Privately commissioned histories are a strange literary beast. In MUP: A Centenary History, Stuart Kells does a fine job, but doesn’t quite resolve the matter of maintaining authorial independence.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Book reviews
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Across her long political career, Tanya Plibersek has learnt to fight for visionary policies, not merely espouse them.
Many journalists were wrong about the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but Christopher Hitchens never admitted his mistake.
Journalist Shannon Molloy was sexually abused as a child, by another young person. He talks to experts, and to other men who’ve experienced sexual abuse, to make sense of his experience.
A fascinating new collection of essays explores Indigenous deep histories and conceptions of time, showing pre-colonial Australia’s rich human past.
A new book illuminates the bold lives of Australian women journalists between 1860 and the end of Word War II – a time when female reporters were ‘almost unheard of’.
Marina Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of housework and ‘femininity’. Maxine Fei-Chung’s book gives an often-harrowing account of eight women who struggle.
The rise of AI raises the complicated question of how we might guide it towards ethical and political ends.
Michael Meehan’s An Ungrateful Instrument is a vivid, lively novel drawing on the history of French music.
Judy Ryan’s book describes, in meticulous detail, what it took for the Victorian government to trial the state’s first safe injecting facility, through the lens of a local Richmond resident.
Birnam Wood is a novel of depth and complexity, but its depiction of an unscrupulous billionaire is also refreshingly unsubtle.
What a new president needs to know as he takes the reins of a deeply divided and disillusioned country.
A new book argues that sanctions are a bad idea in principle, not very effective in practice, and often have unintended consequences.
A new book argues the war against Ukraine is an escalation of an ongoing hybrid war of ‘Russia’ against ‘the West’ – and that only ‘real and credible force’ will make Putin step back from aggression.
Kate Legge’s husband was chronically unfaithful. So was his father, who was forced to leave the family home after revealing his mother’s affair. Legge reflects on generational love and infidelity.
D.H. Lawrence is a writer who provokes adoration or loathing, depending on one’s taste, politics and patience. How reliable is he as a guide to life?
Victory City marks a return for Rushdie, who has not set a novel substantially on the Indian subcontinent for over a decade.
To read a “memoir” by Janet Malcolm is to enter a realm where the very idea of memoir will be treated with mistrust.
Paul Dalgarno’s latest novel is a meditation on the sorrows that rip a family apart and a celebration of the love that threads it back together.
With euthanasia laws proliferating around the world, Caitlin Mahar’s The Good Death Through Time is a valuable exploration of the history of our shifting views on dying well.
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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Adjunct professor, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
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Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
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Professor of Communication, Deakin University
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PhD Candidate, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
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Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
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Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne
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Dennis Altman is a Friend of The Conversation.
VC Fellow, La Trobe University
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Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University
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Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Charles Sturt University
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Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University
