Learn this labyrinth, Holly … so if you ever needed to, you could navigate it in the darkness. So Jacko, Holly Sykes’s “freaky little brother”, says as he hands his sister a “diabolical”, nine-circled…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Book reviews
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While a week can be a long time in politics, palaeontology typically moves more sedately, in keeping with its subject matter (the slow progression of the aeons). But one area of fossil research is seeing…
It is perfectly understandable for an editor to be protective of his own patch, but it is worrying when the editor of a national magazine, which claims to be the leading independent Australian literary…
Noted Works is a new series on The Conversation devoted to long-form reviews of significant new books. See the end for further details. Dennis Altman was a young, articulate activist and out gay man when…
Almost exactly 98 years ago, the Fromelles legend goes, the 5th Australian Division was thrown into battle by stupid British generals and slaughtered. Overnight, 5500 men were killed or wounded: supposedly…
There should be no hard and fast rules concerning book reviewing. That’s because reviewing constitutes a worthy genre in its own right, one that should not be limited by guidelines or mandates. Criticism…
Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but Professor John Dale’s article on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own…
Good book reviews are all alike while every bad review is bad in its own way. In Australia reviews are often bad in many different ways. Historically the trade has consisted of retired English academics…
The World Health Organization estimates that one in every 12 deaths worldwide is due to chemical exposure, sometimes acute but mostly chronic. This eclipses the annual death tolls from malaria, car crashes…
Malcolm Fraser occupies a rather unique place in Australia as someone who has, at different times, managed to incense both ends of the political spectrum. If nothing else this is indicative of someone…
In the late 1980s, shortly after Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd had swallowed the Herald and Weekly Times to become the print media behemoth that it is today, I found myself working on the subeditors’ table…
Journalists and their editors can be rude about schools of journalism. When Columbia University cut its journalism program from two years to one year, the New York Daily News called it “a step in the right…
What makes a children’s book compelling? Is it a driving, action-centred plot that forces us to turn the page? Is it a puzzle that we solve from clues thrown down by the narrator – or is it a story that…
The eruption of the News International phone hacking scandal has caused significant problems for Rupert Murdoch and his business empire. It forced him to close his big money spinner, News of the World…
Over the next four years, the centenary of World War One will prompt the publication of a vast number of war-related books. In Australia, it will be hard to keep count of the new books on Gallipoli, with…
It is a sign of Labor’s crisis that Mark Latham, the party’s former parliamentary leader, has been re-admitted to polite centre-Left company. For his book Not Dead Yet: What Future for Labor?, Latham has…
The way we live, interact and consume has changed dramatically with the shift towards internet and mobile telecommunications technology. And yet large amounts of money are still regularly spent on traditional…
Rachel Buchanan’s new book Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers is part of what independent publishing house Scribe calls the “Media Chronicles”: A series of first-person accounts about the dramatic…
The best lines in investigative journalist Paul Barry’s new book - Breaking News: Sex, Lies & the Murdoch Succession - are supplied by Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour, that connoisseur of corporate…
Burning coal is the one of the main sources of greenhouse gases, but mining expansion continues apace in Australia. Given the all-but unqualified support of federal and state governments for new mining…
Top contributors
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Adjunct professor, University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
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Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
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Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
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Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
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Matthew Ricketson is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Communication, Deakin University
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PhD Candidate, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne
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Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University
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VC Fellow, La Trobe University
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Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University
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Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University
