A man after his own heart: A true story
Charles Siebert. Scribe, 2004. isbn 1 920 76914 5, rrp $30
Nearing the end of this ‘exploration of the heart’, the author recounts an occasion on which he tried explaining the idea for this book to an ageing and unnamed academic. Responding to Siebert’s comments, the gentleman seems uncertain of the author’s intended work, which he dismissively summarises as ‘some sort of book about the heart’.
This is a book about a man considering his father’s death (of heart disease), becoming aware of his own mortality and the possibility of inheriting the same disease. It is also a study of the life of Siebert’s father; an anonymous organ donor; harvester and recipient. Though impeccably researched and written with great sensitivity, there is something inexact about Siebert’s narrative. This is common enough in biography, but in a book about the heart I suspect it is almost desirable. This is less a book about certainties than a history of questions.
There are rich engagements with some of the scientific and theological characterisations and caricatures of the heart through history. Siebert suggests that it is only in lived experience that the extremes of science and religion maintain a precarious but satisfying tension.
Charles Siebert’s narrative is touching. His exploration of this symbol, archetype and pump is engaging at many levels. I heartily recommend it.
Luke O’Callaghan
Car Wars: How the car won our hearts and conquered our cities
Graeme Davison with Sheryl Yelland. Allen & Unwin, 2004. isbn 1 741 14207 5, rrp $29.95
‘Cars are everywhere’, Graeme Davison writes in this history of a city and its cars. ‘They monopolise our streets and roadways and mould the landscape to their insistent demands.’ Melbourne is a place Davison knows intimately, and about which he writes with insight. Car Wars analyses the effects of automobiles on cities—congestion, road trauma, suburban sprawl, motels, drive-in shopping centres, parking lots. It examines the aspirations of past governments—from the vast freeway networks of the 1960s, to the City Link schemes of the Kennett era.
Davison looks at protest movements against expansion along waterways and through Melbourne’s historic inner suburbs. He examines arguments of earlier critics, such as Robin Boyd, an opponent of Australia’s car-led transformation into ‘Austerica’. He examines gender constructions and the effects cars had on the lives of young people.
Car Wars is written engagingly, supported by meticulous research that reveals unknown episodes in transport