
21 August 2024
Historical detective work reveals more of the life of the city’s best-known brothel-keeper
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