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November 2024, no. 470

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ABR Arts

Book of the Week

How to Lose a War: The story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan
United States

How to Lose a War: The story of America’s intervention in Afghanistan by Amin Saikal

Though scarcely a teenager at the time, I remember clearly what I was doing when I heard the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. That was a seminal event for the baby-boomer generation – not only in the United States, but around a then barely globalised world. I suspect the equivalent event for young adults today is the horrifying television footage, rebroadcast countless times since, of two passenger aircraft being deliberately flown into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

From the Archive

From the Archive

June-July 2006, no. 282

The New Puritans: The rise of fundamentalism in the Sydney Anglican Church by Muriel Porter

A couple of years ago I attended the patronal festival at St James’, King Street, Sydney. The preacher was the Dean of Newcastle, who, after the blessing, opened with ‘Greetings from across the Chasuble Belt!’ The large congregation erupted into laughter, then settled in for twelve minutes of civil gospel. This is because Sydney Diocese, alone in the Anglican Communion, requires its clergy to sign an understanding that they will not wear Eucharistic vestments, including the chasuble. The ban is but one outward and visible control mechanism of an inward and enclosed evangelical attitude that typifies the power play within the diocese.

From the Archive

October 2007, no. 295

The Rock History Reader edited by Theo Cateforis

Attempting to theorise or intellectualise rock‘n’roll, one could argue, is to miss the point. As Almost Famous’s egomaniac Stillwater vocalist Jeff Bebe put it, ‘I don’t think anyone can really explain rock‘n’roll – [except] maybe Pete Townsend’. In which case, Bebe would probably get a kick out of editor Theo Cateforis’s lovingly composed The Rock History Reader, which, unlike other publications in a similar vein, allows the theorising and intellectualising – the explaining – to nestle alongside autobiographical passages and personal anecdotes, providing a complex view of rock’s annals. If you didn’t already know who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp, you’ll probably find more than a few clues in this volume.