Derek Parker

Summer Books

16 December 2023 9:00 am

Some very good, and a few astonishingly bad

Summer books

17 December 2022 9:00 am

2022: good reads for a mixed bag of a year

Summer books

18 December 2021 9:00 am

2021: grit your teeth and read a good book

Missing chapters

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Between them, Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington have a wealth of research and writing experience, and their biography of…

In the land of the blind

27 February 2021 9:00 am

Somehow, American culture has got itself into a terrible mess of division and acrimony: elites against mainstream, progressives against conservatives,…

Summer books

19 December 2020 9:00 am

Bad year, good books

Office boy

12 December 2020 9:00 am

For most of us, going to work means going to an office, to sit at a desk and perform bureaucratic…

Blame game

28 November 2020 9:00 am

Ah, millennials. Golden children of the Digital Age or dysfunctional, over-educated slackers? Bit of both, says Anne Helen Petersen, although…

Summer books

21 December 2019 9:00 am

The year has been an odd one for books, with some trying to make sense of the political landscape and…

Quo vadis?

5 October 2019 9:00 am

How did it come to this? When did the constitutional right of the US Senate to ‘advise and consent’ on…

Australian books

15 December 2018 9:00 am

There is the feeling that after ten years of political failures and assorted cultural nonsense the community is yearning for…

Flexing China’s muscles

17 November 2018 9:00 am

We live in interesting times. And, according to Taylor, a respected academic from the Australian National University specialising in geopolitics,…

Misplaced nostalgia

11 August 2018 9:00 am

Michelle Grattan has been a part of the political landscape for nearly a half-century, so when she says that there…

Oddballs and lefties

21 April 2018 9:00 am

Ah, populism: is it a fulsome democratic expression of giving people what they want or merely join-the-dots fear-mongering? Bit of…

Books of 2017 – reviewed

16 December 2017 9:00 am

When we look back at 2017 we will probably remember it as a year of minor issues that turned into…

God’s children

26 March 2016 9:00 am

Once upon a time, Christianity in Australia was seen as the One True Faith. These days, it is likely to…

The year in books

12 December 2015 9:00 am

In an age of white noise Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children (MUP, $33) stands out as a loving…

Aussie royals

3 October 2015 9:00 am

If the issue of Australia becoming a republic is a marathon rather than a sprint, the republicans never had a…

Pollie peddling

15 August 2015 9:00 am

When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…

In the bunker

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

In the bunker

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

Tales to tell

14 March 2015 9:00 am

The short story has long been a staple of Australian literature but has had something of a rough ride in…

Buffoonery

24 January 2015 9:00 am

Not so much striding across the political landscape as huffing and puffing his way through the back rooms, Clive Palmer…

Under the bed

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The bogeyman of the ASIO agent under the bed has long been an obsession of the Left, and judging from…

Genocidal thoughts

15 November 2014 9:00 am

It takes a certain type of courage for a writer to complete a book and then admit that he does…