Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs Adams by Louisa Thomas Penguin Press New York 2016 ISBN: 9781410488145 (hb) ISBN: 9780399563133 (pb) ISBN: 9781101980828 (eb) RRP $25 (pb) $50 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson It says something about US presidents and their families that there have been only two foreign born US first ladies – US first [...]
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville Text Publishing 2020 ISBN: 9781922330024 RRP: $39.99 (HB) By Anne Henderson Historians do their best with the remnants of the past at hand to decipher various truths of events and the people who made them happen. But it seems it is left to novelists to fill in [...]
Captain Cook’s Epic Voyage by Geoffrey Blainey Penguin Viking 2020 ISBN: 978 1 76089 509 9 RRP: $34.99 (HB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Looking back and looking back with the perspective of time is no bad thing. But looking back on events and people and recasting them out of ignorance and with ideological blinkers is [...]
The Mystery of Olga Chekhova by Antony Beevor Penguin Books 2004 ISBN: 0 14 30 3596 (pb) ISBN: 0-670-03340-5 (hc) Reviewed by Anne Henderson No century in history has captured historians and scholars quite like the twentieth century with its political upheavals, bloodshed, revolutions, social dislocation and technological advancement brought on by world wars. The brutal [...]
The New Social Contract - Renewing the liberal vision for Australia by Tim Wilson Connor Court 2020 ISBN: 9781922449030 RRP: $32.95 (PB) Reviewed By Paul Henderson This book is a very good read. It covers both aspects of liberalism and compares it with other forms of government. It is a very detailed and well argued [...]
Missing William Tyrrell by Caroline Overington Harper Collins 2020 ISBN:9781460758687 RRP $34.99 (pb) By Anne Henderson In popular crime fiction, the master detective pursues the clues, trusts instincts hewn over years of tracking the movements and signs in suspects and cracks the case after several mistaken scents. In a matter of weeks, even days, the [...]
The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner Text Publishing 2019 ISBN: 9781922268365 $19.99 (pb) Reviewed by Peter Hayes About once a year on average I see someone giving Helen Garner’s 1984 novella The Children’s Bach an extravagant one-line review. Recently I saw an Oxford professor tweeting, “If you’re looking for something extraordinary to read, Helen Garner’s [...]
A House in The Mountains – The Women Who Liberated Italy From Fascism by Caroline Moorehead Chatto & Windus 2019 ISBN: 9781784741419 RRP $35 (pb) $60 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson As the world undergoes a revision of historical monuments, care of the protests led by Black Lives Matter, it is timely to reflect on the [...]
We Need to Talk About Mum and Dad – a Practical Guide to Parenting Our Ageing Parents by Jean Kittson Macmillan 2020 ISBN:9781743538890 $34.99 (pb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson It’s not something we try to think about. Dying. Certainly not for ourselves – though we do expect our parents to die before we do. And, [...]
Attlee and Churchill – Allies in War; Adversaries in Peace by Leo McKinstry Atlantic Books London 2019 ISBN: 9781848876606 $49.99 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Extraordinary times can produce extraordinary outcomes. None quite so unusual or extraordinary as the partnership during the Second World War of Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Labour parliamentary colleague [...]
