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
Reviewed by Ian Lipke There is a slight chance that someone has come across Peter FitzSimons’ writing for the first time with the publication of his latest book The Incredible Life of Hubert Wilkins. This is part of the book’s title, the remainder “Australia’s Greatest Explorer” I find an unconscionable thing to write. FitzSimons is
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Everybody knows what Julius Caesar, Caligula and Nero, to name just a few Roman emperors, looked like. We’ve all seen sculptures of them, some created by well-known artists. They’ve all been on television. Of course, we know what they look like. Mary Beard, variously a leading classicist and cultural commentator, a
Review by Richard Tutin The Governors of our Australian states are often regarded as mysterious beings. After all, what do they do? What is their purpose? Philip Payton has taken up the challenge of demystifying state governors through this history of the Governors of South Australia. Though he focuses on only one state he does,
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders A 1943 US short film entitled “Bismarck Sea Victory!” is an object lesson in not letting the facts interfere with a good story. Comparing it to Michael Veitch’s written version of the same battle is the perfect advertisement for why we still read books. The battle took place in March 1943