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books
Books & arts
A stitch in crime
Jeremy Gans
9 July 2025
A prosecutor turned judge turned corruption czar looks back
Books & arts
Ghosts of dictatorships past
Andrew Bonnell
4 July 2025
Dictators don’t govern alone, which helps explain what happens once they’ve gone
Essays & reportage
A political world we still inhabit
Frank Bongiorno
2 July 2025
Historian John Hirst founded a career on a distinctive view of colonial Australian politics
Books & arts
Reeled in by the Reich
Philippa Hawker
1 July 2025
A sharp, grim, exhilarating novel engages with the real-life story of a filmmaker’s return to Nazi Germany
Books & arts
Imperialism’s stamping ground
Jim Davidson
30 June 2025
A new book explores the culture of philately
Books & arts
A kind of elegy
Susan Lever
27 June 2025
An award-winning memoir honours cultures old and new
Books & arts
Not alone in the dark tunnel
Tanya Dalziell
27 June 2025
Gail Jones’s latest novel echoes the preoccupations of much of her writing
Books & arts
Dropping out, burning out, tuning out
Andrew Dean
27 June 2025
Nobody’s happy about the state of Australian universities, but a seasoned academic has some remedies
Books & arts
Seize the day!
Caitlin Mahar
26 June 2025
Classicist Robert Garland leads a tour of ancient attitudes to death and the afterlife
Books & arts
Something else
Sara Dowse
26 June 2025
Francis Picabia had never come across a woman like Gabriële Buffet
Books & arts
Are we getting in our own way?
John Edwards
24 June 2025
The American bestseller
Abundance
is making waves in Australia, but its key argument has less force on this side of the Pacific
Essays & reportage
Quincentenary of a revolution
Klaus Neumann
17 June 2025
Commemorating the German Peasants’ War and an early charter of human rights
Books & arts
Alone like a finger
Nick Haslam
13 June 2025
It was writing that “separated me from everything,” says German writer Judith Hermann in a captivating collection of biographical essays
Books & arts
Democracy in an age of emergencies
Stephen Mills
12 June 2025
Can democracy respond effectively when the future is breathing down our necks?
Books & arts
Essential services
Paddy Gourley
12 June 2025
Celebrated American author Michael Lewis brings together an emblematic group of public servants
Books & arts
Okay, you’re hired
Patrick Mullins
5 June 2025
A biographer’s apologia raises as many questions as it answers
Books & arts
What are we talking about when we talk about AI?
Campbell Wilson
5 June 2025
Applying the term to everything from dishwashers to medical breakthroughs masks both its benefits and its harms
Books & arts
The price of pleasure
Zora Simic
5 June 2025
A journalist explores the “sexual wellness industry”
Essays & reportage
The American clever man
Martin Thomas
5 June 2025
How an Arnhem Land community distilled the 1948 American–Australian Scientific Expedition into a figure with unusual powers
Books & arts
Empire of the southern seas
Alessandro Antonello
27 May 2025
Australia is better seen as a vast archipelago, according to a new exploration of its iciest reaches
Books & arts
How little one knows, really, of one’s parents
Caitlin Mahar
26 May 2025
French sociologist Didier Eribon goes in search of his working-class mother
Books & arts
Ben Chifley versus the banks
Stephen Mills
26 May 2025
The former Labor PM’s battle with the banks still matters — for both sides of politics
Books & arts
Empire’s end
Ken Haley
23 May 2025
Old ties were broken forever by the time the second world war drew to a close
Essays & reportage
The ecological revolution
Tom Griffiths
20 May 2025
How a new moral consciousness began to stir in Australia
Books & arts
Not in the mood
Andrew Ford
16 May 2025
What is Spotify doing to music?
Books & arts
War by other means
Pete Millwood
13 May 2025
Could diplomacy have changed the course of postwar Chinese history?
Books & arts
Meeting the moment
Gary Werskey
29 April 2025
A sociologist’s dissection of hyperglobalisation and its legacies
Books & arts
The devil in your hand
Peter Mares
25 April 2025
Sport and gambling are becoming dangerously intertwined on both sides of the Pacific
Books & arts
Body politics
Alecia Simmonds
24 April 2025
A new biography of Beatrice Faust illuminates a distinct strand of Australian feminism
Books & arts
All in the family
Tim Rowse
14 April 2025
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has built a political philosophy on her family’s efforts to reconcile the past and the future
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