Non Fiction

Ian Fairweather: A life in letters edited by Claire Roberts and John Thompson

November 2019, no. 416

Artist, hermit, instinctive communicator, a nomad who built studio nests for himself all over the globe, Ian Fairweather is a consistent paradox – and an enduring one. In an art world of fragile and fluctuating reputations, his work retains the esteem with which it was received – by his peers – when he landed in Australia in 1934 and, with their help, exhibited almost immediately. His way of life – eccentric, solitary, obsessive – was extraordinary then, and continued so until his death in 1974. Success never sanded off his diffident, abrasive edges. When presented with the International Cooperation Art Award in 1973, he mused, in a letter to his niece, Helga (‘Pippa’) Macnamara:

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Underland: A deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

by Alison Pouliot •

November 2019, no. 416

Alison Pouliot reviews 'Underland: A deep time journey' by Robert Macfarlane

Underland is English nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s longest and, by his own admission, deepest and strangest book. It took almost a decade to write. From the remote mountain peaks of his first book,

Red Meat Republic: A hoof-to-table history of how beef changed America by Joshua Specht

by Cameo Dalley •

November 2019, no. 416

During a steamy Brisbane summer in the early 1990s, my father planned an outing for his preteen children, an adventure that would punctuate an otherwise predictable cycle of sleepovers, movies, and trips to the swimming pool. At the time, Dad was a board member of the Queensland Abattoir Corporation, and his idea of entertainment was a guided tour of the nearby Cann ...

Tim Costello: A lot with a little by Tim Costello

by Jacqueline Kent •

October 2019, no. 415

This autobiography by Tim Costello – Baptist minister, lawyer, anti-casino activist, CEO of World Vision Australia for thirteen years – is a clear and straightforward account of his life, free of obvious literary artifice. What Costello has tried to do, he says, is to understand and explain how his memories and experiences ...
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Don Dunstan: The visionary politician who changed Australia by Angela Woollacott

by Christina Slade •

October 2019, no. 415

Don Dunstan tended to divide those around him, even his parents. His father, Viv, moved from Adelaide to become a company man in Fiji. Peter Kearsley, a contemporary of Don’s who later became chief justice of Fiji, said Viv was ‘a fair dinkum sort of chap’, ‘the sort who would have been an office bearer in a bowling club’. His mother, according to Kearsley ...

Addressing Modern Slavery by Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma

by Sayomi Ariyawansa •

October 2019, no. 415

When the Bill that became the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) was introduced into the federal parliament, it was accompanied by a grim message: two centuries after the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom, it is estimated that there are twenty-five million victims of modern slavery worldwide. It also came with a bracing if Panglossian promise: t ...

The Politics of the Common Good: Dispossession in Australia by Jane R. Goodall

by Judith Brett •

October 2019, no. 415

The commons, the common good, the commonwealth: all words for humans’ shared right to the fruits of the earth to sustain their lives, and all words with deep political histories. In The Politics of the Common Good, Jane R. Goodall excavates some of these deep histories, beginning with the Diggers and Levellers of mid-seventeenth-century England who, in pr ...

The Great Cauldron: A history of southeastern Europe by Marie-Janine Calic, translated by Elizabeth Janik

by Iva Glisic •

October 2019, no. 415

South-eastern Europe is a region defined by ambiguity: with few clear geographic boundaries or consensus over its correct appellation, it is a palimpsest bearing the marks of Balkan, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, and central European cultures. As the identities of the region’s inhabitants have shifted across the centuries, their position within the European ...

The Gap: An Australian paramedic’s summer on the edge by Benjamin Gilmour

by Nicholas Bugeja •

October 2019, no. 415

Sirens wail. Families cry together. Defibrillators shock bodies into convulsion. These are the sounds and images that veteran paramedic, writer, and filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour animates in his latest book, The Gap

Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and redemption in a town under siege by Mike Thomson

by Beejay Silcox •

October 2019, no. 415

A rebel stronghold on the southern edge of Damascus, the Syrian suburb of Daraya, was violently isolated by the Assad regime for almost four years – a ruthlessly protracted attempt to starve out the city’s pro-democracy insurgency. Power and water supplies were cut, crops were burned, and humanitarian aid was barred. There was no food, no medicine, and no way out.
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