Browsing No 251 - May, 2003 by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 39
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Bestsellerdoom. "Warra Warra: A Ghost Story" by John Scott. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This novel has a controlled opening, a reasonable tone. But soon control will not avail and the irrational will hold sway, though Scott will maintain a firm control over his plot, with developments and reversals proceeding ... -
Fraying Nerves. "The Hamilton Case" by Michelle de Kretser. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)"The Hamilton Case", Michelle de Kretser’s magnificent second novel, takes as its philosophical focus the opposition of forms of knowledge, but presumes from the outset that fiction knows more than the law does. Its modes ... -
Orchid Business. "Orchids of Australia" by John J. Riley and David P. Banks. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This beautiful book showcases the botanical orchid illustrations of John Riley, a retired shearer whom some regard as Australia's finest living botanical illustrator. Riley started drawing Australian orchids in the 1970s, ... -
The Long Trek. "Burke's Soldier" by Alan Attwood. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Alan Attwood's fictional account of the Victorian Exploration Expedition, long known as the Burke and Wills Expedition, is told through the eyes of a man who has often been overlooked. John King - a soldier, not a gentleman ... -
Rampaging Rationalism. "Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason" by Val Plumwood. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Val Plumwood, the author of a highly praised defence of eco-feminism, "Feminism and the Mastery of Nature", presents in this book a critique of 'rationalist culture' and explains why it harms nature as well as so many ... -
Phantom of the Prison. "Penal Populism and Public Opinion: Lessons From Five Countries" by Julian V. Roberts et al. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This new book provides a valuable analysis of the recent trend toward punitive justice and the populist politics that has nurtured it in five English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. ... -
Courtroom Knuckledusters. "Lee's Law: How Singapore Crushes Dissent" by Chris Lydgate and "The Mahathir Legacy: A Nation Divided, A Region At Risk" by Ian Stewart. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Singapore and Malaysia have a lot in common beyond a shared border and a shared colonial heritage. Both countries have been dominated for decades by one strong leader - Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Dr Mahathir Mohamad in ... -
Only as a Last Resort: Reflections on War and Justice. [essay]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Each time a Western nation goes to war, its citizens are locked in sometimes bitter argument, as we have recently been. When the war is over we no longer reflect on those arguments, as though we learnt nothing or forgot ... -
Letter From Beirut.
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)It has been raining all week, persistent drizzle unlike the brief downpours that are more typical of Beirut. The city is slumbering. El-Zein am staying with his parents. His father goes out less often. His mother is snuggled ... -
Mimesis of What? "Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History" by Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavallaro (eds). [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Many people regard cyberculture as the territory of boffins, sci-fi enthusiasts and 'itinerant wanderers', and inescapably limited to computer technology. However, the term is also applied to a field of research, one that ... -
Universal Nomads. "The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing" by Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds) and "Venus in Transit: Australia's Women Travellers 1788-1930" by Douglas R.G. Sellick. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)In our Postmodern age, when everything travels and travel is a metaphor for everything, travel and travel writing have become the subject of intense scholarly interest and debate. Travel, once largely the domain of ... -
Back Chat. "Spooling Through: An Irreverent Memoir" by Tim Bowden. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Anyone who remembers the amiable host of the ABC’s television show "Backchat", which he compèred for eight years from 1986, will not be surprised to learn that Tim Bowden has written a breezily readable memoir. Its pages ... -
'Down With Beauty! Long Live Death!' [poem]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05) -
Losses and Gains. "Ministers, Mandarins and Diplomats: Australian Foreign Policy Making, 1941-1969" by Joan Beaumont et al. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This book is an important contribution towards understanding the milieu in which Australia's foreign policy was formed, between 1941 and 1969. It does so principally by looking at the interaction of successive foreign ... -
Advances, Contents, Letters, Imprints and Contributors.
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This item contains miscellaneous information from this issue. -
Global Babble. Review of "Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order" by Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney (eds).
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)These days, every respectable academic needs to have a book about globalisation, on pain of death. In the 1990s the compulsory theme was citizenship; this decade, globalisation. Empire or imperialism remains the Marxist ... -
Hidden behind Razor Wire. "Asylum: Voices Behing the Razor Wire" by Heather Tyler. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)This important book succeeds in forcing us tosee and hear the individuals hidden from knowledge and understanding behind the razor wire of Australia's detention centres. Direct contact with people's stories is one of the ... -
The Hollowing of the Middle Class. "The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform" by Michael Pusey. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)Is the great white middle class endangered in Australia? If it is, does it matter greatly? Michael Pusey answers 'Yes' on both counts. He argues that we are seeing a 'hollowing out of the middle'. If he is right, this ... -
The Time Machine. [poem]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05) -
No Promised Land. "Shanghai Dancing" by Brian Castro. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2003-05)If we lived in the kind of country - and there are some - where people not only chose their presidents but chose as leaders poets, philosophers and novelists, a new novel by Brian Castro would be a sensation, even a political ...