February 2011
Spain
John Peter Russell & Vincent van Gogh
Early in November 1886, when the overcast sky was struggling to light his Montparnasse studio, a 28-year-old painter from Sydney took up...
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ECONOMICS
'How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead' By Dambisa Moyo
John Edwards
Dambisa Moyo’s 2009 bestselling attack on development assistance to poor countries, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a...
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WORLD
'Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage' By Hazel Rowley
Carmen Callil
It is always a pleasure to read a biography by Hazel Rowley. She is an enthusiastic chronicler of the lives she chooses to present to us,...
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WORLD
Parallel Lives: Mark Twain and his Autobiography: Volume 1
Peter Robb
A big book by Mark Twain became a bestseller in the US following its publication last November, a hundred years after its author’s death....
More ...Paths of Glory: Olivier Assayas’ 'Carlos' and Terrorists in Film
Kate Jennings
Every road leads to a reckoning. In Olivier Assayas’ movie Carlos, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – AKA Carlos the Jackal...
More ...Too Much Heaven on their Minds: The New Castrati
Paul Kelly
Ever since the world began, I suspect, men have been showing off to women and to other men by singing high. Sure, the manly stuff – hunting...
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WORLD
Falling Stars: The Plight of the Windsors
Peter Conrad
I, too, once saw her passing by, for a few seconds in 1954, on a scrubby hill in Hobart during her first Commonwealth tour. She passed by...
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ECONOMICS
In the Eye of the Storm: The Collapse of Storm Financial
Paul Barry
Yet these financial collapses happened at almost exactly the same time: Bernie Madoff was led away in handcuffs in December 2008, just as...
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SOCIETY
Into the Beehive: The Destruction of Burrup Rock Art
Robyn Davidson
We all know what justifications, arguments and perspectives are likely to be heard from the competing interests (competing visions of value...
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POLITICS
Lousy Science: Lice Infestations in Australia
Christine Kenneally
In a laboratory in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Melbourne, Vern Bowles slides a Petri dish into a microscope and...
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CULTURE
Life Juices: Fasting at a ‘Fat Farm’
Helen Garner
At 5 pm on Boxing Day we sweep up the drive of the establishment my sister refers to as “the fat farm”. Its modest buildings are set in an...
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WORLD
A Tale of Two Cities: Mahmoud Saikal and Kabul’s ‘New City’ Proposal
Christopher Kremmer
How like an architect to see the problems of one city as a reason for building another. It wasn’t his idea but Mahmoud Saikal – architect,...
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POLITICS
Comment: Renewable Energy
Guy Pearse
Every year the sunburnt country receives enough solar energy from above to meet its current annual energy consumption for 10,000 years....
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ENVIRONMENT
Comment: The Queensland Floods
Alex Miller
When I first arrived in the central Queensland town of Springsure on the train the previous year the roads were impassable and I was stuck...
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ECONOMICS
Crises of Faith: The Future of Fairfax
Margaret Simons
Perhaps the worst journalists are believers too – so convinced about the importance of their mission, their own special place as...
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