Keywords: Books
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 17 November 2022
2 Comments
Paulie had a childlike delight in taking the mickey out of everything and everyone and acting outrageously. The stories of the Painters and Dockers’ engagement with their equally wild audiences and the public, full of hilarious encounters, display the same innocence and the same sublimated rage. If it was his brother Tony’s death that set him on his madcap journey, Paulie has shaped his own life as a monument for Tony more durable than marble.
READ MORE 
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 08 November 2022
8 Comments
There are a great many despairing people about, with parents of children fearing they have no future; believing that by the time they are grown up the world as we know it will have ceased to exist. Floods, drought, wars, pandemics, climate change. In a world ever smaller and more connected, encouragement is needed.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 02 November 2022
2 Comments
The campaign against global warming has been heating up, and the latest protests have focused on works of art. Like the burning of books, assaults on paintings seemed to express contempt for human culture at its noblest. But as more details became public, the reality seemed more complex.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
- David James
- 28 October 2022
Who wields the most power in the world? If one follows the money trail, it becomes clear that Western societies have become ruled by a new type of aristocracy: a management aristocracy.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Matt Gaughwin
- 27 October 2022
3 Comments
Liberal democracies seem increasingly threadbare, insufficiently creating just outcomes for vulnerable people. We need a rejuvenation of stable and fair democracies in which integrity and trust are evident. To that end, I suggest we revisit the liberal egalitarianism of 20th century American philosopher John Rawls.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 11 October 2022
Jonathan Freedland’s book is an extremely harrowing tour de force: at one stage I could read only a chapter at a time. But by the end I had been reminded of the power of the human spirit, and of the way in which some people, those with a sense of mission, can endure almost any trial. Resilience is a great gift.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 29 September 2022
5 Comments
Humans depend greatly on hope. In a recent interview, Tova Friedman discusses her book The Daughter of Auschwitz, the memoir of the part of her childhood spent in the eponymous and notorious concentration camp. Can someone who has seen first hand the depths of human depravity be at all hopeful about the future?
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ann Rennie
- 28 September 2022
1 Comment
We celebrate wordsmiths, minor and major, whose gift it is to write the world for us / To create the nourishing broth, the alphabet soup, of words to work their magic / Words that exhort and advocate / That calm and soothe / Words on which to float away / Words for strength on another day.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Emma Wilkins
- 27 September 2022
2 Comments
There's an assumption that writers shouldn’t be writing about groups they don't belong to, as if this couldn’t be done with honesty and insight, respect and restraint. Difficult, yes, but impossible? Whether in fiction or non-fiction, outsiders might misunderstand and misrepresent the people they depict, but sometimes, insiders will too. Sometimes, outsiders will lack insight, but sometimes, when they’re curious, attentive, when they do not overreach, they’ll capture truth.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Terry A. Veling
- 20 September 2022
5 Comments
The beauty of questions is they remind us that we do not know, even as they lure us into their openness. Questions are rarely ever closed or settled. Honner’s books are built around questions. ‘If God made the world, who made God?’ Or, leaving behind pure speculation, ‘Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?’ These are deep mysteries, but they are not meaningless mysteries, Honner says.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Bernard Appassamy
- 20 September 2022
The shards are earthenware with geometric or figurative coloured patterns. Their cracked glazes and ragged edges echo the outback raw aesthetic, and allude to the ongoing challenging narratives of Broken Hill. Now they are sitting large on my desk claiming a distinctive extraction value from a mining city, and whispering, like books on a homely shelf, an intimate lasting merit.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Paul Collins
- 20 September 2022
5 Comments
The word ‘Catholic’ is derived from the Greek Καθολικός (katholikos) meaning universal, of the whole, and the entire tradition is the very opposite of sectarian, particularist, narrow. It is most truly itself when it’s embracing and inclusive.
READ MORE