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books
Essays & reportage
The phoenix
Helen Ennis
22 November 2024
Photographer Max Dupain returned from the war determined to reinvent himself and his work
Books & arts
Bark diplomacy
Marian Quartly
22 November 2024
Could the Yirrkala Petitions best be understood as an attempt at communication between nations?
Books & arts
Uglifying the universe
Andrew Dodd
20 November 2024
Once a “writer’s paper,” the
New York Post
pushed the wrong boundaries under Rupert Murdoch
Books & arts
AI through the looking glass
Kurt Johnson
11 November 2024
Could artificial intelligence make us less human?
Essays & reportage
What is a library?
Kieran Hegarty
6 November 2024
Targeted by hackers and sued by publishers, the Internet Archive continues to push boundaries
Books & arts
Trade’s political problem
Susan Stone
6 November 2024
A former trade negotiator sets out to improve trade’s profile and reputation
Books & arts
A kind of social architecture
Frances Flanagan
5 November 2024
The case for valuing and protecting “connective labour” in an increasingly automated and disconnected world
Books & arts
In the face of death
Jacinta Halloran
1 November 2024
Life’s binaries bleed into each other in a spirited memoir shadowed by a terminal illness
Books & arts
Have you been working hard recently?
John Docker
1 November 2024
Our reviewer savours an idiosyncratic account of the Queen, on and off duty
Books & arts
Opening doors in Central Australia
Glenn Nicholls
1 November 2024
A Lutheran pastor introduced to remote communities a different way of thinking about schooling for Aboriginal children
Books & arts
Let them not eat Tip Truck Cake
Anne-Marie Condé
31 October 2024
Triple-tested in its own kitchen, the
Women’s Weekly
’s recipes helped shape Australian tastes. But it had its rivals
Books & arts
“Got a light?”
Jim Davidson
24 October 2024
Peter Parker has trawled widely to produce a documentary history of gay life in London from postwar repression to the hope induced by 1957’s Wolfenden report
Essays & reportage
White lies, archival truths and R.J.L. Hawke
Michael Piggott
17 October 2024
What the record reveals about the future prime minister and the ornamental pond
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
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
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
Essays & reportage
If you want to fix America, fix Detroit
Don Watson
25 September 2024
Once a symbol of greatness, the city’s uneven decline mirrors the national malaise
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
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
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
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