• Girl Power Besting the Net. "Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture" by Susan Hopkins. [review] 

  Lumby, Catharine (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  "Girl Heroes" is a book that meditates deeply on the question of the image and objectification, and on what's at stake in the Nietzschean ideal of aesthetic subjectivity, a realm in which the divisions between illusion and ...

• What's So Special? "The Federation Mirror" by Ross Fitzgerald and "Johannes Bjelke-Peterson: The Lord’s Premier" by Rae Wear. [review] 

  Bolton, Geoffrey (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Wear's book should be the starting point for readers wanting a balanced overview of Bjelke-Peterson's career. Derek Townsend published his book little more than halfway through his premiership; Alan Metcalfe was obsequiously ...

• Palace Inventory (Partial): Sleeping Beauty. [poem] 

  Middleton, Kate (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

• Eschewing Jouissance. "Gender Trouble Down Under: Australian Masculinities" by David Coad and "From Camp to Queer: Remaking the Australian Homosexual" by Robert Reynolds. [review] 

  Willett, Graham (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Although called "From Camp to Queer", this book is really about the early years of the gay liberation movement in Australia - from 1970 to 1974. In that sense, "From Camp to Gay" would have been more accurate; the Epilogue ...

• A Matter of Gravitas. "Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth" by Brett Hutchins and "Warne's World" by Louis Nowra. [review] 

  Matthews, Brian Ernest (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  "Don Bradman" and "Warne's World" are two very different books, and in many ways they sit uneasily together - for a reviewer at least. But they reveal among other things why Warne, with Bradman-like gifts, does not occupy ...

• The Cabinet of Wins and A Racing Life. [poems] 

  Sherborne, Craig (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

• Rooming with Lillian. "Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock" by Robert Milliken. [review] 

  Haigh, Gideon (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Martin Amis's encapsulation of biography is that it should convey a sense of what it would be like to spend some time alone in a room with the subject. Robert Milliken begins his story of Australian journalist and rock ...

• Freud in London. "i am the voice left from drinking: the Models - from the 'burbs to 'Barbados' and beyond" by James Freud. [review] 

  Nichols, David (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Freud has left the music business and alcoholism for a sober career in advertising. Several times he acknowledges his wife and children for providing the incentive: it's that kind of a redemption tale. Whether Freud's book ...

• The Hard Way. "From Eternity to Here: Memoirs of an Angry Priest" by John Hanrahan. [review] 

  Bantick, Christopher (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  For those who remember John Hanrahan as an incisive literary critic for "The Age", former editor of ABR, and literary commentator on the ABC, this biographical account, published posthumously, will have great poignancy. ...

• The Great Riddle. "The Naked Fish: An Autobiography of Belief" by Ian Hansen. [review] 

  Steele, Peter (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Given life's pluriform character, any autobiography is inevitably selective: but this 'autobiography of belief' is more open to the variety of experience than many other writings of the self. The domestic plays a great ...

• Breezy Bell. "The Time of My Life" by John Bell. [review] 

  McFarlane, Brian (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Autobiography inevitably involves some sense of reflection on, as well as selection from, the past; not merely a recital of factually affectless information. Australian theatrical producer, actor and company director John ...

• Styx and Stones. "The Many-Coloured Land: A Return to Ireland" by Christopher Koch. [review] 

  McGirr, Michael (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  There are some enticing vignettes in Christopher Koch's new travel memoir. It is hard, however, to work out what story Koch wants to tell in this book about Ireland and the Irish. If "The Many-Coloured Land" has a story ...

• Watercolour Memories. "A Pavane for Another Time" by Bernard Smith. [review] 

  Craven, Peter (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  It's a Proustian title, or at any rate a Powellian one, that Bernard Smith has produced for this memoir of his life in the long-ago 1940s, and, yes, there on the cover is Anthony Powell's hero, Poussin. That's doubly ...

• Private Masterpiece. [poem] 

  Simpson, R A (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

• Imprints, Contents, Contributors, Advances, Letters and Subscription. 

  Unknown author (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  This item contains miscellaneous information from this issue.

• Revolution to Resistance. "The French Revolution 1789–1799" by Peter McPhee and "France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society" by Charles Sowerwine. [review] 

  Drapac, Vesna (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Peter McPhee and Charles Sowerwine, internationally renowned historians of modern France, are both professors of history at the University of Melbourne. Their latest books are what might be termed generalist surveys that ...

• Isles of Unknowing. "American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839–1850" by Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart. [review] 

  Merwick, Donna (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  One of the pleasures of reading "American Citizens, British Slaves" is its invitation to think about writing. It asks us to consider the need of prisoners to maintain, and later restore, normal relations with one's self ...

• October Bestellers. 

  Unknown author (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  This item outlines the Bestsellers for October 2002.

• New Standards in a Glorious Grammar. "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds). [review] 

  Burridge, Kate (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  Kate Burridge has read many excellent accounts of the English language over the years, but this recent publication by Cambridge University Press is by far the most impressive. In fact, "The Cambridge Grammar of the English ...

• Ozymandian Lesson. "Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language" by Kate Burridge and "Speak: A Short History of Languages" by Tore Janson. [review] 

  Moore, Bruce (Australian Book Review, 2002-11)

  These two books differ greatly in scope and style, but they are both highly interesting and enjoyable. Tore Janson is concerned with the history of languages over the past 40,000 years and (in a brief coda to his argument) ...

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