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books
Books & arts
Eye of the storm
Linda Atkins
2 August 2023
How much of an author’s experience of an abortion do we have a right to read about?
Books & arts
How the machine works
Sean Scalmer
31 July 2023
Renowned sociologist Raewyn Connell takes stock
Books & arts
A reservoir of possibilities
Holly High & Joshua O. Reno
28 July 2023
David Graeber’s latest book isn’t his best, but still we love it
Books & arts
Harry Frankfurt’s warning
Brett Evans
28 July 2023
The philosopher presciently identified an age awash in “bullshit”
Books & arts
Magnificently crumpled lives
Penny Russell
26 July 2023
A fascinating account of nineteenth-century phrenologists illuminates how ideas spread
Books & arts
On the morality of imprisonment
Maggie Hall
26 July 2023
A philosopher considers the case for abolishing prisons
Books & arts
(Don’t) always look on the bright side of life
Nick Haslam
25 July 2023
How best to deal with dark moods?
Books & arts
Sense and sensibility
Sara Dowse
17 July 2023
Philosopher Clare Carlisle chronicles the interaction of George Eliot’s public voice and private life
Books & arts
Buckle and strain
Patrick Mullins
14 July 2023
In probing the shortcomings of George Orwell’s biographers has Anna Funder fallen into traps of her own?
Books & arts
The self-fashioning of George Orwell
Peter Marks
13 July 2023
A new biography probes the gap between the kind of person the writer was and the kind of person he imagined himself to be
Books & arts
Memoirs of a Middle East tragic
Graeme Dobell
12 July 2023
A summing up by an Australian diplomat who loved the Arab world
Books & arts
Unfriendly fire
Mark Baker
12 July 2023
Two new books go behind the scenes with the reporters who exposed Ben Roberts-Smith’s actions in Afghanistan
Books & arts
Late bloomer
Zora Simic
10 July 2023
Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams’s memoir is an instant classic
Books & arts
The incrementalists
Sean Kelly
5 July 2023
Is there a case for gradual change in a radical age?
Books & arts
Russia’s war with the future
Jon Richardson
4 July 2023
Underlying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are existential fears of democracy, diversity, sustainability and the decline of patriarchy
Books & arts
Fantales
Desley Deacon
4 July 2023
How Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil and Nicole Kidman crossed the psychic gangway between Sydney and Hollywood
Books & arts
Three “bloody difficult” subjects
Tim Rowse
4 July 2023
Historian Ruth Ross, the Waitangi Treaty and historical mythmaking are the subjects of a provocative account of New Zealand’s founding document that throws light on Australian…
Books & arts
Mobile generations
Jock Given
28 June 2023
Behind their inexorable rise, mobile phones leave a landscape littered with once-mighty businesses and technological dead-ends
Books & arts
The country we are still to be
Henry Reynolds
22 June 2023
Stan Grant’s
The Queen is Dead
reviewed
Books & arts
The ambiguity of hope
Nick Haslam
15 June 2023
Do positive expectations and a sense of personal control add up to a unique predictor of wellbeing?
Books & arts
The silence that makes sense of modern China
Linda Jaivin
13 June 2023
Two new books excavate everyday experiences of the Cultural Revolution
Books & arts
Mad for the feathers
William McInnes
9 June 2023
A lifelong birdwatcher reviews Libby Robin’s
What Birdo Is That?
Books & arts
Baked into our bricks
Zora Simic
7 June 2023
A writer considers the “state of the sexual nation”
Books & arts
Fire, ash and official secrecy
Graeme Dobell
5 June 2023
The authorised history of Australia’s role in East Timor’s 1999–2000 crisis reveals as much about Canberra as it does about Dili
Books & arts
Good story, bad theory
Tom Greenwell
2 June 2023
An enterprising school principal mistakes mastering the system for fixing it
Books & arts
Stateless, and loving it
Ryan Cropp
25 May 2023
Inspired by Hong Kong’s rise, countries all over the world created free-market enclaves. But who has really benefited?
Books & arts
And so on
Frank Yuan
22 May 2023
A necessarily incomplete guide to the prolific philosopher Slavoj Žižek
Books & arts
President Wilson on the couch
Nick Haslam
16 May 2023
What happened when a diplomat teamed up with Sigmund Freud to analyse the president?
Books & arts
Slicing the tide
Marian Quartly
16 May 2023
English writer Alethea Hayter pioneered a new way of framing history
Books & arts
Global reach
Michael Gill
15 May 2023
Do asset managers own the world?
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