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Non Fiction

Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder

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June 2012, no. 342

This author, this book, and its composition are all extraordinary. Tony Judt, one of the most distinguished historians of his generation, made his name with studies of French intellectual history, then in 2005 he published his masterwork, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. ...

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Miles Franklin loosens up

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June 2012, no. 342

Soon after the announcement of the shortlist of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award (‘the Miles’), bookmaker Tom Waterhouse installed Anna Funder’s All That I Am (2011) as favourite. Fair enough, too: it’s an astute and absorbing Australian novel about, among other things, Nazism’s long shadow. But Waterhouse favoured Funder – oddly – because her non-fiction book Stasiland (2003) won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2004. He asserted – debatably, even if it proves correct in 2012 – ‘a strong positive correlation’ between the Miles and the Australian Book Industry Awards. Most interestingly, he noted that the administrators of the Miles, The Trust Company, have now authorised the judges to extend their interpretation of Australianness beyond geography.

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Class Act: A Life of Creighton Burns by John Tidey

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May 2012, no. 341
Nick Hordern reviews 'Class Act: A life of Creighton Burns' by John Tidey

Newspapers, they say, are in the throes of ‘far-reaching structural change’, a euphemism for ‘extinction’ that arouses complacency in the breasts of the e-literate; fury in those of the technophobes. But one only has to take a slightly longer view to realise that the golden age of newspapers, over which Creighton Burns presided as editor of The Age, may have only ever been a transitory phase.

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Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power by David McKnight

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March 2012, no. 339

 It is a thought-provoking photograph. In 1988, during the bicentenary of The Times, Rupert Murdoch and Queen Elizabeth are pictured sitting at a news conference within the inner sanctum of the London broadsheet. Mogul and monarch are at arm’s length – she, straight-backed, legs crossed, hands gathered together above her lap; he, leaning forward and slightly to his right, towards her, with a piece of paper pinched between thumb and forefinger. Behind and between them, pinned to the wall, is what appears to be a photograph of Prince Charles crossing the road holding the hand of a very young Prince William.

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All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939–1945 by Max Hastings

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February 2012, no. 338
Robin Prior reviews 'All Hell Let Loose' by Max Hastings

It is a brave undertaking to write a single-volume history of World War II. As Max Hastings notes, we already have many good books in this category: Weinberg, A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II (1994); Calvocoressi, Wint, and Pritchard, Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War (1989); Millett and Murray, A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (2000); and Hastings might have mentioned Parker’s Struggle For Survival: The History of the Second World War (1989) and Ellis’s Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War (1990). He was too late to notice Andrew Roberts’s latest contribution.

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Oz Lit in the Moot Court Room

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February 2012, no. 338

I first discovered Australian literature in Argentina. While I was there studying Argentinian literature at the University of Buenos Aires in 2009–10, I spent many nights hunched over the table in our dingy kitchen with one of my housemates, Teresa. We would pick over the politically infused vernacular of the short stories ...

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The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays by Simon Leys

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February 2012, no. 338
Nick Hordern reviews 'The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays' by Simon Leys

Simon Leys is the pen name of the distinguished academic Pierre Ryckmans, who came to notice, first as a sinologist, then as a critic and author. The essays in this collection, composed over more than three decades during which Ryckmans held appointments at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, cover a wide range of subjects ...

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A History of Tasmania by Henry Reynolds

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February 2012, no. 338
John Hirst reviews 'A History of Tasmania' by Henry Reynolds

Henry Reynolds is the pre-eminent historian of Aboriginal–settler relations in Australia, and with this theme he begins his history of Tasmania. He eschews the obligatory set piece description of Aboriginal society before the Europeans arrived, with which so many books now awkwardly commence ...

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Bernard Whimpress reviews 'The Premier and the Pastoralist: William Morgan and Peter Waite' by James Waite

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February 2012, no. 338
Bernard Whimpress reviews 'The Premier and the Pastoralist: William Morgan and Peter Waite' by James Waite

Family histories have their limitations. One compensation is to discover famous or infamous ancestors. In most Australian states, disinterring a convict becomes a badge of honour. In South Australia, having a nineteenth-century premier and a noted pastoralist in one’s lineage advances a claim to fame ...

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In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood

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February 2012, no. 338
Melinda Harvey reviews 'In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination' by Margaret Atwood

As contemporary author fan bases go, Margaret Atwood’s must be among the broadest. She is read at crèches, on university campuses, and in nursing homes. Feminists, birders, and would-be writers jostle to see her perform at literary festivals. Yet despite an Arthur C. Clarke Award and, in her own words ...

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