No 252 - June / July 2003

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https://hdl.handle.net/2328/1100
Dennis Altman on Superstition and Idolatry Greg Dening reviews Edward Duyker's Citizen Labillardiere
Kim Mahood reviews Irris Makler's Our Woman in Kabul
Tony Blackshield reviews Philip Ayres' Owen Dixon
John Rickard reviews Iain McCalman's The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro
Amanda Smith reviews Nova by Nova Peris with Ian Heads

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Browsing No 252 - June / July 2003 by Title

Now showing 1 - 20 of 38
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    An Arabesque Yes. "ode ode" by Michael Farrell. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Edwards, Chris
    It's easy to see why Michael Farrell already has something of a reputation as a stylist, though this is his first collection. Inventive, sharp-witted, entertaining and meticulously made, the poems in "ode ode" offer a lower-case, unpunctuated take on style in which style is energised, orchestrated substance.
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    Bestsellers / Subscription
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06)
    This item contains the May 2003 Bestsellers and Subscription information from this issue.
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    A Bruised Universe. "Conquerers' Road: An Eyewitness Report of Germany 1945" by Osmar White. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Byrne, Madeleine
    Whether objectivity is possible (or desirable) in journalism is debatable, but "Conquerors’ Road" demonstrates the importance of bearing witness. If the fight against totalitarianism is one of memory against forgetting, we should be grateful for journalists like White and his modern-day counterparts, who daily risk their lives in danger zones, dodging fire - friendly, or otherwise.
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    The Crook with a Great Soul. "The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro: The Greatest Enchanter of the Eighteenth Century" by Iain McCalman. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Rickard, John
    You haven't heard of Count Cagliostro? Well, chances are, if HarperCollins has anything to do with it, you will. This book is likely to ensure that the enchanter casts his spell on a new audience. For it is an extraordinary tale.
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    Defying the Uncivil. "Lines of My Life: Journal of a Year" by Edmund Campion. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Pierce, Peter
    Edmund Campion's latest book, "Lines of My Life", is an elegant hybrid, part meditation, part gossip (of edifying kinds), part political testament. Its genial tone is suggested by the source of the title, which comes from Psalm 16: ‘the lines of my life have run in pleasant places’. Urbane and affable, Campion is still alert to how institutional cruelties and prejudices can deform those who practise them, and of how that practice damages the chances of civilised life. Such a life he has found in Australia - and in the US.
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    Degrees of Latitude. "Colonialism and Homosexuality" by Robert Aldrich. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Britain, Ian
    Aldrich’s book concentrates only on all-male homosexual experiences of the Imperial world, though it extends its geographical boundaries as far south as Australia, notably Sydney: 'Sodom of the South Seas', as it used to be called in the mid-nineteenth century, and the author's own current home base. Fellow Sydneysider Donald Friend, 'the gay Gauguin' as he’s styled here, nonetheless felt impelled for long periods of his artistic career to seek 'a wild, tropical, exotic life among dark-skinned native people', basing himself in Ceylon for half a decade and Bali for nearly a decade and a half. These are two of the epicentres of Aldrich's study.
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    Drumming for Peter Garrett. "Willie's Bar and Grill: A Rock 'N' Roll Tour of North America in the Age of Terror" by Rob Hirst. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Nichols, David
    For a quarter of a century, Hirst has been drummer and songwriter for Midnight Oil, seemingly content to play a backseat role to the arresting and exotic lead singer/frontman Peter Garrett. From the late 1970s to early this year, when they broke up, the Sydney group broke new ground in politically aware, dynamic rock. "Willie’s Bar and Grill" is two books enmeshed: a post-September 11 tour diary and an auto-biographical memoir. Rambling and unchecked, it captures band dynamics and the mechanics of a rock show better than it does the so-called ‘age of terror’ experience or even group history.
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    Dwelling on the Weather. "A Break in the Weather" by John Jenkins. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Brennan, Michael
    With "A Break in the Weather", John Jenkins offers us an example of a verse novel. At a mere ninety-six pages, this verse novella manages to compress a great deal of information into its 252 octaves. Towards the novella's end, Bruce offers an almost Aristotelian summation of the work of art as 'a sense of being brought to a complete and adequate expression'. For all its various shortcomings, "A Break in the Weather" successfully achieves just so much.
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    Elegance and Wit. "Writing Round the Edges: A Selective Memoir" by Nancy Phelan. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Walker, Shirley
    Nancy Phelan's "Writing Round the Edges" is a stylish and beautifully written memoir by one of Australia’s best-known and most prolific writers.
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    Fashion Mistakes. "Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 230: Australian Literature, 1788-1914" and "Volume 260: Australian Writers, 1915-1950" by Selina Samuels (ed). [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Brunton, Paul
    Biography can be a rewarding approach to literary history. A reading of these volumes is not only immensely educative; it is also immensely enjoyable. You cannot say that about all reference books. It is difficult to curl up with these books as they are large and sturdily bound, as befits works of reference, but if the entries were put between bright covers with some of the illustrations in colour, you would have a marvellously accessible history of Australian literature.
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    Fear of Difference. "Unpacking Queer Politics" by Sheila Jeffreys. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Reynolds, Robert
    The book is a continuation of Jeffreys’s project to unmask and address the oppressive institutions and practices of a heteropatriachal world. Hers is a polemical voice, and one that gets considerable attention. Jeffreys’s analysis stems from the glory days of British revolutionary lesbian feminism and American lesbian feminist separatism. These two movements peaked sometime in the late 1970s, and there are plenty of citations in "Unpacking Queer Politics" from this softly lit era of lesbian feminist praxis.
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    Feeling Unsafe. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Cox, Sarah Mayor
    This article is a review of various young adult fiction, including: Melina Marchetta, "Saving Francesca"; Celeste Walters, "The Glass Mountain"; Sofie Laguna, "Surviving Aunt Marsha"; Jackie French, "The Black House"; and Ruth Starke, "Nips Go National".
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    The Future of an Illusion: Superstition and Idolatry. [essay]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Altman, Dennis
    This essay explores the role of institutionalised religion in modern society, and particularly its role in justifying political or social action. It concludes that, given the dangerous conflicts in the world today, 'ultimately, religion does more harm than it does good.'
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    Get Happy. "Growth Fetish" by Clive Hamilton. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Cully, Mark
    The cover is sparse, the title centre-boxed in a subtle reprise to "No Logo", and it is all bound together with a plug by Noam Chomsky. That’s some savvy marketing, designed to appeal to anti-globalisers and bobos alike. Yessir, capitalism works. It co-opts and it commodifies. Even ideas are not immune. It is the policy prescription and its ‘spin’ that are sold. Thinktanks, whose business it is to peddle ideas, are constantly mired in the contradiction between clear-eyed analysis, the basis of their credibility,and advocacy, the basis of their influence. In "Growth Fetish", the balance weighs too heavily towards advocacy and the reader is left feeling slightly conned, much like Clive Hamilton reckons we feel each time we depart from the shopping mall.
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    Going Exploring. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Robson Kett, Margaret
    This article is a review of various young adult non-fiction, including: Mary Malbunka, "When I was Little, Like You"; Jesse Martin with Jon Carnegie, "Dream On: The Journey of Kijana – Making it Happen"; John Nicholson, "Animal Architects"; and Coral Tulloch, "Antarctica".
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    In 'the Ukraine'. [poem]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Harry, J S
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    In Search of a Statistic. "Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna" by Peter Singer. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Beecham, Rodney
    Many of us, as we get older, become curious about relatives we hardly or never knew. Perhaps, if we have children of our own, we become more aware of the biological ties that bind us to those relatives and seek self-illumination through the lighting of the shadowy places in our ancestry. This process is beautifully implied by Peter Singer’s title, "Pushing Time Away", a phrase taken from a letter written by his maternal grandfather, David Ernst Oppenheim, to his maternal grandmother, Amalie Pollak, in which Oppenheim declares: 'what binds us pushes time away.'
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    Independent Duo. "The Andren Report: An Independent Way In Australian Politics" by Peter Andren and "A Humble Backbencher: The Memoirs of Kenneth Lionel Fry" by Ken Fry. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Aitken, Don
    These two well-written, unpretentious and engaging books address a central question for those interested in parliamentary democracy: who should represent us? Is the best representative someone just like ourselves, or someone who knows how ‘the system’ works and can manipulate it in our interest? Should it be someone from the party in power? Should it be someone wise and experienced, or young and vigorous? Should it be a woman, to represent the largest proportion of the electorate?
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    Irony Upon Irony. "Our Woman in Kabul" by Irris Makler. [review]
    (Australian Book Review, 2003-06) Mahood, Kim
    "Our Woman in Kabul" documents the US invasion of Afghanistan, the routing of the Taliban and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Makler’s story covers the circumstances of daily life as a female correspondent in a country where women are virtually invisible, the discomforts and challenges of being part of a media feeding frenzy in a place without the infrastructure to support it, and the larger drama of a civil war suddenly escalating into an international conflict. This is a book for the times, an extremely readable account that clarifies the circumstances of the Afghan war, reveals the dreadful price paid by ordinary people and leaves Mahood convinced that we truly live in a global culture where the displacement and suffering of apparently forgotten people is something for which we must all take responsibility, whether reluctantly or willingly.
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