Books & arts
How Hamer made it happen
Judith Brett
27 October 2014
Dick Hamer’s election as Victorian Liberal leader was a seachange in the state’s politics and culture, writes Judith Brett
Books & arts
Girl, twenty-eight
Sophie Black
22 October 2014
Girls creator Lena Dunham has the knack of bottling the essence of the thing, writes Sophie Black
Books & arts
The real Julia
Sara Dowse
15 October 2014
Books | What happened to the woman who beguiled on election night 2007?
Essays & reportage
Caught out: Edna and Jack Ryan and the 1951 referendum
Lyndall Ryan
13 October 2014
Expelled from the Communist Party for not toeing the line, Lyndall Ryan's parents were faced with a dilemma when Robert Menzies’s government tried to ban the party
Books & arts
The making of a great biography
Brian McFarlane
23 September 2014
Jonathan Croall’s new book reveals a talented researcher and writer at work, says Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
Imperial intimacies
Frank Bongiorno
19 September 2014
Historian John Rickard recalls an Australia in which private lives occasionally teetered on the edge of scandal
Books & arts
Money and morality
Stuart Macintyre
19 September 2014
Stuart Macintyre reviews a new biography of the titan of Australian newspaper proprietors, David Syme
Books & arts
What makes them run?
Brett Evans
5 September 2014
Three new political biographies reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the genre
Books & arts
The surgeon as bad-tempered hero
Frank Bowden
20 June 2014
A physician decodes an unsettling memoir of life in and beyond the operating theatre
Books & arts
An unknown, an interloper, a feminist
Sybil Nolan
5 March 2014
Books | Eilean Giblin touched much that was formative in twentieth-century Australia
Books & arts
Torn in two parts
Bridget Griffen-Foley
21 June 2013
On the anniversary of its publication, Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews John Douglas Pringle’s self-deprecating account of a much-admired career
A Chinese constitutionalist and the state of the nation
Antonia Finnane
17 October 2012
The latest biography of Liang Qichao reveals a man of his times with a new significance for present-day China, writes Antonia Finnane in Beijing
Books & arts
A flawed giant
Frank Bongiorno
8 October 2012
A sympathetic biography of Gough Whitlam also recognises its subject’s shortcomings
Books & arts
Father and sons
Brett Evans
2 October 2012
Books | The political and the personal illuminate each other in James Button’s fine account of a year in Canberra
Books & arts
Winner take nothing
Jill Kitson
20 July 2012
Jill Kitson reviews a new account of Barack Obama’s formative years
Books & arts
Eyes wide open
Jamie Hanson
25 June 2012
Lyndon Johnson took on the frustrating role of vice-president to shake off the taint of Southern racism and conservatism. And the rest is history
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