Reviewed by Richard Tutin Having flown between Australia and the United States a couple of times has made me very aware of the sheer size of the Pacific Ocean. Sixteen hours flying nonstop is a long time to be in the air, but it has to be done. The ocean that laps both our shores
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Delving into Adam Courtenay’s latest book, which explores aspects of the life in the fledgling colony at Sydney Cove, poses a fascinating question. How did a society that at almost all levels was “three sheets to the wind” form the foundation to the thriving nation of today, which seriously takes part
Reviewed by Ian Lipke This is a most unusual book. It investigates the lives of two influential American writers, Herman Melville and Lewis Mumford, within a specific context. In effect, it purports to become a double portrait of two of America’s most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them—and their uncanny relevance to
Reviewed by Richard Tutin The rediscovery of diaries of Bishop Mathew Hale for the period 1858-1868 in 2015 prompted the holding of a forum in Perth in 2018. The forum, through the lens of the diaries, focused on the period of Hale’s service and ministry as Bishop of Perth which at that time was a
Reviewed by Richard Tutin India, with its long history and diverse cultural and religious life, has been an enduring source of fascination and wonder for people over many centuries. John Zubrzycki has taken up the challenge of encapsulating this history into a book of less than three hundred pages. Many authors and academics would blanch
Reviewed by Richard Tutin I heard a lot about the Depression Years of the 1930s as I was growing up. Stories about having to make do with very little in the way of food and clothing as well as memories of the great lines of people looking for both food and work abounded during my
Reviewed by Richard Tutin Colonial Australia contains many stories. Some are dominant and so are often seen as the only stories of the colony’s founding years while others have bubbled below the surface waiting for an opportunity to speak and be heard. Jessica North’s biography of Mary Ann Sheers who became the lover and later
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Western understanding of the ancient Persian kings has always been skewed by histories written by Greek scholars such as Herodotus whose understanding has been incorporated as our own. Llewellyn-Jones sets out to correct this mindset by supplying an authentic Eastern vision. I’m not convinced that he has been successful. No doubt
Reviewed by Richard Tutin Though Death is one of the certainties of life along with taxes, it’s not often that we have an opportunity to read about its history. I originally thought that Andrew Doig was going to describe the various practices of different cultures to Death and how people respond when their loved one
Reviewed by Richard Tutin Wherever we go in the world, we are surrounded and often entranced by the buildings that make up cities and communities. We marvel at their construction whether it is the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China or the houses and public buildings of Paris, Rome or New York City.
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Few people of my generation will fail to recognize the name Anne Frank. Anne was a thirteen-year-old Dutch girl whose family took steps to hide in an annex to Otto Frank’s business premises when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in the early 1940s. The Franks were Jews and therefore certain to
Reviewed by Richard Tutin It was either fortuitous or a coincidence that, when Janine di Giovanni’s book The Vanishing -The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East arrived on my desk, a statement from the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches of Jerusalem was published concerning the current threat to the Christian presence in the
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders What did the Ottomans ever do for us? Best known for harems, sieges of Vienna and Armenian genocide, their history has largely come to us through a European lens. A lens that has often reduced the Ottoman Empire to a series of clichés and myths that fail to acknowledge the intricacies
Reviewed by Ian Lipke David Hunt, author of Girt, True Girt, and now Girt Nation, has been flying beneath the flag of public notice for far too long. First of his books in this series to appear was the very funny, 2013 award-winning Girt which was shortlisted for the 2014 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA), the
Reviewed by Clare Brook Everything has changed except our way of thinking. Albert Einstein Thomas Hobbs wrote that human life without a central government would be ‘nasty, brutish and short!’ (Leviathan, 1651) Whereas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed Noble Savages lived free and equal having little to do with war. It turns out that neither philosopher got