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July 2008

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    Guy Pearse | The Nation Reviewed | July 2008 | Environment | Politics

    Kevin Rudd wasn't the only one licking his lips on election night last year. For millions of Australians, an end to John Howard's lamentable response to climate change couldn't come soon enough. Unlike Howard, Rudd harboured no doubt about the seriousness of...

  • Old House
    Mungo MacCallum | The Nation Reviewed | July 2008 | Politics

    Kevin Rudd personifies generational change in Australian politics, in part because he is the first prime minister not to have served an apprenticeship in Old Parliament House. Rudd entered parliament a mere ten years ago, and the amazing erection on Capital Hill has recently...

  • Katharine’s Place
    Alice Pung | The Nation Reviewed | July 2008 | Society & Culture

    I am in Greenmount, Western Australia. The sign outside the house says Katharine's Place, but I didn't realise that her husband was still here, until Mardi told me. When she told me, I was staring at a bird in the gutter, at how the colours of death made it look so...

  • Trivial Pursuit
    Craig Sherborne | The Nation Reviewed | July 2008 | Society & Culture

    You miss out on medicine by five points and so you dedicate your life to trivia. Don't get eccentric on us, with your pointy bald head and smart-arse grin - we don't like those sorts of antics, mister. This is Melbourne, Australia, not England. But you, Neven Solian,...

  • In the Dark?: The Same Dirty Old Energy
    John Birmingham | The Monthly Essays | July 2008 | Environment

    The Mays own and run Solartec, a boutique renewable-energy company specialising in solar panels. Phil May, a country boy, didn't start out as a "tree-hugging type", according to the company's homey, avuncular website. He more or less blundered into renewable...

  • Lovely Bones: Making Sense of the Flores Find The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Ashley Hay | The Monthly Essays | July 2008 | Society & Culture

    This something took three days to extricate. It was a skeleton, so tantalisingly conserved that some of its sections were still joined, and so fragile that it had the consistency of wet blotting paper. The researchers thought it was a pre-modern child; they took it to the...

  • An Oddity from the Start: Convicts and national character
    John Hirst | The Monthly Essays | July 2008 | Society & Culture

    Reynolds had in his sights the classic work on the national character by Russel Ward: The Australian Legend, published in 1958. Long before Australian society generally accepted and even boasted of its convict foundations, Ward took pleasure in insisting that...