EMPIRE OF THE ELITE – INSIDE CONDÉ NAST, THE MEDIA DYNASTY THAT RESHAPED THE WORLD By Michael M Grynbaum Coronet (Hodder & Stoughton) 2025 ISBN: 9781399707220 RRP: $34.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson When the movie The Devil Wears Prada, featuring lead character Miranda Priestly as a fictional Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, appeared on [...]
UNSETTLED – A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME AND PLACE By Kate Grenville Black Inc 2025 ISBN: 9781760645649 RRP: $36.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson As Chaucer in his Prologue to The Canterbury Tales wrote, the coming of spring “longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”. The ancient notion of pilgrimage was a journey to a holy place, [...]
PAUL HASLUCK by Anne Henderson Reviewed by Geoffrey Lehmann What emerges from Anne Henderson’s masterly 85-page biographical monograph on Paul Hasluck is how principled he was – how essentially good. Hasluck must rate a high distinction for goodness. As I read Henderson’s short book, I could not stop rating Hasluck’s contemporaries. In historical order these [...]
FLY, WILD SWANS by Jung Chang HarperCollins Publishers Australia - 2025 ISBN: 9780008661083; ISBN 10: 0008661081 RRP: $37.99 PB, E-book $19.99 “CONSCIOUS OF WRITING ABOUT PURE EVIL” Chinese-born writer Jung Chang is perhaps best known as the author of Wild Swans – Three daughters of China, first published in 1991, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. [...]
THE POWER OF RESILIENCE AND RESOLVE A MEMOIR OF FREEDOM By Cheng Lei HarperCollins 2025 ISBN: 9781460766576 ; ISBN 10: 1460766571 RRP: $35.95 (PB) Reviewed by Keith Harvey Chinese-born Australian Cheng Lei’s memoir of her three years and two months spent in detention in China is a powerful tale of her arbitrary arrest and the [...]
AGING AS HUMOUR - WITH A MESSAGE CHALK AND CHEESE: A FABRICATION By Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen Hybrid, August 2025 ISBN: 9781922768469 RRP: $24.9 (PB) Reviewed by Eamonn O’Hanlon After suffering a stroke, veteran conservative commercial radio broadcaster Bill Bradley is admitted to an aged care facility, only to find that one of the [...]
THE PARADOXES OF WAR THE CAUSES OF WAR (Fourth Edition) By Geoffrey Blainey, Scribner 2025 ISBN13: 9781761635236 RRP $49.99 (HB) Reviewed by Geoffrey Lehmann Geoffrey Blainey’s The Causes of War, was first published in 1973. Now in its fourth edition in 2025, it has been updated for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. A new [...]
WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS OF CHINESE COMMUNISM BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS! THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA By Linda Jaivin Black Inc Books, Old Street Publishing, 2025 ISBN: 9781760645601 RRP: $26.99 (PB) THE PARTY’S INTERESTS COME FIRST. THE LIFE OF XI ZHONGXUN, FATHER OF XI JINPING By Joseph Torigian, Stanford University Press, 2025 ISBN: 9781503634756 RRP: $50 [...]
FATHER OF LAND REFORM – AN ECONOMIST’S ASSESSMENT JOHN ROBERTSON – LIBERAL OF THE PEOPLE Australian Biographical Monographs 25 By William O Coleman Connor Court 2025 ISBN- 9781923224612 RRP: $19.95 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Knowledge of Australian history among the young is fading. Whether this is a failure of curricula or the overwhelming emphasis [...]
A WRITER, A PUZZLE AND A SEARCH LOOKING FOR ELIZABETH - THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH HARROWER By Helen Trinca La Trobe University 2025 ISBN: 9781760645755 RRP: $36.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson There were many conundrums in the life of Australian writer Elizabeth Harrower. She produced five novels, largely based on her Australian experience of life [...]
