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Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
George Megalogenis
In the aftermath of the 2010 election, Megalogenis considers what has happened to politics in Australia. He dissects the cycle of polls, focus groups and presidential politics and explores what…
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Hugh White
This essay considers Australia’s place between China and the US. As the power balance shifts and China’s influence grows, what might this mean for the nation? How to define the…
David Marr
This irreverent, controversial account is a ground-breaking, in-depth profile that traces Rudd’s years in Queensland, in China, in opposition and finally in government. Based on extensive research, observation and interviewing…
Waleed Aly
What did George W. Bush and John Howard do to conservatism? In their wake, the conservative parties in the US and Australia seem to have lost their way. How did…
Mungo MacCullum
In Australian Story, Mungo MacCallum investigates the political success of Kevin Rudd. What does he know about Australia that his opponents don’t? This is a characteristically barbed and perceptive look…
Mungo MacCallum
Mungo MacCallum investigates political leadership in Australia, past and present. This is a barbed and perceptive look at the challenges facing the Rudd government and Australia. MacCallum argues that the…
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Noel Pearson
Noel Pearson argues that nothing is more crucial to future success than a proper education, and that too many in our society are being left behind. He also looks critically…
Annabel Crabb
Malcolm Turnbull has quite a job ahead of him as leader of the Liberal Party. How is he going so far? What can we expect in the years ahead? This…
Guy Pearse
This is an essay about ‘quarry vision’, the mindset that sees Australia’s greatest asset as its mineral and energy resources, coal especially. How has this distorted our national politics and…
Kate Jennings
Timed to come out immediately after the November 2008 election in the US, it offers a series of memorable snapshots of America in fascinating flux: Bush’s last days in office…
Tim Flannery
Professor Tim Flannery investigates the latest climate science and the challenges facing Australia and the world. He looks at what the Rudd government needs to do if the nation is…
Toohey
In this riveting piece of reportage and analysis, Toohey examines the wholesale attempt to change an entrenched way of life. He takes a perceptive, at time humorous, look at the…
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David Malouf
Australia’s British inheritance is a paradox that has preoccupied much of Malouf’s fiction, and now it gives rise to a brilliant essay exploring Australia’s connection with our one-time ‘mother-country’. Malouf…
Inga Clendinnen
Looks past the skirmishes and pitched battles of the history wars, and asks what’s at stake, what kind of history do we want and need? The author discusses what good…
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer challenges white Australians to come to terms with their past and present relationship with the indigenous community. She discusses Australia’s culture today, the current reconciliation process and the…
Amanda Lohrey
Explores the world of evangelical Christianity. It also looks at the use and abuse of religion in party politics. Analysing the success of Family First, Lohrey argues that Christians have…
Clive Hamilton
According to the author, we need a completely new politics built on the world as we find it. In his provocative new essay, he throws out a challenge to the…
Judith Brett
Australians are relaxed and comfortable with the Liberal Party. What is the party doing right? What is its core appeal to Australian voters? Has John Howard made a dramatic break…
Gideon Haigh
In Bad Company Gideon Haigh scrutinises the way we have turned CEOs into tin gods.
Is moral outrage the appropriate response to the collapses of Enron or HIH or are…
John Birmingham
John Birmingham critically examines the Australia-Indonesia relationship. This essay is a controversial account of how the Australian Government’s relation to Indonesia is characterised by delusion and misjudgment.
Robert Manne
Attacks the right-wing campaign against the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report which revealed how thousands of Aborigines had been taken from their parents.
Mungo Maccallum
No issue has so divided Australians recently as how to handle the arrival on our shores of asylum seekers. This controversial account of Australia’s treatment of refugees by legandary political…
John Button
The latest in this successful series of current political essays. John Button reveals the workings of the Labor Party today, its successes and failures and where it is heading. Winner…
John Martinkus
West Papua is today the site of a covert and brutal struggle. Investigative reporter John Martinkus has just returned from the region, where he has spoken to guerillas and Indonesian…
David Corlett,Robert Manne
This is a groundbreaking and dramatic account of a transformation with global consequences. As other Western nations come to adopt similarly harsh measures, this account will serve as a prophetic…
Paul McGeough
In this second Quarterly Essay of 2004 Paul McGeough offers a dramatic account of why Iraq remains in chaos despite desperate American efforts to create a model democracy in the…
Margaret Simons
In the thirdQuarterly Essayof 2004, Margaret Simons takes a long hard look at Mark Latham, the self-proclaimed ‘club buster’ and the man who would be prime minister. Few doubt Latham’s…
Raimond Gaita
Many people are now dismayed by the relaxed attitude of governments here and abroad towards truth telling. In Australia, examples include WMD and Iraq, ‘children overboard’ and the Manildra affair…
Bestselling author John Birmingham delves into our new military myths. Why has Anzac Day returned and Vietnam faded? Why do we love war stories again? What does this mean for…
John Hirst
The Family Court was a progressive reform of the 1970s. Now it is the most hated institution in Australia. What went wrong? This is a searching critique of its failures…
Robyn Davidson
In this scholarly, yet passionate essay the author explores the paradoxes and strengths of nomadism, in both its traditional and modern forms.
Ian Lowe
Australia is at a crossroads: do we need to embrace a nuclear future? In Reaction Time, Ian Lowe examines the science and the politics of nuclear power, as well as…
Peter Hartcher
This dazzling essay analyses today’s bipolar nation , looks at the legacy of Paul Keating, and discusses how John Howard will set out to craft an election-winning strategy. It explains…
John Howard has the loudest voice in Australia. He has cowed his critis, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced NGOs, censored the arts, prosecutred leakers, criminalised protest…
In Exit Right , Judith Brett explains why the tide turned on John Howard. This is an essay about leadership, in particular Howard’s style of strong leadership which led him…
Anne Manne
The author looks at the challenge of balancing love and economics, and the value our society places on both. Examining how paid work has become ‘sacred’ for many, she argues…
