Books & arts
17 July 2023
Philosopher Clare Carlisle chronicles the interaction of George Eliot’s public and private lives
Books & arts
14 July 2023
In probing the shortcomings of George Orwell’s biographers has Anna Funder fallen into traps of her own?
Books & arts
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
12 July 2023
A summing up by an Australian diplomat who loved the Arab world
Books & arts
12 July 2023
Two new books go behind the scenes with the reporters who exposed Ben Roberts-Smith’s actions in Afghanistan
Books & arts
10 July 2023
Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams’s memoir is an instant classic
Books & arts
5 July 2023
Is there a case for gradual change in a radical age?
Books & arts
4 July 2023
Underlying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are existential fears of democracy, diversity, sustainability and the decline of patriarchy
Books & arts
4 July 2023
How Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, David Gulpilil and Nicole Kidman crossed the psychic gangway between Sydney and Hollywood
Books & arts
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
28 June 2023
Behind their inexorable rise, mobile phones leave a landscape littered with once-mighty businesses and technological dead-ends
Books & arts
22 June 2023
Stan Grant’s The Queen is Dead reviewed
Books & arts
15 June 2023
Do positive expectations and a sense of personal control add up to a unique predictor of wellbeing?
Books & arts
13 June 2023
Two new books excavate everyday experiences of the Cultural Revolution
Books & arts
9 June 2023
A lifelong birdwatcher reviews Libby Robin’s What Birdo Is That?
Books & arts
7 June 2023
A writer considers the “state of the sexual nation”
Books & arts
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
2 June 2023
An enterprising school principal mistakes mastering the system for fixing it
Books & arts
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
22 May 2023
A necessarily incomplete guide to the prolific philosopher Slavoj Žižek
Books & arts
16 May 2023
What happened when a diplomat teamed up with Sigmund Freud to analyse the president?
Books & arts
16 May 2023
English writer Alethea Hayter pioneered a new way of framing history
Books & arts
15 May 2023
Do asset managers own the world?
Books & arts
12 May 2023
Writer Kapka Kassabova continues her beguiling exploration of the Balkans
Books & arts
27 April 2023
Two men, five books, one film
Books & arts
26 April 2023
Sara Ahmed’s celebration of the feminist killjoy continues
Books & arts
3 April 2023
Australia’s impassioned worries about China are in tension with better relations in the Pacific
Essays & reportage
24 March 2023
That era’s spirit of optimistic change has a message for the 2020s
Books & arts
23 March 2023
A historian tries to hear the voices of lost children
Books & arts
23 March 2023
A tight network of interpersonal connections is both a buffer and a blanket