BOOK AND EXHIBITION REVIEWS
Trim, the Cartographer’s Cat: The Ship’s Cat Who Helped Matthew Flinders Map Australia
Trim, the Cartographer’s Cat: The Ship’s Cat Who Helped Matthew Flinders Map Australia by Matthew Flinders, Philippa Sandall and Gillian Dooley, with illustrations by Ad Long and a foreword by Julian Stockwin Adlard Coles (Bloomsbury), 2019, 128 pp., ISBN:...
Tom Frame, Gun Control: What Australian Got Right (and Wrong)
Tom Frame, Gun Control: What Australia Got Right (and Wrong) NewSouth Books, 2019, 201 pp., ISBN: 9781742236346, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Professor Tom Frame’s Gun Control: What Australia Got Right (and Wrong) offers a clear and concise history of Australian politics and...
Peter Corris, See you at the Toxteth: the best of Cliff Hardy and Corris on crime
Peter Corris, See you at the Toxteth: the best of Cliff Hardy and Corris on crime Selected by Jean Bedford Allen & Unwin, 2019, 323 pp., ISBN: 9781760875633, p/bk, AUS$29.99 Many readers will feel privileged to hold one more book from Peter Corris...
Tanya Bretherton, The Suicide Bride; A Mystery of Tragedy and Family Secrets in Edwardian Sydney
Tanya Bretherton, The Suicide Bride; A Mystery of Tragedy and Family Secrets in Edwardian Sydney Hachette Australia, 2019, pp 1-311, ISBN: 9780733640988, RRP $32.99 Mid-morning, Tuesday 12 January 1904, Watkin Street, Newtown. Four-year-old Mervyn Sly probably...
Jessica North, Esther; The extraordinary true story of the First Fleet girl who became First Lady of the colony
Jessica North, Esther; The extraordinary true story of the First Fleet girl who became First Lady of the colony Allen & Unwin, 2019, pp 1-277, ISBN 9781760527372, p/bk, AUS$29.99 They could have hanged Esther Abrahams. In 1786, the pretty young Jewish woman had...
Leigh Straw, Angel of Death Dulcie Markham, Australia’s most beautiful bad woman
Leigh Straw, Angel of Death Dulcie Markham, Australia’s most beautiful bad woman HarperCollins, 2019, ISBN 978073333966 (p/bk), pp1-312, RRP $32.99 Angel of Death is the third book by writer and historian Leigh Straw that focus on Australian women and crime. It...
James Dunk, Bedlam at Botany Bay
James Dunk, Bedlam at Botany Bay NewSouth Books, 2019, 244 pp. (plus notes, select bibliography and index), ISBN: 9781742236179, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Looking at the great corpus of works that exist on Australia's colonial history, there are so many available to...
Judith Brett, Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage
Judith Brett, Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting Text Publishing, 2019, 208pp., ISBN: 9781925603842, p/bk. AUS$29.99 I don't normally do book reviews, but I've just recently finished From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage by...
Vanessa Finney, Capturing Nature: Early Scientific Photography at the Australian Museum 1857-1893
Vanessa Finney, Capturing Nature: Early Scientific Photography at the Australian Museum 1857-1893 NewSouth Books, 2019, 654 pp., ISBN: 9781742234984, p/bk, AUS$49.99 Let me declare a point of self-interest before I say too much about this insightful and intriguing...
Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires
Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires NewSouth Books, 2019, 654 pp., ISBN: 9781742234984, p/bk, AUS$39.99 Sally Young’s new book, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (2019), is stunning. The history of print media...
