Non-Fiction

August 2017

Genocide A World History by Norman M Naimark book cover

The Crime of Crimes:
Genocide: A World History

'Genocide is distinct from broader terms such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Genocide: A World History, Naimark reviews cases of genocide dating to the ancient world, working through the warrior genocides committed by the Crusaders and the Mongols, to the Spanish conquest of the Americas, to what he terms the ‘settler’ genocides that occurred in North America, Africa and Australia.' 

16.08.17

Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Published on 01.08.17 in
Sydney Cemetries A Field Guide by Lisa Murray book cover

Tending and Attending

'I have paid my respects at Anne Brontë’s grave but not at that of my own great-grandmother. Graves haven’t figured at all in my sense of myself as a person with biological progenitors, yet they’ve played a part in my attempts to connect with individuals whose artistic achievements I admire. '

15.08.17

Roslyn Jolly

Published on 02.12.16 in
A Writing Life cover

Love and Rhetoric: A Writing Life

'I had the sensation of ‘growing up’ as a result of reading Brennan’s book. This statement expects no flabbergasted reaction. Many of us know that books have tracked our lives – and with Garner, it is from inner-city, communal living in Monkey Grip, to families in The Children’s Bach, to the enigma of the spiritual in Cosmo Cosmolino, to death in The Spare Room.'

11.08.17

Moya Costello

Published on 28.07.17 in
Grand Hotel Abyss by Stuart Jeffries book cover

Politics Without Gasoline:
Grand Hotel Abyss

''Stuart Jeffries’ group biography, Grand Hotel Abyss tells the story of the Frankfurt School, its central figures, and their most significant affiliates. The collective accomplishment of these thinkers, it shows, was to develop a critical theory with which to apprehend what it means to live and think through an historical period during which the left would achieve fewer and fewer victories.' '

02.08.17

Mark Steven

Published on 18.07.17 in

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The SRB is an initiative of The Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University

July 2017

Rattling Spears A History of Indigenous Australian Art by Ian McLean

The Shimmer of Light

'Martin Edmonds on a new history of Indigenous Australian art 'Nothing is simple in this philosophical arena, where rattling spears and tjurunga contend with sextants and theodolites; cans of spray paint with the sepia tones of old colonial photographs. The question is how to make a future. If the Dreaming was always about eternity poured into time, the problem the Enlightenment brought with it—along with its Cartesian accoutrements—was how to protect eternity from time.' '

19.07.17

Martin Edmond

Published on 29.07.14 in
Australian Lives an intimate history by Anis Puri and Alistair Thompson

The Texture of the Past

14.07.17

Jeff Sparrow

Published on 16.09.14 in
They Cannot Take The Sky cover

The Greatest Crime

They Cannot Take the Sky gathers thirty-five stories of men and women who have experienced Australia’s detention regime. Some are now living in Australia and others remain locked up. Each oral history, told to one of the book’s editors, transcribed and translated, bears witness to the resilience of the human spirit and to its fragility. Together these stories are a condemnation of the border policies that have permitted the long-term incarceration and criminalisation of refugees and asylum seekers.

11.07.17

Ruth Balint

Published on 04.07.17 in
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