Nonfiction
Kiffy Rubbo: Curating the 1970s edited by Janine Burke and Helen Hughes
Kiffy Rubbo: Curating the 1970s is a reminder of what an extraordinary time the seventies was – an era filled with the promise of systemic change if you were brave enough to embrace it.
Government had become an agent of…
True Girt by David Hunt
Like a good many others, I found the version of Australian history taught to me at school fairly dry and boring – nowhere near as colourful or scandalous as ancient Greece or Egypt (or my personal favourite, Anglo-Saxon England). David…
Fight Like A Girl by Clementine Ford
The shocking nature of online abuse that Clementine Ford has received for her feminist writing is pretty widely known. In her first full-length book she fights back with a wholly justified vengeance. Ford describes this book as ‘an exploration of…
The Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt
Journalist Emily Voigt’s first book is a thrilling deep dive into the strange and dangerous world of the Asian arowana or ‘dragon fish’. Inspired by a meeting with a pet detective tracking an illegal alligator sale in the Bronx, Voigt…
We Are Not Such Things by Justine Van der Leun
In the final days of apartheid a young American student, Amy Biehl, was murdered by a black mob in one of Cape Town’s townships. Three young men were convicted of her murder but the case was a strange one that…
Trillion Dollar Baby by Paul Cleary
Norway’s discovery and development of huge oil reserves in the North Sea has led to the creation of the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. In contrast, Australia’s resource boom has been met with the growth of national debt…
The Great Multinational Tax Rort by Martin Feil
Having spent decades working for the Australian Taxation Office, the Customs department and in private accounting firms, Martin Feil has a true insider’s insight into the murky world of multinationals and their accounting practices. This book was written before the…
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
The latest book from Teju Cole is a collection of essays, put out over a number of years, from various magazines and loosely arranged into three categories: reading, seeing and travel. While it would be easy to find the essays…
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
My favourite childhood books were The Faraway Tree series by Enid Blyton. It was wondrous to imagine the lives of trees being full of feelings, thoughts and relationships. I would trawl my neighbourhood in search of my own adventure trees…
Position Doubtful by Kim Mahood
Position Doubtful is an astonishing, sprawling memoir of place. Returning annually to the Tanami desert country in which she had lived as a child on a remote cattle station, Tanami Downs (though for her it is always Mongrel Downs), artist…
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