Reviewed by Clare Brook Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay provides a comprehensive guide for the layperson through a fraught social/political landscape. A setting that is populated by an ever-widening abyss between the left’s Postmodern Theories and Social Justice activism, and the reaction of the far right harking back to an untenable past.
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve People of all ages, on occasion, think their memory has failed them. We know it is the most complex and important section of the brain. It gives shape, direction, ability and pleasure to our existence. For each, it is unique, and found deep in the brain in a small, sea-horse-like structure,
Reviewed by Gerard Healy An informed look at intergenerational poverty in Australia by Glyn Davis AC, the former Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University. It is both an easy read and a hard-to-read text, the former because it is only 70 odd pages long but the latter because it asks us what we are doing to solve
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders Apparently, over five million Australians go bushwalking, so we must know what a bushwalker is…. well, don’t we? As it turns out, defining a bushwalker – let alone what he or she actually does – is not trivial. For some people, it is a heated topic. Even deciding the distance of
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Scott Peeples is a professor of English at Charleston. He has a particular interest in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Peeples has published two other books on Poe. His current work is a book that bears an identical name to Poe’s story. To compound the confusion, Peeples includes a chapter
Reviewed by Gerard Healy An interesting take, by journalist Rick Morton, on what happens when you grow up WITHOUT money. From his very personal experiences, Rick explains how life treats the poor and the not-so-poor in our society. It’s probably among only a handful of books on finance written from the lack-of-money perspective and it’s
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Mantel Pieces is a selection of twenty essays and reviews which Hilary Mantel has written since her earliest experience with the London Review of Books late last century. The first review focuses on Shere Hite’s “American Marriage”. The value of Hite’s research into her subject is clouded by the widely held
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Leo A. Notenboom is a commentator on issues relating to information technology, computers, and the internet. With the latter in mind he wrote that believing and spreading lies and misleading implications is akin to spreading manure. He instances confirmation bias as the tendency we all have to believe things that confirm what
Reviewed by Rod McLary In 2013, the Federal Government announced the establishment of its Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The Commission released its final report in November 2017 after many case studies into specific institutions and numerous interviews with victims/survivors of child sexual abuse and their families. For the first time
Reviewed by Ian Lipke It was a simple road. A winding, twisting road through high country, an engineering marvel in parts. But the road was to pass through West Papua. It was to stir a war between the West Papuan Independence Movement on the one hand, who saw West Papua as part of Papua New
Reviewed by Gerard Healy A family-friendly cookbook from Helen Tzouganatos containing over 100 recipes for busy cooks. Each recipe is accompanied by a mouth-watering colour photograph taken by Jeremy Simons, which adds greatly to the appeal. Since I enter any kitchen with a large L plate on my back, I was attracted to the ‘Easy’
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve From one of the world’s leading thinkers, The Lonely Century is a wide-ranging and detailed examination of how this rapidly changing world has become the loneliest time in our history. Noreena Hertz does this by looking at social, political and personal lives in a manner that is bold and confronting in
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders You can’t help but admire someone setting off on a journey like this. Any long distance walk in back country requires mental and physical doggedness, and the 660km Australian Alps Walking Track is right up there. Having walked bits of the same route, I looked forward to this book taking me
Reviewed by Ian Lipke While I have never heard of Catrine Clay, whose ‘ground-breaking research’ produced The Good Germans, the fault is not hers. It is my responsibility to keep up. I note that Ms Clay has written at least one other book, King Kaiser Tsar, and on its merits has been described as an
Reviewed by Ian Lipke All those women, like so many restless houris, each demanding to possess his memory. All those equally wavering details, supporting a romanticised idea of the poet. The one thing that is securely on the record is the poetry itself, a poetry of light and shade, and uncertain ways. A poetry of