Non-Fiction

Reviewed by E. B. Heath Those societies, which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows. Alfred North Whitehead. Every human society has a cultural framework that advocates a value system along with a code

Reviewed by E.B. Heath The title of this book belies the depth of intriguing knowledge therein.  Mind, brain, sex and hysteria!  My brain leapt towards Freud, without any bidding from my mind, and that is the last location I want either to visit.  How the Brain Lost its Mind: Sex, Hysteria and the Riddle of

Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve This title, in itself, arrests the attention of the reader who is interested in the human brain, the most complex and unexplored area of the body, if not the planet. The book is a thriller of a very different nature, and, in under 300 pages, gives a glimpse of the advances

Reviewed by Norrie Sanders The Great Recession of 2007 – the one that Australians call the GFC – was a boon to economists. Book sales boomed as the very economists who had failed to predict the crash, tried to convince us that they knew why it occurred.   If only those same economists could have predicted

Reviewed by E. B. Heath ‘Hawke was a vivid fellow; and entertaining by his very nature’. Tom Keneally Remembering Bob, edited by his eldest daughter, Sue Pieters-Hawke, is a compilation of one hundred and thirty-eight eulogies of praise for Australia’s 23rd Prime Minister.  Reading it was akin to attending a long memorial service, while wondering,

Reviewed by Antonella Townsend At its simplest, the act of cooking is an act of love; an act of indulging those you love with something delicious. The above is a quote from the introduction of Matt Preston’s latest cookbook – More, which is all about vegetables, nuts and grains.  He promotes vegetarianism without the finger

Reviewed by Ian Lipke I had not heard of this artist until I attended an art history class at the University of the Third Age in Brisbane a couple of years ago. While weeks of studying the old masters had sharpened my analytic skills and broadened my knowledge of those things that make an artist

  Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve As the author states, ocean racing involves multiple skills: like combining football, flying and surfing. Add to this the luck of the draw that comes with playing poker and the skill of a chess player who plans a forward strategy, and you have the formula! His book pays homage to

Reviewed by Pauline Seath All the Burning Bridges, written by veteran Australian actor Steve Bisley, is a sequel to his highly acclaimed first book Stillways, a memoir published in 2013, and nominated for several literary awards. Steve, a born storyteller, grew up in Lake Munmorah, near Newcastle NSW. Stillways tells of his childhood, candidly, sometimes

Reviewed by Rod McLary Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish journalist who has been held in the Manus Island offshore processing centre since 2013.  This book is a first-hand account of his experiences in the centre.  It has an immediacy which, in no small way, was created by the process by which it was written.  Boochani