Australian Books
AI, a near miss, and a pleasing history
My pick of the books of 2025
A Chesterton for our time
This is Greg Sheridan’s third volume of Christian apologetics. The first, Christians, was the case for Christian faith. The second,…
Abbott delves into Down Under
‘He who controls the past, controls the future’ wrote George Orwell in his classic work, 1984. This is something Tony…
Dressing the word salad
We owe the ghostwriter of this book a debt of gratitude. A novelist called Geraldine Brooks is cited as a…
Wry observations in a jolly good read
For a Justice of the High Court of Australia – even a retired one – publication in any genre is…
God on his side
It was veteran journalist Zito who said in her 2018 book The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American…
Oh come all ye faithful
Catholics make up the largest Christian denomination in Australia. The Catholic Church runs thousands of schools, hospitals, aged care facilities…
Edge of your seat
Great news for admirers of entertaining and refreshingly honest thinking and writing about our world: a bonus volume by the…
The all-seeing AI
Artificial intelligence has overturned many of the old rules, and the one about ‘seeing is believing’ was perhaps the first…
The sin of TDS
You almost have to admire the nerve, the gall, the sheer chutzpah. Here we have a book about the mental…
Wokeness under the Milky Way
Well before Trump’s re-election there were serious signs that woke and identity politics had peaked. In the 2023 blockbuster Harvard…
The good, the bad, & the just plain wrong
My pick of the Aussie books of 2024
Bebop, swing and all that jazz
I can still remember the first time I heard big band jazz. I was in my twenties (too long ago!)…
The puppet masters
Among the Western democracies there are increasing signs that things are falling apart – our governments no longer know what…
Summer Books
Some very good, and a few astonishingly bad
Rip-roaring satire in Iota
This novel is the ninth book of the satirical series concerning Grafton Everest, a rambunctious, overweight, fictional academic who, as…
By hook or by crook
Anne Henderson has produced a series of important books on the Menzies era. Her latest volume adds to this considerable…
Knight who climbed up a mineshaft
For almost 130 years Australian Liberals have prided themselves on their ability to exercise their civic duty to speak and…
The enduring Orwell
One of the things I most enjoy about George Orwell is his love of tobacco. It was essential to him…
What did the Brits ever do for us?
A decade ago, American sociologist Michael Hechter quipped that ‘good alien government may be better than bad native government,’ a…
Writing about leaders
Historian Chris Wallace, who currently holds a professorship at the Faculty of Business, Government and Law at the University of…
Voicing doubt
When it comes to the Voice, Anthony Albanese is breaking all the rules for successfully changing the constitution. First, he…
Faking it
When a radical feminist publisher suggested I review some of their books, I wasn’t quite sure I would enjoy the…
Dismantling the Aboriginal industry
Integration into a wider society works. That is why Australia is one of the most successful countries on the planet.…
Voice of reason
Governments and the woke elite are falling over themselves with taxpayer and shareholder money to promote the seriously dangerous proposal…
