NOT ALWAYS DIPLOMATIC – AN AUSTRALIAN WOMAN’S JOURNEY THROUGH INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS By Sue Boyd UWA Publishing 2020 ISBN: 978-1-76080-149-6 RRP: $29.99 (PB) Reviewed By Anne Henderson Sue Boyd’s memoir begins with a meeting she had with Prime Minister Gough Whitlam after returning from her first overseas posting as an Australian diplomat in Portugal where the [...]
Witness: An Investigation into the brutal cost of seeking justice by Louise Milligan Hachette Australia 2020 ISBN: 9780733644634 RRP $34.99 Reviewed by Gerard Henderson The front cover of Witness describes the author as a “Walkley award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Cardinal’”. The full title of ABC TV journalist Louise Milligan’s first book is Cardinal: [...]
CODE NAME MADELEINE – A SUFI SPY IN NAZI OCCUPIED PARIS By Arthur J Magida W W Norton & Company 2020 ISBN-10: 0393867552; ISBN-13: 978-0393867558; RRP: $44.95 (HB) By Anne Henderson Winston Churchill called the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which he created under his minister for economic warfare Hugh Dalton in July 1940, the “Ministry [...]
SIR ROBERT ASKIN By Paul Loughnan Connor Court Publishing ISBN: 9781922449368 RRP: $19.95 Reviewed by Milton Cockburn No biography of Bob Askin has ever been published or, as far as I am aware, attempted. This is odd given that Askin is certainly the most controversial NSW premier since Jack Lang. For an account [...]
GREAT SOCIETY – A NEW HISTORY By Amity Shlaes HarperCollins 2019 ISBN 0061706426 ISBN-13 9780061706424 RRP: $44.95 (HB) By Anne Henderson Stand-up US comedian Charles Fleischer is credited as the originator of the now well-worn line: “If you remember the ’60s, you really weren’t there.” Well, historians and archivists are another matter. Many were there and kept [...]
STAYING WITH THE COUNTRY – A LIFE OF JOHN McEWEN John McEwen: The Right Man, Right Place, Right Time by Bridget McKenzie Connor Court Publishing ISBN: 9781922449412 RRP $24.95 Reviewed by Paul Henderson John McEwen wrote an autobiography after he retired, but there have been few books written about him. One of those is the [...]
PRISON JOURNAL VOLUME 1 – The Cardinal Makes His Appeal By George Cardinal Pell Ignatius Press, Freedom Publishing 2020 ISBN 978-1-62164-448-4 (PB) ISBN 978-1-64229-142-1 (eBook) RRP: $39.95 (PB) By Anne Henderson For Catholics of 1950s Australia, the formal prayers said as the Rosary were very familiar. Families knelt in homes at night and together prayed the [...]
SIGNATURES – LITERARY ENCOUNTERS OF A LIFETIME By David Pryce Jones Encounter Books 2020 ISBN (HB) 9781641770903 RRP: $43.50 (HB) By Anne Henderson It’s a plain looking hardback – dark red with gold lettering and no dust jacket. The kind of book you might dig out of your grandparents’ library a half a century and [...]
HOW AND WHEN MIGHT LABOR GOVERN The Write Stuff – Voices of Unity on Labor’s Future Nick Dyrenfurth and Misha Zelinsky (editors) Connor Court Publishing 2020 ISBN:9781922449429 RRP: $29.95 (pb) By Keith Harvey The Write Stuff – Voices of Unity on Labor’s Future is a significant book to understand the ALP today. Edited by the [...]
The Truth of the Palace Letters: Deceit, Ambush and Dismissal in 1975 by Paul Kelly & Troy Bramston MUP 2020 ISBN: 9780522877557 RRP: $29.99 (pb) Reviewed by Gerard Henderson The strength of The Truth of the Palace Letters: Deceit, Ambush and Dismissal in 1975 is that it demolishes two seemingly conflicting conspiracy theories. The first [...]
