Book Reviews (Page 8)

This week’s book review is Dancing With Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact, by Inga Clendinnen. It is a detailed historical narrative of the first five or so years of the white settlement of Australia. I’ve read Inga Clendinnen’s essays before in weekend papers, and found them hard going,Continue Reading

This week’s book review is The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. I decided, when choosing my books for the Christmas holidays, that I really should find out what was really going on with global warming. I was sick of reading the carefully set out pro- and anti- columns in theContinue Reading

I’ve been home on holidays for the past two weeks, and trying to sort out a few things. Yesterday, I tackled books. I read a book a few years ago talking about the ideal to organise books. One of the (all very sensible) things it said was “always leave roomContinue Reading

This week’s book review is Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power, by Rhona Mahoney. I first read about this book on Half Changed World, and then it was one of the main sources sited by Linda Hirshman in her recent controversial piece on the failures of feminism, and lastlyContinue Reading

This week’s book review is Secrets of the Jury Room : Inside the Black Box of Criminal Justice in Australia by Malcolm Knox. Malcolm Knox is the SMH’s literary editor, and a few years ago got himself on a jury in a fairly serious criminal trial. This book is theContinue Reading

This week’s book review is Better than Sex – How a whole generation got hooked on work, by Helen Trinca & Catherine Fox (who edit the Australian Financial Review‘s Boss magazine). Helen Trinca and Catherine Fox are journalists who write about the world of work very much from a managementContinue Reading

This week’s book review is The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less – How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction by Barry Schwartz. This book’s main thesis is that too much choice is detrimental to our lives – it makes us unhappy, not to mention takingContinue Reading

This week’s book review is Children of the Lucky Country: How Australian society has turned its back on children and why children matter by Fiona Stanley, Sue Richardson and Margot Prior. Fiona Stanley was the Australian of the Year in 2003, and made children the topic of the platform sheContinue Reading

Today’s book review is Against the Gods – the Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L Bernstein. I bought this a while ago, when it was first published, and for some reason didn’t finish at the time. I couldn’t believe it when I read it again recently, as (unusually forContinue Reading