Browsing No 243 - August 2002 by Title
Now showing items 9-28 of 38
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A Formidable History. "Images of Australia: A History of Australian Children's Literature" by Maurice Saxby. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Although he attributes it to Walter McVitty’s "Innocence and Experience" (1981) and Brenda Niall’s "Australia through the Looking Glass" (1984), there is no doubt that Maurice Saxby’s pioneering "A History of Australian ... -
The Importance of Being Edited. "Szabad", by Alan Duff and "Featherstone", by Kirsty Gunn. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Kirsty Gunn’s "Featherstone" is a writerly book, with a style and tone carefully attuned to letting a mystery tale unfold very differently in different lives over the course of a single weekend. It is complex and intimate ... -
Least of the Dictators? "Mussolini", by R.J.B. Bosworth. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Richard Bosworth, in this superb biography of Italy’s Duce, is critical of ‘the great man in history’ and intentionalist approaches that vest all power, initiative and control in leaders, particularly in the case of ... -
Manners in the Mosh Pit. "The Penguin Book of Etiquette: The Complete Australian Guide to Modern Manners", by Marion von Alderstein. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Why etiquette? Most books of this sort feel the need to justify their existence. Often they get stuck one step earlier: What is etiquette? Is it simply courtesy, or a behavioural code used for separating people into classes? ... -
Masters of Social Chaos. "White Out: How Politics Is Killing Black Australia", by Rosemary Neill. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)For a long time in her column in 'The Australian', Rosemary Neill has been breaking the taboo that Aboriginal affairs must not be discussed honestly. She has now brought her researches and thoughts together in a book. The ... -
Medley and Hotchpotch. "Christina Stead: Satirist", by Anne Pender. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Pender’s is the first study to focus on Stead the satirist (though the claim that ‘critics have chosen to ignore the satire in her fiction’ overstates the case considerably). She locates Stead within a tradition that begins ... -
Missing the Oxygen of Office. "Beyond Belief: What Future for Labor?", by John Button. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)John Button’s prognostications on the state of the Labor Party have already attracted substantial discussion. Coming little more than six months after Labor lost the federal election — and also lost a good deal of self-respect ... -
Missing the Zeitgeist. "Alanna", by Alan Saunders. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)As a satire of the pretension, gullibility and downright silliness of contemporary Australian cultural politics, "Alanna" is highly diverting entertainment. But its textual ‘playfulness’ is, frankly, a bit passé. Good ... -
Mixed Results in the South Seas. "Quiros", by John Toohey. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)John Toohey’s "Quiros" is set during the seventeenth-century search for the Great South Land. Toohey negotiates the pitfalls of his genre with mixed success. The situation he explores is intriguing: men grouped in a confined ... -
Modernist Embraces. "Cut Lunch", by Chris Andrews and "Collage", by Peter Lloyd and "Itinerant Blues", by Samuel Wagan Watson. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Samuel Wagan Watson and Peter Lloyd enjoy the contrast between citified sophistication and the detritus that accompanies it. There is plenty of energy in Watson’s work. Generally, the tone is more assured than in his first ... -
National News.
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)This item discusses connections between the Australian Book Review and AustLit, the Australian Literature Gateway (www.austlit.edu.au). -
Off-Duty Darwinism. "Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender", by Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse (eds). [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)The tension between strict Darwinism and transformist evolutionary schemes not founded on natural selection is central to "Disseminating Darwinism". The best chapters (those by Eric Anderson, Scott Appleby, David Livingstone ... -
Old Children. [poem]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)This item is a poem by Tom Shapcott, dedicated to Ron and Pam Simpson. -
On the Volcano Trail. [poem]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)This item is a poem by Brendan Ryan. -
Pompey at Half Mast. "Pompey Elliott", by Ross McMullin. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Ross McMullin argues rightly that an Australian who achieved so much ‘deserves to be better remembered’. His vivid, thorough biography is the first full account of Elliott’s life — surprising, given Pompey’s eminence, ... -
The Purposefulness of the Creatures. "Confessing a Murder", by Nicholas Drayson. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)"Confessing a Murder" is written in the narrator’s old age. It is the journal of a man who is now the sole inhabitant of a small island somewhere in the Java Sea. He addresses a diary to Charles Darwin, whom he calls ‘Bobby’ ... -
A Reflective Rarity in the Bearpit. "Thoughtlines: Reflections of a Public Man", by Bob Carr. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)"Thoughtlines" is a pot-pourri, with some of the characteristics of the curate’s egg. There are speeches — in and out of parliament — book reviews, newspaper articles and extracts from his political diaries. There are even ... -
Retiring Beasts. "A Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia", by Peter Menkhorst and Frank Knight. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2007-07-31)How do you tell a kangaroo from a wallaby, a seal from a sea lion? If you know the answer to those questions, then how do you tell a mountain pygmy possum from an eastern pygmy possum, or a hairy-footed dunnart from a ... -
A Searing Trail with Butterflies. "White Butterflies", by Colin McPhedran. [review]
(Australian Book Review, 2002-08)Colin McPhedran was living a comfortable middle-class colonial life in Central Burma when the Japanese invaded the country in 1941. The invasion spread terror throughout the population, which feared the notorious savagery ...