Insight into the latest publications by our resident team of book reviewers. Subscribers only.
FRIENDS AND RIVALS: Four Great Australian Writers: Barbara Baynton, Ethel Turner, Nettie Palmer and Henry Handel Richardson by Brenda Niall Text Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 276 pages Price: AUD$34.99 Reviewed by Harry Oldmeadow
SMALL ACTS OF DEFIANCE by Michelle Wright Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW Paperback: 342 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
by John C. Rice, editor Hesperian Press, Carlisle, WA Paperback: 80 pages Price: AUD$30 Available from the publisher Reviewed by Jeffry Babb
by Michael D. O’Brien Ignatius Press, San Francisco Paperback: 597 pages Price: AUD$35.90 Reviewed by Ben Hutchinson
by Dr Lisa Noland, editor Wilberforce Publications, London Paperback: 211 pages Price: AUD$25.95 Available from the publisher or try your quality local bookshop Reviewed by Gabrielle Walsh
by Greg Sheridan Allen & Unwin, Sydney Paperback: 384 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Peter Westmore
by Mark Galeotti Ebury Press, Hardcover: 208 pages Price: AUD$27.99 Reviewed by Rex Drabik
by Dr Ray Guarendi EWTN, Irondale, Alabama Paperback: 144 pages Price: AUD$31.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
by Eddie Jaku Pan Macmillan, Sydney Hardcover: 208 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
by Mark Halliday Sutherland and Neil Sutherland Independently published Paperback: 342 pages Price: AUD$34.73 Available only from amazon.com.au Reviewed by David Daintree
by Jennifer Marohasy, editor Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 400 pages Price: AUD$59.95 Reviewed by William Kininmonth
by Geoffrey Blainey Viking, Melbourne Paperback: 336 pages Price: AUD$34.99 Reviewed by Rex Drabik
by Mark Lopez, PhD Connor Court, Redland Bay, Qld. Paperback: 404 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Christopher Murray
by Ryszard Legutko Encounter Books, NY, Hardcover: 200 pages Price: AUD$47.99 Reviewed by Brian Coman
by Sue Williams Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest Paperback: 336 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
by Graham Allison MIT Press, Boston Paperback: 224 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb The Empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been. – Romance of the Three Kingdoms
by Wanda Skowronska Connor Court, Cleveland, Qld. Paperback: 322 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Michael Gilchrist
by Charles Taylor, Patrizia Nanz and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor Harvard University Press, London Hardcover: 120 pages Price: AUD$33.99 Reviewed by Steve Jones
Edited by Dr Kevin Donnelly Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 182 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Peter Kelleher They are sawing away at the ladder A very famous book (The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for those born yesterday) reassured nervous readers, in an uncanny anticipation of snowflake culture, with this advice on the back…
by O. Carter Snead Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass. Paperback: 336 pages Price: AUD$85.40 Reviewed by Margaret Somerville
by Bishop Peter J. Elliott Freedom Publishing Books Paperback: 161 pages Price: AUD$25.95 Reviewed by Peter Westmore
by Dr Kevin Donnelly AM Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 256 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by David Daintree
by Walt Heyer Self-published, NP Paperback: 176 pages Price: AUD$25.80 Reviewed by Peter Kelleher
The Last Lighthouse Keeper: A memoir by John Cook, with Jon Bauer Allen & Unwin, Sydney Paperback: 352 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
BLACK AND PRO-LIFE IN AMERICA: The Incarceration and Exoneration of Walter B. Hoye II by Robert Artigo Ignatius Press, San Francisco Hardcover: 261 pages Price: AUD$38.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel
by Keith Windschuttle Quadrant Books, Balmain Paperback: 408 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Peter Westmore THE LONG CAMPAIGN TO ‘STITCH UP’ CARDINAL PELL Meticulously researched, this book by Keith Windschuttle, the editor of Quadrant magazine, is an exposé of what the author describes as a multi-faceted campaign over several years to fit up Cardinal George Pell for the crime of sexual abuse, to discredit the Catholic Church in the community and, more broadly, to diminish the influence of Christianity in public life. Windschuttle shows how the campaign to implicate Cardinal Pell in the Church’s sex-abuse crisis, which Cardinal Pell did more to deal with than any other churchman in Australia, was built on years of hostile media coverage of the Cardinal’s defence of traditional Christian morality, particularly on sexual ethics.…
WHERE IS GOD IN SUFFERING? by Brendan Purcell New City Press, Hyde Park, NY Paperback: 157 pages Price: AUD$46.95 Reviewed by John Little Who does not suffer? And how do Christians accept and enter its deeper meaning and challenge with clarity, trust and hope, and not with passive, puzzled acceptance, denial, confusion, resentment – or even anger? For a “full-on” expression of anger, watch the viral recording of Stephen Fry being interviewed on Irish television in 2015. The interviewer asked Fry what he would say to God, if He existed, and if Fry were to meet him at the Pearly Gates. With barely any hesitation, Fry replied: “I will basically say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world in which…
DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM by Anne Case and Angus Deaton Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Hardcover: 312 pages Price: AUD$47.99 Reviewed by Brian Coman “Knowledge is of two kinds,” said Dr Johnson. “We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” The book under review – Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism – supplies that second kind of knowledge. It assembles and dissects a vast body of detailed statistics on the mental, physical, economic, and political health of the United States. For that reason, it is not a book for light bedtime reading. Nonetheless, it is written in a simple, layman’s language and most of the data are presented in easy-to-comprehend line graphs. The book is…
APOCALYPSE NEVER: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger HarperCollins, New York Hardcover: 432 pages Price: AUD$59.99 Reviewed by Bill Kininmonth The emergence of Extinction Rebellion has lifted environmental alarmism to a new level of public confrontation. It is not, however, as if the movement has been able to call on a massive number of active supporters, as did the “Ban the Bomb” and anti-Vietnam War marches of the 1970s. Extinction Rebellion groups often number from hundreds to a few thousand, yet they are able to close city thoroughfares and disrupt communities. It is civil disobedience and wilful disrespect for the law that has enabled the environmental extremists to gain media attention, not numbers. Michael Shellenberger introduces his book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, with…
A GOOD LIFE AT ANY PRICE: New Threats to Human Life in Our Times by Anita Dowsing Gracewing, Herefordshire Paperback: 224 pages Price: AUD$32.95 Reviewed by Joe Carolan This book gives a valuable overview of several major threats to human life in our times, including abortion, the destruction of embryos during IVF, assisted suicide/euthanasia and terrorism. Anita Dowsing, who has held various roles in Catholic adult education in Britain, addresses each topic methodically from the philosophical, religious and legal perspectives. The book is intended for the general reader but does address each of the topics relating to human life in considerable depth. Dowsing frames each of the threats to human life as being rooted in misconceptions of what “a good life” means. She says a good life is a life…
THE SECOND WORLD WARS: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson Basic Books, NY Hardcover: 752 pages Price: AUD$60.75 Reviewed by Anthony Staunton The Second World Wars is by Victor Davis Hanson, an American classicist, historian, farmer and columnist on modern and ancient warfare. He has more than 20 books to his name, particularly on ancient warfare, and brings to this work 3,000 years of historical comparisons. The book is a thematic overview of World War II and not a chronological or narrative history. Its focus is on the three main Allied powers: the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union; and on the three main Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan. Hanson selected the title, The Second World Wars, “since no supposedly single…
COVID 19: What You Need to Know about the Coronavirus and the Race for the Vaccine by Dr Michael Mosley Simon and Schuster Australia, Cammeray, NSW Paperback: 144 pages Price: AUD$19.99 Reviewed by Peter Westmore Dr Michael Mosley, the author of this book – subtitled, “What You Need to Know about the Coronavirus and the Race for the Vaccine” – studied to become a doctor in Britain but became a BBC science journalist, and appears frequently on television speaking about medical issues. He is the author of several books, most of which concern healthy and “fad” diets, and has been a frequent TV commentator on medical aspects of the covid crisis. This book is a very readable account of the biochemistry of the virus, explaining how it is able to…
DANIEL RUDD: Calling a Church to Justice by Gary B. Agee Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota Paperback: 113 pages Price: AUD$32.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel This short biography recounts the life and work of journalist and civil-rights advocate Daniel Rudd. It is published in the “People of God: Remarkable lives, heroes of faith” series produced by the Liturgical Press, a series that showcases the lives of prominent 20th and 21st-century Catholics such as Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. The author, Gary Agee, teaches church history at Anderson University, Indiana, is a pastor in the Church of God denomination, and is the author of numerous works, including a longer study of Rudd’s life and work. Described as “the greatest Negro Catholic in America” at the height of his public career…
RADIO GIRL: The Story of the Extraordinary Mrs Mac, Pioneering Engineer and Wartime Legend by David Dufty Allen & Unwin, East Melbourne Paperback: 312 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Chris Rule In his preface, David Dufty explains how he became interested in the “Radio Girl”, Florence Violet McKenzie, who was usually called Violet. Dufty was interviewing “a retired spy” for his book, Secret Code-Breakers of Central Bureau (reviewed in the December 16, 2017, edition of News Weekly), when the interviewee “abruptly changed the subject and started talking about ‘Mrs Mac’”, the affectionate nickname her trainees had given to McKenzie. So Dufty included a chapter on her in that book. Now Dufty has devoted an entire book to the Extraordinary Mrs Mac. Florence Violet MaKenzie was born in Melbourne in 1890.…
A TIME TO BUILD: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream by Yuval Levin Basic Books, New York, Hardcover: 256 pages Price: AUD$42.40 Reviewed by Michael Quinlan Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a senior editor…
100 DAYS: Claiming Back NZ by Amy Brooke Howling at the Moon Publishing, Kaukapakapa, New Zealand Paperback: 383 pages Price: NZ$29.95 Reviewed by Paul Collits Readers of News Weekly may be aware of Amy Brooke, Kiwi Happy Warrior. I hope so. Amy has appeared in News Weekly’s page as a poet and as a political commentator. She has a recurring column in The Spectator Australia, in which she delivers invariably common-sense, clear thinking reports on matters political and cultural from across the Ditch. And she has had her work published over many years in Quadrant. Or you might have visited her website. Amy is a writer of children’s books. But there is much, much more. Amy has also had a distinguished career as a literary editor and a publishing presence…
THE BATTLES FOR KOKODA PLATEAU: Three Weeks of Hell Defending the Gateway to the Owen Stanleys by David W. Cameron Allen & Unwin, Melbourne Paperback: 432 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb On July 21, 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance force landed near Gona, on the northeast coast of Papua. The first objective, Cameron writes, was to capture the Kokoda Plateau and its vital airstrip, which would provide a forward base for operations against Port Moresby. The plateau measures 1,000 metres by 500 metres. This is the story of how Australian forces, consisting of just one militia battalion, the 39th Battalion, supported by the 1st Battalion, Papuan Infantry Battalion, and a small number of loyal members of the Royal Papuan Constabulary (RPC), held off a Japanese force three times…
THE DECEPTIONS by Suzanne Leal Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW Paperback: 277 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Actions have consequences, many of which affect people for the rest of their long lives, and their descendants. This idea is central to Suzanne Leal’s latest novel, The Deceptions. A lawyer by profession, Leal has again incorporated a Holocaust story into her work. The inspiration of one of the central aspects of the plot, namely a gendarme befriending a Jewess, came from her former landlord and Holocaust survivor, Fred Perger. Many of Perger’s other anecdotes formed the basis of her first novel, Border Street. The novel begins in 2010 with Hana, one of the three central characters. Readers learn she is an elderly woman of Jewish back-ground, originally from…
ORWELL: A Man of Our Time by Richard Bradford Bloomsbury Caravel, London Hardcover: 234 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Bill James Some Christians try to base their behaviour on the principle, “What Would Jesus Do?” which sometimes extends to wearing a WWJD wristband. A secular version of this practice takes the form of “What Would Orwell Say?” For example, 50 years ago there was a debate over whether George Orwell, had he lived, would have supported the Vietnam War because of his anti-communism, or opposed it because of his anti-colonialism. Richard Bradford has attempted to draw lessons from Orwell’s life and writings and apply them to several contemporary issues, such as the Trump presidency, Brexit, left-wing anti-Semitism, Islamism, and China’s aspirations to global hegemony. His book was published just too…
THE KILLING SEASON: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 by Geoffrey B. Robinson Princeton University Press, New Jersey Paperback: 456 pages Price: AUD$42.99 Reviewed by Paul Monk Confronted, after 1945 (and even more from 1949–50) with a communist bloc in which large-scale terror and totalitarian rule had repeatedly been imposed on hundreds of millions of people, the Anglo-American powers in 1947 took measures to create a global strategic and intelligence alliance to buttress the post-World War II world against the threat of communist subversion and revolution. Over the decades of the Cold War, beginning with the Berlin airlift in 1948, that alliance undertook many operations, overt and covert, to contain communism. Much of the history of those operations remains, to this day, shrouded in secrecy in classified files. This…
PHILOSOPHIES AT WAR by Fulton J. Sheen Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1943 Available to read online here What strikes this reader of Fulton Sheen’s 1943 book, Philosophies at War, is its agreement with B.A. Santamaria’s Philosophies in Collision, which had its origins in a paper B.A. gave in 1973. (This paper is now available again in The Best of News Weekly.) Both men are writing of the times in which they live and diagnosing the ailments that are besetting their societies, in the one case in the United States during World War II, in the other in the Australia of the 1970s upheavals, and suggesting similar lines of defence and renewal. And both see the root of the ailments as a civilisational crisis which is manifesting itself in the exact…
THE 20-YEAR PERSECUTION OF FALUN GONG IN CHINA by the Minghui Report Minghui Publishing Center Hardcover: 437 pages Price: AUD$95 (Free delivery if order is from NSW, Victoria or Queensland) Available from the Epoch Media Group, c/o Tianti Books, 49A Treacy Street, Hurstville, NSW 2220 T: (02) 8988 5600, email: [email protected] or Melbourne Epoch Media Group, 1/486 Station Street, Box Hill, Victoria 3128 T: (03) 9898 8188, email: [email protected] Reviewed by Peter Westmore For those concerned about the misuse of Chinese power around the world, this book is an essential source of information. It offers over 430 pages of the most exhaustive documentation of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and should be in every library and parliamentary office in Australia. Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong,…
CHINA’S GREAT WALL OF DEBT: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon Little Brown Book Group, London Paperback: 352 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by David James It is all getting quite exhausting. Just as we were getting used to hating Russia, despite zero proof of Vladimir Putin’s limitlessly evil genius – not to mention the evidence now emerging that the whole thing was invented by American dirty politicians, dirty media and dirty judges – we now have to turn our attention to the endlessly wicked Middle Kingdom. For those bravely attending to this new task, it might help if, I dunno, we actually knew something about China. Which is why it is worth reading Dinny McMahon’s insightful book, China’s Great Wall…
SURVIVING THE FUTURE: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy by David Fleming and Shaun Chamberlin Chelsea Green Publishing, Hartford, Vermont Paperback: 304 pages Price: AUD$30.95 Reviewed by Brian Coman “Examine everything,” writes St Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians, “hold on to that which is true.” Now, of course, St Paul is here referring pre-eminently to matters of Christian faith, but his teaching nonetheless has the character of a universal axiom. The problem is that, in these troubled times, establishing the truth of any secular matter is no easy task. Anyone who bothers to compare the “factual” news analyses coming from, say, the ABC with the same news items from, say, Sky News, will understand the sort of problems I am referring to.…
MY UNCLE FULTON SHEEN by Joan Sheen Cunningham and Janel Rodriguez Ignatius Press, San Francisco Paperback: 144 pages Price: AUD$33.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel One of the most prominent churchmen in the 20th century was Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895–1979). Author of numerous books, and presenter of the renowned Life is Worth Living series on television, his great influence on the lives of millions of people cannot be underrated. For example, the future Pope John Paul II improved his command of English by watching episodes of Life is Worth Living. The fact that many of his works are still in print, and various videos and audio files of his presentations are readily available on the internet, for example on YouTube, attest to his enduring popularity and influence. As its title…
LIBERTY IN THE THINGS OF GOD: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom by Robert Louis Wilken Yale UP, New Haven, Connecticut Hardcover: 248 pages Price: AUD$46.99 Reviewed by Michael Quinlan Professor Robert Louis Wilken is chairman of the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, the publisher of First Things magazine. He is also the William R. Kenan Jr Professor of the History of Christianity Emeritus at the University of Virginia and a past president of the American Academy of Religion, and the Academy of Catholic Theo-logy. His books include The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (2013), The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (2003), The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (1984/2003), and Remembering the Christian Past (1995). This book…
TEN ROGUES: The Unlikely Story of Convict Schemers, a Stolen Brig and an Escape from Van Diemen’s Land to Chile by Peter Grose Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest Paperback: 222 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel One of the most picturesque, yet eerily remote, locations in Australia is the west-coast region of Tasmania. A visit to the region typically includes a cruise along the Franklin River, and a visit to the ruins of the notorious penal settlement on Sarah Island. Barbarous and inhumane treatment of prisoners, such as described in Marcus Clarke’s classic novel, For the Term of His Natural Life, were de rigueur in this settlement. During the course of the visit, tourists’ attention is generally drawn to the fantastic tale of the escape by 10 convicts…
THE GREAT KOALA SCAM: Green Propaganda, Junk Science, Government Waste and Cruelty to Animals by Vic Jurskis Connor Court, Cleveland, Qld. Paperback: 138 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Brian Coman Let me begin with a declaration of non-objectivity! Any retired scientist who quotes Miguel Cervantes on the first page of his work is almost certainly worth reading. There! I’ve exposed my bias. And like the great Don Quixote himself, Vic Jurskis has suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. Well, not fortune exactly, but rather the slings and arrows of hostile reviews, publication knockbacks from scientific journals, and deliberate snubbing from many other scientists engaged in his line of work – the relationship between forest ecology and bushfires. Part of that ecology led Jurskis to undertake a study of…
GRANT by Ron Chernow Apollo, London Paperback: 1,104 pages Price: AUD$27.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Some books require such a commitment of time and attention – and also on account of their sheer length – that they become life changing. Who could not read Tolstoy’s War and Peace without absorbing the grandeur of the Russian worldview? Ron Chernow’s Grant is 1,000 pages long. Reading at a moderate pace, it takes at least a month to finish. What do we find out about U.S. Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant for this effort? One thing most people know about Grant is that he was a drunk. He also won battles when other generals did not. An old story goes that a cabinet member rushes into the cabinet room and says to…
CAPITAL AND IDEOLOGY by Thomas Piketty Belknap Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts Hardcover: 1,104 pages Price: AUD$79.99 Reviewed by Colin Teese Back in 2014, French academic economist Thomas Piketty published Capital in the Twenty-First Century. His aim was to codify what he called the “grand dynamics” that drove the accumulation and distribution of capital. He brought to our attention new facts and penetrating observations about the evolution of inequality and prospects for economic growth, which are at the heart of the political economy. He brought into clear focus the issue of inequality as a worthwhile source of academic study. Before that book, there had been little structured debate about the subject. Piketty told us that, due to a lack of adequate data and clear, guiding theories, we would be unable to tackle…
THE SMALLEST MINORITY: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics by Kevin D. Williamson Gateway Editions, Washington DC Hardcover: 256 pages Price: AUD$53.99 Reviewed by David James Kevin D. Williamson’s book, The Smallest Minority, is an entirely reasonable critique of democracy’s shortcomings that just as entirely misses the point. He criticises the mob rule element in democracies, but there is no sense in which, in reality, democracies reflect the will of the people. Anyone who thinks that is either a simpleton or has spent far too much time watching reality TV. There are even empirical studies proving that government policies are routinely the exact opposite of what the majority wants. The point of democracy lies elsewhere. For one thing, it enables the people peaceably to rid itself of bad…
WHY READ HANNAH ARENDT NOW? by Richard J. Bernstein Polity Publisher, Cambridge Paperback: 120 pages Price: AUD$21.95 LOVE AND SAINT AUGUSTINE by Hannah Arendt University of Chicago Press, Chicago Paperback: 254 pages Price: AUD$32.99 Reviewed by Paul Gray Hannah Arendt is one of the most important thinkers of the late 20th century and, in this century, remains a key influence in con-temporary thought. The recent short volume, Why Read Hannah Arendt now?, by philosopher Richard Bernstein, an admirer of Arendt’s who has done important work of his own in extending understanding of the problem of evil in contemporary times, is an almost too readable account of her thought. Bernstein’s Radical Evil – a consideration of the problem in light of the Holocaust and the wider totalitarian experiences of the…
NERVOUS STATES: How Feeling Took Over the World by William Davies Vintage, London Paperback: 320 pages Price: AUD$24.99 Reviewed by David Daintree The more complicated the world becomes, the more books are written to help us understand and navigate it. So numerous and so diverse are books of this kind that a pessimist might suspect they have become part of the problem. But Davies’ book is relatively creditable. His central thesis is set out in the introduction: “The modern world was founded upon two fundamental distinctions, both inaugurated in the mid-17th century: between mind and body, and between war and peace.” These “binaries”, he says, have been growing weaker over the ensuing centuries: new sciences such as psychology have demonstrated previously unrecognised links between body and mind (psychosomatic illnesses were…
GOLIATH: Why the West Doesn’t Win Wars, and What We Need to Do about It by Sean McFate Michael Joseph, London Hardcover: 336 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Bill James Most of us, either consciously or unconsciously, hold a number of assumptions about the nature of “normal” war. The participants are sovereign, independent states, a state being by definition an entity that holds a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence. Conflicts are fought by permanent, professional armed forces, and clear-cut victory goes to the side with the most and the best-trained fighters, using the most technologically advanced equipment. Fighting is (in theory, anyway) governed by principles derived from the Christian “just war” theology of Augustine and Aquinas;…
THE NEW ART OF WAR: China’s Deep Strategy inside the United States by William J. Holstein Brick Tower Press, NY Paperback: 232 pages Price: AUD$32.95 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Sun Tsu (544 BC–496 BC) was a master strategist whose classic book, The Art of War, has been the essential manual for Chinese soldiers and businessmen for two millennia. It is no accident that the Chinese god of war is also the god of business. William Holstein has a deep understanding of Chinese culture, derived from his time as a foreign correspondent in Beijing and his studies of China’s language and culture. But he doesn’t seem to grasp the reason why so many students and businessmen act as agents for the Chinese Government. In the United States, the Chinese are known…
THE ADJUNCT UNDERCLASS: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students and Their Mission by Herb Childress University of Chicago Press, Chicago Hardcover: 208 pages Price: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Dr Augusto Zimmermann Herb Childress currently works as a partner at an ethnography-based consulting firm in the United States. Until 2013, he was dean of research and assessment at the Boston Architectural College, and before that, he was an associate director of the University Writing Program at Duke University. It is common to describe universities as bastions of knowledge, academic freedom, and intellectual rigour. But in today’s America, argues Dr Childress in his latest book, the image and reputation of university education has been seriously diminished. In The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission,…
FATHER AUGUSTUS TOLTON: The Slave Who Became the First African-American Priest by Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers Sophia Institute Press, New Hampshire Paperback: 176 pages Price: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel One of the most inspirational persons in the history of the United States Church in the 19th century is Servant of God Rev Augustus (Augustine) Tolton, the first full-blooded African-American man to be ordained to the priesthood. The author of this biography, Harold Burke-Sivers, is a permanent deacon of African-American background who regularly appears on EWTN, and whose previous works include Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality. Born a slave on 1 April 1854 in Missouri, Augustus was the son of Peter and Martha Tolton. The family escaped North in the chaos that enveloped the South during…
MAOISM: A Global History by Julia Lovell Vintage, London Paperback: 448 pages Price: AUD$35 Reviewed by Bill James Those over a certain age will remember the reign of Mao back in the 1960s and ’70s. His icon was taped to the walls of student digs, from where the Great Helmsman could preside over the long hair, hippy clothes, rock music, all-night partying, drug taking and casual sex – all of which which his puritanical apparatchiks forbade in China. “China Liners” split the Australian communist movement. In a self-indulgent display of ideological one-upmanship, contingents of Maoist marchers irrelevantly chanted “Smash Soviet revisionism!” in the middle of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. There is no shortage of biographies of Mao or histories of 20th-century China. Julia Lovell, however, Professor of Modern China at University…
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND ST THOMAS AQUINAS: On Justice in the Distribution and Exchange of Wealth by Donald Boland En Route Books and Media, St Louis Paperback: 214 pages Price: AUD$34.95 Reviewed by Paul Collits Don Boland is a modern day peeping Thomist (apologies to the late Ralph McInerney), a keeper of the faith and a champion of the natural law-driven scholastic ethics, philosophy and theology of the Angelic Doctor. Don has been a significant presence for many years at Sydney’s Centre for Catholic (formerly Thomistic) Studies, involved both in teaching and administration. The former CTS broke ranks with the older Aquinas Academy, established by the legendary Marist Father Austin (Doc) Woodbury, when the Academy later took off in a modernist, post-Vatican II direction. (Fr Woodbury was noted for being a…
DOUBLE TROUBLE: The Amazing True Story of the After Dark Bandit by Geoff Wilkinson and Ross Brundrett Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 288 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Long ago I had a friend named Dave Norgaard. He was “pictorial editor” for the Daily News in Perth. Dave had worked on The Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne. He had also worked in England, Hong Kong and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The Daily News, Perth’s afternoon paper, followed Dave into the grave. Dave was a heavy drinker and died in his 30s. Dave could always be found at the window at Steve’s Pub after work. Dave was a shrewd man who had had much experience with the seamier side of life in his profession as a journalist. I was, at the…
GALILEO REVISITED: The Galileo Affair in Context by Dom Paschal Scotti Ignatius Press, San Francisco Paperback: 276 pages Price: AUD$37.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Those who wish to argue that Christianity, Roman Catholicism in particular, is opposed to science invariably cite the condemnation of Galileo. In the popular mind, one need look no further than this example, arguing that it proves that science – which is characterised by open inquiry – is opposed to “blind faith”. Many people in the community base their understanding of the affair on Bertolt Brecht’s heavily biased play, The Life of Galileo, in which he uses this historical event to advocate his anti-Catholic and Communist agenda, portraying Galileo as a proto-Marxist! In this study, Dom Paschal Scotti, a monk of Portsmouth Abbey, Rhode Island,…
A WORLD MADE NEW: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon Random House, New York Paperback: 342 pages Price: AUD$36 Reviewed by Madeleine van der Linden The creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a momentous achievement, as nations tried desperately to create peace and safety in a world shattered by World War II. It was the first time that an effort had been made to clarify and ratify the rights of man on a global scale. In the light of the atrocities carried out during World War II, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights sought to ensure that never again would people be deprived of liberty and life as they had been in that war or during the Cold War…
ANGELS, INCENSE AND REVOLUTION: Catholic Schooldays of the 1960s by Wanda Skowronska (Foreword by Jim Franklin) Connor Court, Redland Bay Paperback: 224 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Michael Gilchrist As the old saying goes, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. However, those in control of Catholic religious education forgot that wise maxim in the years after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). While the Council mandated reforms where needed, it by no means commanded a revolution, whether in liturgy, education or anywhere else. However, for assorted reasons, many responsible people in Catholic education offices, liturgy committees, seminaries and religious orders invoked the “spirit of Vatican II” as giving a green light to ongoing radical changes, not least in the content and method of religious education. The fallout from this for…
HOW FEAR WORKS: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century by Frank Furedi Bloomsbury Continuum, Sydney Hardcover: 320 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Margaret Somerville I currently teach bioethics to medical students and in the past have also taught law students. A theme of the first class I give them is that as members of the professions they are entering they should try to learn to live comfortably with uncertainty if they are to avoid errors, including ethical errors, especially errors of judgement. Psychologists tell us that uncertainty is a very difficult mental state to experience because it means that we cannot be certain what coping mechanisms we need to use, which can leave us feeling unable to cope. Living comfortably with uncertainty is the polar opposite of uncertainty eliciting…
THE LITTLE GREY BOOK ON SEX AND TRANSGENDER by Patrick J. Byrne Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 95 pages Price: AUD$19.99 Reviewed by Terri M. Kelleher This second book on transgender by Patrick J. Byrne is an excellent introduction to his more detailed treatment of the subject in his first book, Transgender: One Shade of Grey. It is a handbook of the concepts that you need to get your head around to begin to make any sense of transgender ideology. Those who do not share that ideology are beginning to realise it affects them and can have a serious consequences for them. The author refers to the “growing … conflict between two worldviews about human sexuality and human nature”. There is the biological worldview, based on science, that recognises a person’s…
UNDER FIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA by Schalk Visagie Christian Liberty Books, Cape Town Paperback: 318 pages Price: AUD$41.95 Reviewed by John Elsegood In the Book of Ephesians, we are told about having to wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers of darkness. In fact, a South African police officer, Lieutenant Colonel Schalk Visagie, did both, in scenes reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, an Italian poem of the 14th century about a journey through hell, where those who have yielded to bestial acts of fraud, violence and malice against their fellowman are punished. In arguably the toughest police beat in the world in the 1980s and 1990s, such was the lot of a young family man who lived out his daily occupation in an environment of bombings,…
AN UNSOUND INVESTMENT: The Memoirs of Sir Peter Lawler by Peter Lawler Privately published, Canberra Hardcover; three volumes in slipcase: 933 pages Price: AUD$170 Reviewed by John Barich An Unsound Investment is the title of the memoir of one of the Australian Family Association’s national patrons, Sir Peter Lawler. The memoir has been published posthumously in three volumes. Volume I covers Sir Peter’s Anglo-Celtic roots until his graduation from Sydney University in 1943 and he is offered a position in the Department of Post War Reconstruction (PWR) in Canberra. Volume II begins in 1944, when Canberra’s population was about 10,000. Today it is 340,000. The volume covers his work in PWR from 1944 to 1952, when the director-general of the department was H.C. (Nugget) Coombs and his Deputy was Allen…
SAINTS AND SINNERS IN THE CRISTERO WAR: Stories of Martyrdom from Mexico by Mons James T. Murphy Ignatius Press, San Francisco Paperback: 264 pages Price: AUD$35.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel As a teenager, I was unable to put down Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory, after my school chaplain spoke at length about the protagonist in his weekly reflection. Greene’s novel explores the complex character of an unnamed priest, known only as “the whiskey priest”, a deeply flawed individual who ministers clandestinely while trying to escape the Mexican authorities, who are ruthlessly trying to hunt him down. Apart from an abiding interest among the general public in Greene’s novel, the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico in the early decades of the 20th century, particularly the…
KING OF THE AIR: The Turbulent Life of Charles Kingsford Smith by Ann Blainey Black Inc., Carlton Hardcover: 384 pages Price: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb This biography is a story and Ann Blainey is a fine storyteller. Charles Kingsford Smith was a hero of the pioneering days of aviation, between the wars. He made the first trans-Pacific flight from the American mainland to Australia; the first flight across the Tasman; and the first non-stop crossing of the Australian continent. But, in what context should we see these feats today? Qantas has a non-stop flight from Perth to London in less than 24 hours; in Kingsford Smith’s era, doing the same trip in a week was near miraculous. Kingsford Smith was a man who pushed the boundaries. He wanted to…
BY VIOLENCE UNAVENGED: In the Hearts of Kings, volume 1 by Annette Young Distant Prospect Publishing, Lorn, NSW Hardcover/Paperback: 474 pages Price: Hardcover: AUD$49.95; Paperback: AUD$34.95 Available also as an ebook for Kindle, Kobo and Google Play Preorder now from any bookseller, or from the author at annetteyoung.net (signed to Australian addresses) Reviewed by John Young Phoebe Raye was one of the principal characters in the author’s previous novel, A Distant Prospect. She is the leading character in the present work, which begins some years earlier than A Distant Prospect, and continues on beyond that work. We are told how the principal characters fared, but it is Phoebe who is centre stage in the present work, which is the first of a trilogy. The early chapters are set in Sydney,…
THE KILLING OF LOUISA by Janet Lee University of Queensland Press, St Lucia Paperback: 272 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel One of the more unusual criminal cases in Australian history is that of Louisa Collins, who in 1889 was the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Louisa Collins has already been the subject of two academic studies published in recent years: Last Woman Hanged, by Caroline Overington (2014): and Black Widow, by Carol Baxter (2015). Now, emerging writer Janet Lee has written a fictionalised account of her. Louisa Collins’ case has been of particular interest not only because she was the last woman hanged in NSW, but also because she was found guilty only on the fourth trial for the crime of murder. Her first trial…
MUSIC AS AN ART by Roger Scruton Bloomsbury Continuum, Sydney Hardcover: 272 pages Price: AUD$50 Reviewed by David James Writing about music is often an unrewarding task. It is an art form that leaves the philosopher or critic either confined to talking about technicalities, or in generalities that are too abstract to say much about any composer, or genre. The results are often empty, or say little. It is thus refreshing to read Roger Scruton’s Music as an Art, a brilliant display of philosophical analysis, critical insight, cultural reflection, close, attentive listening and extensive erudition. For anyone who wants to reflect on the art that is music, this is an exceptionally rewarding tome. Scruton covers many areas that need to be looked at, especially in classical music. One is melody:…
HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS DESTROYING EDUCATION AND YOUR CHILD’S FUTURE by Kevin Donnelly Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne Paperback: 240 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Christopher Murray Readers who follow the national conversation about education will be very familiar with Kevin Donnelly. He has published several books, writes often for daily newspapers, appears on television and was appointed as one of two reviewers of the Australian Curriculum under the Abbott government. His voice is authoritative. He knows education inside and out and has followed the trends pushed by progressives on generations of students in Australia. This particular book is a compilation of previously published articles and opinion pieces, so many of the ideas and stories will already be well known to interested parties. However, this does not lead to the work being…
THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS: A Woman’s Record of the Armenian Massacre of 1909 by Helen Davenport Gibbons Connor Court, Redland Bay, 2016 (first published in 1917; this edition with a new introduction and annotations) Paperback: 130 pages Price: AUD$19.95 Reviewed by Edward Fenton The world heard of the “liberation” of Aleppo a few years ago from the hands of a God-forsaken “other”. This book is an account of another episode of mass upheaval and mob cruelty 100 odd years and 150 kilometres removed from that city, in the city of Saint Paul, Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. It focuses the mind on the utter barbarity that can be unleashed when order breaks down in the Near East, in particular, and in any society once the innate worth of every human…
AUSTRALIA’S FIRST SPIES: The Remarkable Story of Australia’s Intelligence Operations, 1901–1945 by John Fahey Allen and Unwin, SydneyPaperback: 456 pagesPrice: AUD$34.99 Reviewed by Chris Rule John Fahey’s book is a history of the birth and early development of what have become Australia’s intelligence community and its international connections. It details the organisations involved, operations, sources and methods, successes and failures, key individuals, and intra and inter-agency wrangling. It deals with the problems of professionals dealing with bean-counting bureaucrats; and it highlights the security issues that have plagued Australian intelligence from the start. Fahey contends that Australia’s intelligence operations originated in a desire to protect Australian interests whenever those interests didn’t coincide with those of Great Britain. The first operation commenced in early 1901, against the French and British in the…
SAINTS VS. SCOUNDRELS: Debating Life’s Greatest Questions by Benjamin Wiker EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama Paperback: 288 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Many people have converted to Catholicism because they have recognised that the Catholic Church is able to offer a meaningful and cogent response to the deep questions of life. However, throughout its history, but particularly in the last few centuries, many voices have been raised challenging the claims of Christianity. The author, Benjamin Wiker, holds a PhD in Theological Ethics, and is the author of numerous books, including 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And Five Others That Didn’t Help (2008) and co-author of Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God (2008). Wiker begins this volume by wondering what would happen if some…
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput Henry Hold and Company, New York Hardcover: 288 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Conor Sweeney Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is a rare breed among his class: a serious bishop. By this I mean he is a bishop who, far more than most, confronts real problems and asks real questions. Not only this: he also attempts real answers. Strangers in a Strange Land was published in 2017, a year that also saw the publication of similar works by two of Chaput’s fellow Americans: Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option and Anthony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes. Each text is a variation on the theme of the relationship of faith and culture in an America…
PIONEER PRIESTS AND MAKESHIFT ALTARS: A History of Catholicism in the Thirteen Colonies by Fr Charles P. Connor EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama Paperback: 272 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Central to the foundation story of the United States of America are the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, and the subsequent establishment of Massachusetts by English Puritans. In popular consciousness, colonists who left Britain for the fledgling North American colonies from 1620 to 1640 – such as this reviewer’s American ancestors – did so because they were non-conforming Protestants escaping religious persecution by the government for failing to adhere to the Church of England. The author, Fr Charles P. Connor – a priest of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a regular presenter on the Eternal Word Television…
THE BENEDICT OPTION: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher Sentinel, New York Paperback: 262 pages Price: AUD$38.99 Reviewed by David Daintree Once in a while Providence throws up a splendid synchronicity of famous births. The second-last decade of the fifth century (480–490 AD) was one such special time. What other period and place in history has produced three people whose influence on the centuries to come has been as potent and far-reaching as Cassiodorus, Boethius and St Benedict? Cassiodorus was an educational innovator who founded a scholarly community called Vivarium. Making books was a primary task. He saw no conflict between the Gospel and the noblest achievements of the secular and pagan world, believing that the latter too had God at their root. Boethius died…
THE RUSSIA HOAX: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump by Gregg Jarrett Broadside (HarperCollins, New York Hardcover: 352 pages Price: AUD$52.99 Reviewed by Hal G.P. Colebatch This book is an indispensible guide through the toxic swamp that much of the political establishment of Washington, DC, has become. One reads it both with horror at what much of the U.S. political class has become and with increasingly awe-struck admiration at what President Donald Trump has achieved in draining that swamp to date; a truly Herculean achievement. Whether the rot started with the Clinton Presidency or with Obama hardly matters. It dissects with meticulous, and apparently unanswerable detail, the frantic efforts of much of the political class to clear Hillary Clinton of a string of alleged offences…
THE SEXUAL STATE: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along by Jennifer Roback Morse TAN Books, Charlotte, NC Hardcover: 420 pages Price: AUD$55.95 Reviewed by Michael Quinlan Dr Jennifer Roback Morse has a PhD in economics and is the founder of the not-for-profit Ruth Institute. The Sexual State is her fourth book. In this book Dr Morse argues that the Sexual Revolution was the result of deliberate actions by the elites. She argues that the positions taken in this revolution are false, counter-intuitive and contrary to human nature and that their spread was only possible due to the co-opting of the coercive power of the state. She argues that the Sexual Revolution has brought unnecessary misery, pain and hardship to millions, misery that…
VIETNAM: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–75 by Max Hastings HarperCollins, London Paperback: 752 pages Price: AUD$34.99 Reviewed by Bill James Back in the late 1960s, I demonstrated against the Vietnam War as part of the “Neither Washington nor Hanoi” contingent. While realising that such an ideal outcome was unlikely, I had decided that the tragic imposition of neo-Stalinism on the Vietnamese people was a lesser evil than the continuation of hostilities, with its consequent possible destruction of the country of Vietnam. After all, the conflict cost somewhere between 2 and 3 million lives, with 40 Vietnamese dying for each American. I am still not sure whether I was right or wrong. The Korean people also suffered greatly in the period 1950–53, but in the end communist aggression was contained, and a…
THE END OF LOYALTY: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America by Rick Wartzman Public Affairs, New York Hardcover: 432 pages Price: AUD$42.99 Reviewed by Colin Teese The author could not have chosen a better title for what he wanted to illustrate: whereas American big business was once able and willing to provide well-paid and reliable jobs and working conditions to all Americans willing to work, that is no longer the case. In the process of making his case, Rick Wartzman provides the reader with a thoroughgoing and painstakingly documented account of the evolution of U.S. labour relations for most of the 20th century and up to the present. The book is constructed in three parts: I. The Golden Age; II. Turbulent Times; and III. The Era of…
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto, Harper Collins, Sydney Twins are invaluable to scientists as objects of study, because no two people are genetically closer than identical twins. Had Bruce and Brian Reimer not been identical twins, it is possible that Dr John Money would not have pursued Bruce (later Brenda, then David) as relentlessly as he did. For Money (who was a psychologist, not a medical doctor), his determination to pursue Bruce throughout his life was intended to prove, once and for all, that nurture is superior to nature. Bruce was born a boy. His penis was burned off by a botched exercise in electrocautery: that is, removing his foreskin using an electric instrument, similar to the wires on a…
A HIGHER FORM OF KILLING: Six Weeks in World War I that Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare by Diana Preston Bloomsbury Press, Sydney Hardcover: 288 pages Price: AUD$38.40 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Mention the horrors of World War I, and most people identify trench warfare, and the sheer number of casualties. Author Diana Preston, an Oxford-educated historian whose previous works include Wilful Murder: the Sinking of the Lusitania (reviewed by this reviewer in News Weekly, October 19, 2002), analyses Germany’s adoption of aerial bombing, the sinking of the Lusitania, and first use of poison gas. All of these actions occurred within six weeks of each other in April and May of 1915 and, as Preston argues, changed the nature of warfare. Preston begins with a survey of the…
SCIENCE WAS BORN OF CHRISTIANITY: The Teaching of Fr Stanley L. Jaki by Stacy Trasancos Habitation of Chimham Publishing, Titusville, Florida Paperback: 208 pages Price: AUD$35.99 Reviewed by John Long Twenty-six years ago, a Benedictine priest named Stanley Jaki visited the NCC and gave a talk on the relationship between science and the Christian faith. Father Jaki held doctoral degrees in physics and theology, was awarded the Templeton prize in 1987, and wrote numerous books on the relationship between science, theology, and Judeo-Christian thought. At the time, Peter Westmore described his message in an article in AD2000. One message was that science, dealing only with physical matters, has nothing useful to say philosophically about how the universe came to be, why it is ordered, and whether God exists or not.…
THE GOOD MASTER by Kate Seredy (Available at most good bookstores) This book, first published in 1937, and once regarded as a classic, was read to me as a child. I had forgotten it but rediscovered it, and saw those two names, “Kate” and “Jancsi”, with a feeling of meeting and recognising old friends. Having read some of the squalid “realistic” novels being forced on young children today, it is a strong breath of fresh air and innocence. It is a set of episodes of two children, Kate and Jancsi Nagy, on a farm on the great plains of Hungary in the early part of the 20th century – an idyllic time there when age-old ways and rituals still lingered, but with the best of burgeoning modernity too. The plot…
CATHOLICS CONFRONTING HITLER: The Catholic Church and the Nazis by Peter Bartley Ignatius Press, San Francisco Paperback: 296 pages Price: AUD$35.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel When the reviewer studied Modern History at school, the relationship between the Nazis and the Church was glossed over in the space of a few minutes in one lesson. We were told that by entering into a Concordat with the Nazi regime, the Catholic Church was easily controlled by the Nazis, and did not oppose them. In popular consciousness, the Catholic Church was at worst, either openly or tacitly supportive of the Nazi regime, or at best, adopted a position of silence. Peter Bartley, whose previous works include The Gospel of Jesus: Fact or Fiction, challenges these perceptions in Catholics Confronting Hitler. While in…
A CAPTAIN’S PORTRAIT: Witold Pilecki, Martyr for Truth by Adam J. Koch Freedom Publishing Books, Scoresby Hardcover: 454 pages Price: AUD$44.95 Reviewed by Dr Keith Suter Witold Pilecki was one of the most remarkable Polish people of World War II. In 1940, with Poland overrun by Germans, the Catholic Pilecki volunteered to go into Auschwitz concentration camp to help organise the resistance and to report on what was happening. He escaped three years later and fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and was captured by the Germans. Britain (and Australia) had gone to war in 1939 to fight the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The war ended with Poland occupied by another brutal dictatorship – the Soviet Union. Pilecki was seen as an elite member of Polish society by…
SEX MATTERS: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love and Common Sense by Mona Charen Crown Publishing, New York Hardcover: 320 pages Price: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Madeleine van der Linden Feminism has been a shaping ideology of Western culture for over 60 years, and its effects are being felt. The current move towards aggressive denial of biological sexual difference between men and women is but an extension of feminism’s push to erase all differences between men and women. Feminism has become part of many women’s identities, wound tightly around their sense of self, and their interactions with men. Feminist policies have become another way of virtue signalling for governments and businesses, often to the detriment of men, children and ultimately women too. To understand both the appeal and the…
GARDASIL: Fast-Tracked and Flawed by Helen Lobato Spinifex Press, North Geelong Paperback: 138 pages Price: AUD$19.95 Reviewed by Jacqueline Gwynne The book Gardasil: Fast Tracked and Flawed by Helen Lobato was launched earlier this year by Spinifex Press. Lobato comes from a background in critical-care nursing and presented a radio program on health at a Melbourne community radio station. She began her research on cervical cancer and available treatments after being diagnosed with cervical dysplasia, the pre-cursor to cervical cancer, in 1985. The incidence of cervical cancer was on the decline even before pap-smear screening started in 1991. Cervical cancer is not common in developed countries like Australia and one must question why it requires a vaccine at all. The book and this review are by no means polemics against…
FAMILY CYCLES: Strength, Decline and Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630–2000 by Allan C. Carlson Transaction, Piscatawy, New Jersey Paperback: 182 pages Price: AUD$58.95 Reviewed by Peter Westmore Allan Carlson, arguably the United States’ foremost historian and sociologist of the family, wrote this important book to document historical cycles of strength and weakness in the family in the U.S. from the country’s settlement as a number of British colonies in the 1630s to the present day. This is an important and provocative book, which deserves to be widely read. This short review can only touch the surface of his arguments, so you need to read the book. Dr Carlson clearly hopes that by investigating the pattern of growth and decline in the family unit over nearly 400 years, he might…
CHASING AFTER THE WIND by Kerryn Redpath The Mickie Dalton Foundation, Coffs Harbour Paperback: 286 pages Price: AUD$24.99 Reviewed by Jacqueline Gwynne The title of Kerryn Redpath’s book published last year describes the experience of a drug addict: chasing a feeling that is unattainable. Her story details the personal account of addiction that began as a teenager experimenting with alcohol and cigarettes. Hollywood films depict drug use as glamorous, exciting and a rite of passage for young people. This book, however, gives the truth and the ugly side of drug addiction. It also provides comprehensive research and resources for parents and educators. Kerryn grew up in Melbourne and still resides in the city named the “World’s Most Liveable”. Although Australia is a great place to live, with its beach culture…
THE WEAVER’S SON: Odyssey of an Australian Surgeon by Donald Hossack Melbourne UP, Carlton Paperback: 422 pages Price: AUD$29.99 Reviewed by Julia Patrick Donald Hossack’s story is both a personal memoir for his family and a social history of the time. His life in medicine is the backdrop for how he overcame adversity to follow a distinguished career and an immensely fulfilling life of varied interests in art, architecture and politics. It’s an inspiring story. The son of poor Scottish migrants, Donald suffered the torment of misunderstood dyslexia and at 12 he was virtually illiterate. But by sheer perseverance, determination and an extraordinary memory, he overcame what seemed impossible odds to graduate in pharmacy, then medicine, and was awarded the University of Melbourne’s highest medical award, Doctor of Medicine Honoris…
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION: History for a Techno-Human Future by Judith Bessant Taylor & Francis, London Hardcover: 250 pages Price: AUD$242 Reviewed by Colin Teese Judith Bessant, the author of The Great Transformation, Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, has an impressive record of research and publication. In this latest work, she has set herself a formidable task, even by her high standards. Bessant believes that technologies now embedded in our society have created what she calls the Techno-Axial Age, and represent one of only three fundamental changes in the way humans have interacted in the last 150,000 years. Few would disagree with her contention that today’s technologically driven transformations impact on every aspect of our work and social…
MARTIN LUTHER: Catholic Dissident by Peter Stanford Hodder & Stoughton, London Hardcover: 448 pages Price: AUD$45 Reviewed by Peter Westmore The five hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Protestant Reformation took place in 2017. The occasion was marked by a series of events led by the Lutheran Church to commemorate the events which split Western Christianity asunder, gave rise to the nation state, and arguably changed the world irrevocably. Central to these events was Martin Luther, who, at the time, was an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at a new university established in the German town of Wittenberg, in the state of Saxony in what is now eastern Germany. Among the books published to mark the anniversary was this biography of Martin Luther written by Peter Stanford, a…
WHERE WE ARE: The State of Britain Now by Roger Scruton Bloomsbury Continuum, London Hardcover: 256 pages Price: AUD$31.80 Reviewed by Brian Coman Roger Scruton must count as one of the most prolific writers in the modern-day conservative tradition. He has published over 50 books, on subjects as wide ranging as general philosophy, aesthetics, green ideology, music appreciation, religion and politics. This new book is an attempt to delineate the political identity of Britain post Brexit. It does not present arguments for and against Brexit (although I sense that Scruton has sympathy for the “leavers”) but rather seeks to understand how some form of national identity and cohesion might be achieved amidst the turbulence of post-Brexit Britain. As such, it might seem, on first sight, to have little relevance to…
WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING? John Spooner’s Guide to the 21st Century by John Spooner Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne Paperback: 258 pages Price: AUD$65 Reviewed by Peter Kelleher John Spooner has produced some of the sharpest as well as some of the most confounding political cartoons you will ever see. After a brief stint as a lawyer, Spooner took to the trade of political cartooning with relish and spent more than 40 years with Melbourne’s Age newspaper. Over the past decade or so in particular, and much to his consternation, he found he had a box seat to the devolution of what he terms a “pluralist” news source into the propaganda sheet for the radical left that The Age – along with its Fairfax stablemates – is today. I…
AMERICAN DEFAULT: The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court and the Battle over Gold by Sebastian Edwards Princeton UP, New Jersey Hardcover: 288 pages Price: AUD$64.99 Reviewed by Colin Teese Just when one might have imagined that the last word had been spoken about the Great Depression that hit the United States and then the world back in 1929, Sebastian Edwards comes out with American Default. Happily Edwards, Professor of International Economics at UCLA, isn’t going to add to the confusion by advancing yet another opinion to the many already in existence about what caused the crash. Rather, in a beautifully written and painstakingly researched book, he has chosen to throw light on a little known aspect of the U.S. response to the crash. President Franklin D. Roosevelt came…
PROSTITUTION NARRATIVES: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade by Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard Reist (eds) Spinifex Press, North Geelong Paperback: 200 pages Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Gabrielle Walsh Prostitution Narratives offers sincere, personal stories of women who are survivors of prostitution. The individual testimonies are based on the lived experiences of women who have worked as prostitutes and later exited the so-called industry. The book shines light into a dark place – legal and illegal brothels, street prostitution, escort services and massage parlours are but part of it. The women’s testimonies there are common threads in the overall narrative. One such thread evident is that women experience assault and violence across the industry in all its manifestations. “I would be left with bruises all over my body from…
THE GOSPEL IN GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS: Selections from His Poems, Letters, Journals and Spiritual Writings Edited by Margaret Ellsberg Plough Publishing House, Elsmere Paperback: 255 pages Price: AUD$18 Reviewed by Hal G.P. Colebatch I was introduced to Gerard Manley Hopkins far too early. His work was set as a text at my school, and I, who had just discovered Kipling and become, to use his own expression, “royally drunk” on his verse, spouting it to my bewildered shipmates at the Naval Reserve Cadets, found Hopkins’ radically different techniques of inscape, instress and sprung rhythm bewildering and silly. Mark you, I still do to some extent. His poem about a shipwreck that rhymes “portholes” with “messes of mortals” I consider indefensible. On the other hand, his poem about a wild stream…
SAVING CAPITALISM: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert Reich Allen & Unwin, East Melbourne Paperback: 304 pages Price: AUD$22.99 Reviewed by David James It says something about modern academic and intellectual life that mainstream economics, as it is taught in universities and applied in government, is almost entirely fraudulent. That the emperor has no clothes can be demonstrated readily by engaging in some basic semantic analysis. That such analysis is rarely, if ever, conducted is highly suspicious. Is it stupidity or a deliberate intention to deceive in order to favour rich and powerful interests? Consider, for example, the phrase “financial deregulation”. This is a flat out oxymoron. Finance consists of rules. You can no more “deregulate” it than you can take the wetness out of water. Yet the deregulation…
THE GREAT HUMAN DIGNITY HEIST: How Bioethicists Are Trashing the Foundations of Western Civilisation by Michael Cook Connor Court, Redland Bay Paperback: 254 pages Price: AUD$29.59 Reviewed by Margaret Somerville First some background. Let’s start with Michael Cook’s condensed bio, which gives you a hint of his wicked sense of humour, which, as I will explain, is highly relevant to the impact that his book, The Great Human Dignity Heist: How Bioethicists Are Trashing the Foundations of Western Civilisation, will have: “Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the U.S., where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked…
THE HOLOCAUST: A New History by Laurence Rees Viking/Penguin, London Hardcover: 512 pages Price: AUD$55 Reviewed by Bill James The Holocaust, the murder by Nazi Germany of six million Jews between 1933 and 1945, is history’s most intensively studied event. Rees describes it as “the most infamous crime in the history of the world”. But for all its notoriety, there are still misconceptions and controversies surrounding it – hence the need for a clarificatory “new history”. For a start, was the Holocaust unique, or just another example of the all too many attempted genocides that have taken place over the centuries? Rees quotes the late professor David Cesarani: “Never before in history, I think, has a leader decided that within a conceivable time frame an ethnic religious group…
PAPER GENDERS: Pulling the mask off the Transgender Phenomenon Make Waves Publishing, Carlsbad, California Paperback: 130 pages Price: AUD $29.95 GENDER, LIES AND SUICIDE: A Whistleblower Speaks Out Make Waves Publishing, Carlsbad, California Paperback: 152 pages Price: AUD $29.95 by Walt Heyer Reviewed by Peter Kelleher Availability Walt Heyer’s books are only available through his website, www.sexchangeregret.comNB Above prices do not include P&P from the U.S. In the September 24, 2016, edition of News Weekly, I reviewed the novelised biography of Walt Heyer. In Kid Dakota, Heyer recounted the story of his life from abused toddler to troubled cross-dressing adult to transgender female and back again to the true Walt Heyer. In the two books up for review here, Heyer takes on what he characterises as the…
KYOTO SAKURA TANKA by Andrew Lansdown Rhiza Press, Capalaba, Queensland Hardcover: 144 pages Price: AUD $25.95 Reviewed by Brian Peachey Kyoto Sakura Tanka is Andrew Lansdown’s 15th published collection of poetry and his first published collection of photography. It is an elegant publication, in a beautifully crafted hardcover edition, which makes it an ideal gift. Even more so, because the contents were created by one of the finest poets in Australia. I have fond memories of his previously published books of poetry. His 1996 book of poems and stories, Abiding Things, has an early touch of Japan with the first poem, The Japanese Gardener. But the five-line lyric tanka poem of Japan, which has since become a fascinating adventure for him, had not then grabbed his attention. In…
THE STRUGGLE FOR SEA POWER: A Naval History of American Independence by Sam Willis Atlantic Books, London Hardcover: 608 pages Price: AUD $70 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb “Those who go down to the sea in ships, Who do business on great waters, They see the works of the Lord, And His wonders in the deep.” Psalm 107(106): 23–24 Today the world today is so knit together by maritime commerce that we tend to forget just how dangerous going to sea was 300 years ago. Navigation was rudimentary and often inaccurate, and meteorology as we understand it hardly existed – captains were at the mercy of the weather; an equinoxial gale could tear a fleet apart. A fast ship could get dispatches home weeks before a…
The first comments former South Vietnam army colonel Vo Dai Ton uttered at a meeting in Perth was to praise National Civic Council founder, Bob Santamaria. Seeing Santamaria’s photo on the wall of the National Civic Council offices in Belmont, Western Australia, the retired Colonel, who now lives in Sydney, said: “His name is…
SECONDHAND TIME: The last of the Soviets, An Oral History by Svetlana Alexievich Translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2016 Paperback: 520 pages Price: AUD$37.95 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Russia has a great tradition of literary creation. Russians are said to read more books than any other nation. Writers are the “engineers of the human soul”. Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich writes in Russian. She is not, however, from Russia. She is from Belarus, formerly known as Byelorussia, which can be literally translated as “White Russia”. Alexander Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since 1994. Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship. Freedom House classes Belarus as “not free”. Reporters without Borders ranks Belarus as 157 out of 180 nations; that is, its press is among the world’s…
by Rabbi Shimon Cowen Connor Court, Redlands BayPaperback: 94 pagesPrice: AUD$19.95 Reviewed by Dr Andrew Mullins Do you remember the Year of Tolerance 20 years ago? Among the materials sent to Australian schools from a quasi-governmental body were glossy materials promoting a homosexual lifestyle. I returned them with a note explaining that the parents in my school would not accept promotion of homosexuality to their children and so I would not be using them. Crime reporter Harry Potter heard of this and rang me: “The public have a right to know that this material is being peddled.” The next night Channel 10 news featured a young mum reporter covering the story very sympathetically. There was overwhelmingly positive feedback. Times have changed. The Andrews’ Victorian Government has now mandated…
COUNTERSTRIKE by Hal Colebatch Acashic Intellectual Capital, 2011 Subiaco East Paperback: 245 pages Price: AUD$30 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Hal G.P. Colebatch has the rare talent of being able to carry a storyline while developing complex ideas that enhance, rather than obscure, the narrative. Counterstrike’s protagonist Harry is a part-time lecturer at a university situated near an unnamed river in Western Australia. Harry is also a part-time lawyer. He is more of a poet than an academic. He shares his flat with his cat Seebee and an extensive library. He is also a war gamer and sees reflected in the games his own presentiments. The primary theme in Counterstrike is the retrenchment of American power, which mirrors the Roman retreat from Britain in the fifth century AD.…
ELIJAH IN JERUSALEM: A Novel by Michael O’Brien (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2015) Hardback: 288 pages ISBN: 9781586179465 Price: AUD$45.95 Reviewed by Peter Kelleher The prisoner’s paradox is pertinent to the reading of this novel. On Sunday a prisoner is told he will be executed on one of the following five days but that, when it happens, it will come as a surprise. The prisoner reasons thus: “If they have not come for me by Thursday evening, I will know that my execution will take place on Friday; but then it will come as no surprise. Therefore, they can’t execute me on Friday. “Similarly, if they have not come for me by Wednesday evening, I will know that they must come for me on Thursday, as Friday…
HEAVEN AND HELL: The Pope Condemns the Poor to Eternal Poverty by Ian Plimer (Connor Court, Ballarat, 2015) Paperback: 348 pages ISBN: 9781925138801 Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by William Kininmonth “I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” John 18:37 Pope Francis, successor to Peter as shepherd to Jesus’ flock, is spiritual leader of the Catholic Church. By issuing the encyclical Laudato Si’ (“On care of our common home”), Francis has continued a long tradition of interpreting Jesus’ teaching for the faithful in a changing world. Like many previous encyclicals, Laudato Si’ is a challenge to contemporary life, especially in its rebuke: “We have come to see her…
THE ROMANTIC ATTACK ON MODERN SCIENCE IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA: And Other Essays by Roger Sworder Angelico Press (Sophia Perennis). Paperback: 172 pages ISBN: 978-1621381471 Price: AUD$28.99 Reviewed by Brian Coman From a perusal of the title of this new book by Roger Sworder, we may well ask why such a seemingly arcane subject would be of any relevance to News Weekly readers. After all, any attack on modern science hints at obscurantism. Science has delivered us so much. Thanks to science, we live longer, suffer fewer diseases and, in almost every way, live more comfortable lives. Who cares what some longhaired poet said a couple of centuries ago! But the story of the rise of modern science and of that suite of modern philosophies that accompanied…
FROM TRADITION AND AWAY FROM TRADITION: Poems, 2001–2014 by Andrew Huntley (Bendigo, Extra Castra Publications) Hardcover: 60 pages ISBN: 9780646926049 Price: AUD$29.95 Reviewed by Jarred Vehlen For generations men have spoken about the Western tradition, or all that makes up European culture; that which is handed down from one generation to the next, and is preserved in our religion, great books, art, music and architecture. Since the 1960s, this idea has been undermined by, among other things, postmodernism and deconstructionism. Its exponents would have us believe that such attempts to speak about our tradition account for nothing more than a “grand narrative”, a great fiction set in place to uphold traditional hierarchies and forms of authority, and ought therefore to be abandoned in favour of egalitarianism and…
DO YOU CALL THIS A LIFE? Blurred Boundaries in the Netherlands’ Right-to-Die Laws by Gerbert van Loenen (Ontario, Canada: Ross Lattner) Paperback: 208 pages ISBN: 9781897007280 Price: AUD$35.00 Reviewed by Paul Russell “What do you want to do when you leave school?” A casual conversation starter I think I’ve probably had with each of my children at some point — even repeatedly. It had an additional context when I raised it with Joseph recently in a quiet moment. Joseph, in his 14 years, has had probably more prospective careers than most of us could think of, ranging from a long period when he was convinced he would be a priest to only recently wanting to “go into business” operating a pizzeria out of our kitchen (Mum had…
IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (Melbourne: Scribe Publications) Paperback: 466 pages ISBN: 9781921844799 Price: AUD$24.95 [available from Penguin Australia] Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Some time I ago I met David Kilgour, joint author of a report to the Canadian parliament on the Chinese government’s grisly practice of involuntary organ-harvesting. A lawyer by training, he has enjoyed a distinguished career as a crown prosecutor, a member of the Canadian House of Commons for 27 years, and a Cabinet minister. He retired from parliament in 2006. The groundbreaking report that he and David Matas produced in July 2006, entitled Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, is regarded as being the most authoritative…
INVENTING THE INDIVIDUAL: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop (UK: Allen Lane / Penguin) Hardcover: 448 pages ISBN: 9780713996449 Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Bill James There are some allegedly self-evident things which modern Westerners take for granted themselves, and assume have always been taken for granted by everyone else. These include individualism, in both its psychological and socio-political senses, and its corollary, human volition (Larry Siedentop provocatively asserts that “Augustine … invented the idea of the will”). Thinkers who realise that the concept of individualism is not as timeless as the alternation of night and day, usually trace it back to the Enlightenment, the Reformation or, at the earliest, the Renaissance. Eighteenth-century proponents of liberalism sometimes imagined that they were restoring a freedom and secularism…
WORSHIPPING THE STATE: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion by Benjamin Wiker (Washington, DC: Regnery) Hardcover: 256 pages ISBN: 9781621570295 RRP: AUD$55.90 Reviewed by Bill Muehlenberg Of the major competing ideologies and worldviews locked in fierce combat with Christianity to see which will gain supremacy, the one that has been in constant conflict is secular humanism. I have looked at this ideology and its war on Christianity before, of course. More background on this can be found on my website (for example, “Secular religion”, CultureWatch, May 22, 2007). I now more specifically want to examine how secular statism is at odds with Christianity. Indeed, it always has been. As the early church discovered, the secular state did not take kindly to this new faith, because it presented someone…
THE BOOK THAT MADE YOUR WORLD: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Vishal Mangalwadi (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson) Paperback: 464 pages ISBN: 9781595555458 RRP: AUD$33.95 Reviewed by Bill James This is a classic example of a “Yes, but…!” book. In his commendation of it, the respected American church historian, George Marsden, notes wryly that Dr Vishal Mangalwadi “recounts history in very broad strokes”. In fact, Mangalwadi gallops along tossing polemical fireworks in all directions, while the poor old reader pants along in his wake muttering, “Well, maybe, up to a point…”, or, “You’re right, there’s probably some sort of relationship there. However….”. The author is in the grip of a Big Idea and, as they say, to the man with a hammer everything…
IRON CURTAIN: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (London: Allen Lane/Penguin) Hardcover: 614 pages ISBN: 9780713998689 RRP: AUD$49.95 Reviewed by Bill James When I reviewed Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History a decade ago (News Weekly, September 6, 2003), I commented that it was refreshing to come across a baby-boomer journalist from the left-wing Washington Post who was prepared to honestly criticise communism. Her appraisal of communism is just as clear-sighted in her new book, in which she analyses the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe between the end of World War II and the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. She dedicates it to those Eastern Europeans who refused to live (in Vaclav Havel’s expression) “within a lie”. Applebaum formally divides Iron Curtain into Part One: False…
THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion by Rodney Stark (New York: HarperOne) Hardcover: 512 pages ISBN: 9780062007681 RRP: AUD$55.90 Reviewed by Bill Muehlenberg This is another very important and helpful volume by the world-class historian and sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark. He has already penned a number of volumes on related themes, but here he offers a detailed look at the spread of Christianity over the last two millennia. This is not a standard history of Christianity, but more of a thematic approach, with each stimulating chapter covering important historical, sociological and ecclesiastical topics. Those already aware of his earlier works will find some familiar territory here, but there are a number of new issues covered as well. He demolishes a…
GREAT BATTLES IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY by Jonathan King (Sydney: Allen & Unwin) Paperback: 444 pages ISBN: 9781742374574 RRP: $34.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Although Australia has existed as a nation for only 11 decades, in that period of time its troops have been involved in two world wars and a number of other conflicts. Dr Jonathan King, an historian and award-winning author of over 30 historical books, not to mention producer of a number of noted television documentaries, re-tells the story of some of the most famous (and infamous) battles in which Australians were involved since before Federation. The first two, belonging to the colonial period, were the Battle of Vinegar Hill of 1804 and the Eureka Rebellion of 1854. The next conflict King examines is the…
HOW CIVILIZATIONS DIE (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) by David P. Goldman (aka “Spengler”) (Washington DC: Regnery) Hardcover: 256 pages ISBN: 9781596982734 RRP: AUD$55.90 Reviewed by Eric Jackson The most important development of the 21st century is likely to be the great extinction of peoples and cultures. Like Greece and Rome, Europe has lost faith in itself. Though incomparably richer than the peasants who built the cathedrals, the denizens of what used to be Christendom spend only on themselves, with no thought for the morrow. They have failed to attend to the most elementary task of a successful civilisation: raising children. In no European country is the birthrate at replacement level. As David P. Goldman, “Spengler” of Asia Times Online, tells it, not only is the old…
Family ties with India COLONIAL COUSINS:A Surprising History of Connections between India and Australiaby Joyce Westripand Peggy Holroyde (Adelaide: Wakefield Press)Paperback: 464 pagesISBN: 9781862548411Rec. price: $39.95 Reviewed by Dunstan Hartley For the authors, the connection between India and Australia is initially traced to the super-continent Gondwana, before tectonic plate-shifts separated the Indian sub-continent from Australia and Antarctica, some 130 million years ago. They were fascinated to find that Gondwana is an Indian word which means “land of the Gond people”, as familiar to Indians on the east coast states of Orissa and Andhra as it is to many tribal Aborigines throughout Australia. Struck by similarities in the geological and topographical characteristics of south-eastern India and the south-western corner of Australia, the authors were led to seek geological advice to test their…
New light on Dame Nellie Melba I AM MELBA: A Biographyby Ann Blainey(Melbourne: Black Inc.)Paperback: 400 pagesRec. price: AUD$27.95 Nellie Melba was Australia’s first international superstar. Her long career as an opera singer embraced the old world and the modern, from the era of the great opera composers when it was necessary to go to an opera house to experience a famous singer, to that of recorded music and radio. She sang for Queen Victoria, tasted the high life in Edwardian London, the Empire’s last brilliant summer, and saw friends felled in the so-called “war to end all wars”. Fortune Melba was the daughter of an immigrant. Her father, David Mitchell, was just 23 when he arrived in Melbourne from Scotland in 1852. Mitchell was a stonemason, just out of…
A Christian voice in public life GOD AND CAESAR: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, & Societyby Cardinal George Pell(Victoria: Connor Court)Paperback: 193 pagesRec. price: $29.95 One of the most persistent aims of 20th-century secularism, taken from the French Enlightenment, was first to marginalise then eliminate religion from political life in the Western world. It is a matter of record that in many parts of the Western world, the secularists largely succeeded, in part because of their dominant influence in the universities and the media of public communication, but also because of the failure of most Christians to put forward an intelligent defence of their position. The effect of this can be seen in the triumph of relativism and situation ethics, and the ascendency of utilitarianism which essentially professes that morality…
Australia’s first cardinal PRINCE OF THE CHURCH:Patrick Francis Moran, 1830-1911by Philip Ayres(Melbourne: Miegunyah Press)Hardback: 384 pagesRec. price: $55.00 Almost a century after his death, a biography has been written of Patrick Francis Moran, Australia’s first cardinal, in the opinion of many, its most influential Catholic prelate. Noted scholar and author Philip Ayres, whose previous works include biographies of Douglas Mawson, Owen Dixon and Malcolm Fraser, has produced a very impressive portrait of Moran, the fruit of years of extensive research. Born in Ireland in 1830, Moran left for Rome in 1842, in the company of his uncle, Paul Cullen, then rector of the Irish College in Rome, later cardinal-archbishop of Dublin. Scholarly skills As a student and young priest, Moran manifested his scholarly skills, developing his expertise in ancient languages…
Obituary for the god that failed COMRADES: A History Of World Communismby Robert Service(London: Macmillan)Hardcover: 624 pagesRec. price: AUD$80.00 A few things leap out from the title. First, how could anyone encompass such a huge and complex subject in one volume without its becoming the sort of history famously described as “just one damned thing after another”? Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford, has coped very well, blending straight chronology with analysis and quirky detail. An example of the last is a vignette of Marx and Engels pursued by police up the Tottenham Court Road after getting drunk and smashing street lights! Secondly, there is the now quaint “Comrades”. It would be difficult to find a word which better sums up communism’s descent (despite the power it continues…
A sage and prophet A MISCELLANY OF MENby G.K. Chesterton,with an introduction by Dale Ahlquist(Norfolk, Virginia: IHS Press)Paperback: 182 pages (incl. notes)Rec. price: $25 First published in 1912, this interesting anthology of essays by G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) – originally written for newspaper publication – has been re-released with a foreword by Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society. Some of Chesterton’s essays, written as they were almost a century ago, reflect the thinking of his time, for example, his personal opposition to female suffrage; however, the vast bulk of the ideas contained therein are still very applicable to our own age. Chesterton’s observations cover a broad spectrum of social trends and human behaviour, from “new” theologians to democracy or Cecil Rhodes. In these essays, Chesterton acutely observes certain modern…
The state of the American alliance THE PARTNERSHIP:The inside story of the US-Australian alliance under Howard and Bushby Greg Sheridan(New South Wales University Press, 2006)Rec. price: AUD$29.95 In The Partnership, Greg Sheridan, The Australian’s Foreign Editor, has written a most informative account of the current state of the Australia-US alliance, and the political consequences of the alliance on its two member states. This alliance, undoubtedly the cornerstone of Australia’s foreign policy, was forged during the traumatic years of World War II, when Australia found itself abandoned by Great Britain, then struggling for survival against Nazi Germany, and turned to the New World to provide the sword and shield with which to defend this island continent against Japan. Since then, the alliance has been deepened and strengthened by close co-operation between…
Merchants of toxic sludge THE MARKETING OF EVIL: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedomby David Kupelian(Medford, Oregon: WND Books)Hardcover: 256 pagesRec. price: AUD$48.95 Many books have chronicled the downward spiral of Western culture. This book explains the hows and whys of this decline. It is about how evil is “packaged and perfumed to look good – and good made to appear evil”. The decline, in other words, is not just happening by chance. It is being planned, orchestrated and coordinated by vested interests. There is money to be made in evil. And many groups are getting involved in the marketing of evil, in the attempt to get rich quick. But it is not just about money. There is also ideology. There are many who simply…
THE VICTORY OF REASON:How Christianity led to freedom, capitalism, and Western successby Rodney Stark(Random House)Hardcover: 281 pagesPrice: $49.95 (Available from Freedom Publishing) Two great sociologists of the early 20th century, R.H. Tawney and Max Weber, have had a remarkable impact on Western thinking concerning the rise of capitalism. Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first published in German in 1904), suggested that Calvinism was an essential ingredient in the emergence of capitalism, and therefore of modern Western society. In one sense, Weber’s work was a repudiation of Karl Marx, who had argued that capitalism was the penultimate stage in social development, following its triumph over mercantilism, which itself had succeeded feudalism. Monolithic In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), R.H. Tawney argued that the…
Return of the “Asian values” debate CULTURAL POLITICS AND ASIAN VALUES: The tepid warby Michael D. BarrLondon: RoutledgeCurzon / Melbourne: Palgrave MacmillanPaperback RRP: $49.95 In 1977, then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, began to use the term “Asian values” to explain Singapore’s emergence from being a poor nation with no natural resources in the 1950s into a powerhouse of East Asia. The people of Singapore, he said, “were an Asian-Oriental-type society, hard working, thrifty and disciplined, a people with Asian values, strong family ties and responsibility for the extended family which is a common feature of Asian cultures, whether Chinese, Malay or Indian.” Common values, he argued, provided the necessary foundation for the social stability of countries which were characterised by a complex interaction of cultures, faiths and…
The greatest ever Australian? MONASH: The outsider who won a warBy Roland Perry Random House AustraliaHardback RRP: $49.95 General Sir John Monash was arguably the greatest Australian commander in our military history. Roland Perry explores the thesis that it was Monash who won the First World War for the Allies, as it was his battle strategy, based upon meticulous planning, that enabled the British to break the deadlock on the Western Front. What makes Monash’s career all the more extraordinary is that Monash was an “outsider”: a colonial who, ironically, was the son of German immigrants, albeit Jewish, one of them a militia (non-career) officer. Born in 1865, Monash was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and the University of Melbourne, where he studied arts and engineering. As a student, he…
Are Christianity and capitalism compatible? CATHOLICISM, PROTESTANTISM AND CAPITALISMBy Amintore FanfaniIntroduction by Giorgio Campanini IHS Press. Available from News Weekly Books, RRP: $29.95 Amintore Fanfani was a brilliant young economic historian working at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan when he wrote his great book, Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism. It was 1934 and he was 26. Although Fanfani ended up writing 18 books and hundreds of articles on economic thought and economic history, this remarkable essay in social philosophy, combined as it was with economics and economic history, was his most influential. Emerging from university teaching and research after the exit of Fascism and the end of World War II, Fanfani, as a Christian Democrat, served as a senator in the Italian Parliament, as Prime Minister and…
THE MURDER ROOMby P.D. James Faber and Faber, Rec. price: $29.95 Don’t read P.D. James if you relish detailed post-mortems of mutilated corpses. Don’t read her for lip-smacking depictions of sex and violence. And try a Mills and Boon instead if you are after romance; the love affair of her detective, Adam Dalgleish, is passionless, unconvincing and tacked on. If, on the other hand, you are after an engrossing yarn written with enormous skill by an elderly lady who is in tune with what some call natural law, and others God’s common grace, then James is your woman. The conventions of a murder mystery demand that the killing occurs in circumstances which deliver a limited circle of suspects. In The Murder Room, the deaths take place in a small, private…
Squaring the circle AUSTRALIA AND ISRAEL: An Ambiguous RelationshipBy Chanan Reich Melbourne University PressRec. price: $39.95 Chanan Reich, who is an Israeli, taught in Australia for many years before deciding to concentrate upon university work in Israel. He lectures at Haifa University and Nazareth, but still returns, so to speak, each year to take semester work at Monash University. His commitment to Israel and his affection for Australia come through strongly in his book. Reich has filled an important gap in Australian historical writing for, using official documents – Australian, British and Israeli in particular – he has given us a detailed and novel look at relationships between Australians and Jews, and Australia and the State of Israel. Homeland His story starts in 1915 – before the Balfour Declaration (1917)…
Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President’s Council on BioethicsWith a foreword by Leon KassPublic AffairsRec. price: $34.95 As in Australia and other Western nations, the United States has been involved in a lengthy and divisive debate concerning the new reproductive technologies. More specifically, it has been debating the moral, social and scientific merits of human cloning and stem cell research. This book is the result of a special inquiry ordered by US President Bush to examine these contentious issues. Late in 2001 he announced the formation of a bioethics council to weigh into the many related issues involved in the cloning debate. Chaired by bioethicist Leon Kass of the University of Chicago, a panel of experts was quickly convened, and after six months of research and…
CUTTING EDGE BIOETHICSEdited by John Kilner, et. al. EerdmansAvailable from News Weekly Books for $39.95 plus p&h One of the areas of greatest growth and expansion in recent times is that of biotechnology. New developments are taking place almost weekly, and there is enormous potential for profitability. In many ways biotech has outstripped computer and other technologies as a major growth area. But while the science and technology of human life has mushroomed in the last few years, the ethics of biotech have been much less forthcoming. That is, bioethics have not kept pace with biotechnology. And given how most of us are or will be affected by the new biological and reproductive technologies, it is imperative that some serious ethical thinking about biotech be promoted. But as is often…
Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep: A Woman’s Story of Courage, Struggle and DeterminationBy Siba Shakib Random HouseRec. price: $24.95 Since 11 September last year, Afghanistan and the plight of the Afghan people have been in the news. This recently released, moving work, which is hard to put down, tells of the plight of the Afghan people, particularly women and children. The protagonist, Shirin-Gol and her family can be said to be symbolic of millions of Afghans who have endured war and poverty for over 20 years. The narrative begins with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, when Shirin-Gol was a young girl. While male members of her family go to the hills to fight the Russians, she and a number of other females have the…
NO LOGOby Naomi KleinPicador Available from News Weekly Books Following the collapse of Communism a decade ago, free-market capitalism emerged unchallenged. This has bred a business strategy which Naomi Klein calls “corporate multiculturalism”. What this creates essentially is a First World where advertising slogans are our creeds, and a Third World where multinationals have moved their operations in order to exploit lower wages, sweatshops and even child labour. This exploitation of the Third World provoked a challenge by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In 1999, in a speech to the World Economic Forum, he called on multinationals to “embrace, support and enact a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labour standards and environmental practices …” One leading firm that observes this ethical business principle is the clothing…
Turton & ArmstrongAvailable from News Weekly Books for $49.95 Constanze was Mozart’s beloved wife. He defied his father to marry her. Their life together was a true marriage. She helped copy his music, read him libretti late at night so he could compose his operas, travelled Europe with him. They had two sons. He said of her, ‘She is the most kindhearted, cleverest and best of the Weber women’. Agnes Selby has given us a picture of Constanze which refutes previous Mozart scholars, who presented her as the cause of his woes. Even the film Amadeus depicted her as a rather silly tart. Agnes Selby has tirelessly sifted files in Europe, and, with her knowledge of Czech and German, has given us a different picture. This is a wonderful coup…
