"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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...