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497 reviews
The Music That Maton Made by Andrew McUtchen, Barry Divola, Jeff Jenkins
Great story, informed telling, beautifully illustrated. Like the guitars, a collector’s item.
Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald, Pick of the Week
As lovingly constructed as the guitars themselves … From the rich details of the stories behind the songs to the gorgeous photos spanning the history of rock’n’roll, this book is for gear-heads and music lovers alike.
William Yeoman, The Weekend West
Through personal accounts from family and musicians it transports us to the timber-sculpting factories, to the intimate rehearsal rooms and colossal stadiums of genre-defining musicians. The cathartic and gratifying essence of a Maton guitar is very much instilled in each and every page. At the heart of this compelling tribute is the beauty of a well-crafted guitar, and the family brand that made it distinctly Australian … [D]elves deeply into the iconic songs and musical moments produced by a Maton guitar.
Chris Scott, Beat
The pages are uncoated and feel fantastic to the touch. And it’s full of historical photos that make vintage Maton fanatics like myself teary eyed … It’s a personal history of the company that could only be told by Maton themselves … This is a book that Australian musicians have wanted for years and the love and creativity that has been put into it has made the wait worthwhile.
Tony Giacca, Guitarnerd
This is a beautiful book, a work of love that features stunning photography printed on thick high quality paper. Presented chronologically, The Music That Maton Made includes a series of short articles and extensive photographic essays … [A] story of innovation, risk-taking, import tariffs, export opportunities, determination and hard work … [C]elebrates the remarkable journey from Melbourne back shed to world class guitar maker. It will be treasured by anyone that loves their Maton.
David Mayocchi, Loudmouth
Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald, Pick of the Week
As lovingly constructed as the guitars themselves … From the rich details of the stories behind the songs to the gorgeous photos spanning the history of rock’n’roll, this book is for gear-heads and music lovers alike.
William Yeoman, The Weekend West
Through personal accounts from family and musicians it transports us to the timber-sculpting factories, to the intimate rehearsal rooms and colossal stadiums of genre-defining musicians. The cathartic and gratifying essence of a Maton guitar is very much instilled in each and every page. At the heart of this compelling tribute is the beauty of a well-crafted guitar, and the family brand that made it distinctly Australian … [D]elves deeply into the iconic songs and musical moments produced by a Maton guitar.
Chris Scott, Beat
The pages are uncoated and feel fantastic to the touch. And it’s full of historical photos that make vintage Maton fanatics like myself teary eyed … It’s a personal history of the company that could only be told by Maton themselves … This is a book that Australian musicians have wanted for years and the love and creativity that has been put into it has made the wait worthwhile.
Tony Giacca, Guitarnerd
This is a beautiful book, a work of love that features stunning photography printed on thick high quality paper. Presented chronologically, The Music That Maton Made includes a series of short articles and extensive photographic essays … [A] story of innovation, risk-taking, import tariffs, export opportunities, determination and hard work … [C]elebrates the remarkable journey from Melbourne back shed to world class guitar maker. It will be treasured by anyone that loves their Maton.
David Mayocchi, Loudmouth
Princess Bari by Hwang Sok-yong
Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today.
Kenzaburo Oe, Winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature
Drawing on an old Korean folktale about a princess on a quest and intertwining it with modern life in China and London, Sok-yong chronicles Bari’s journey in an enchanting style that explores Korean culture, beautifully balances reality with magic, and presents an immigrant’s perspective of the world.
Yen Magazine
An evocative, modern-day quest from one of Korea's most renowned novelists … a story of the search for home and a timely, surreal reminder of the cost of war and the desperate measures people will take to escape.
BMA Magazine
A mesmerizing odyssey through the beauty, suffering, and rage that flow from the irrepressible desire to live.
Kirkus
Compelling and heartrending … In Hwang’s probing, compassionate work, Western readers unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy and culture will experience new takes on folkloric wisdom born of the enduring collective imagination.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Hwang Sok-Yong sets Princess Bari in the midst of Korean history, giving the reader insight not only into his characters, but into the history of his home country. He paints a picture of a family living through this horrific time, but intertwines it with the fantastical mythology of the great Princess Bari, known to many Koreans as Barigongju (바리공주) … perhaps we can use the mythology of Princess Bari as a response to the questions of today – as a guide to release from suffering.
Corrie Hulse, The Mantle
Hwang is perhaps the most intensely compassionate writer I’ve ever encountered, telling stories of great suffering with great tenderness and without sensationalism.
Nerd Daily
Kenzaburo Oe, Winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature
Drawing on an old Korean folktale about a princess on a quest and intertwining it with modern life in China and London, Sok-yong chronicles Bari’s journey in an enchanting style that explores Korean culture, beautifully balances reality with magic, and presents an immigrant’s perspective of the world.
Yen Magazine
An evocative, modern-day quest from one of Korea's most renowned novelists … a story of the search for home and a timely, surreal reminder of the cost of war and the desperate measures people will take to escape.
BMA Magazine
A mesmerizing odyssey through the beauty, suffering, and rage that flow from the irrepressible desire to live.
Kirkus
Compelling and heartrending … In Hwang’s probing, compassionate work, Western readers unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy and culture will experience new takes on folkloric wisdom born of the enduring collective imagination.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Hwang Sok-Yong sets Princess Bari in the midst of Korean history, giving the reader insight not only into his characters, but into the history of his home country. He paints a picture of a family living through this horrific time, but intertwines it with the fantastical mythology of the great Princess Bari, known to many Koreans as Barigongju (바리공주) … perhaps we can use the mythology of Princess Bari as a response to the questions of today – as a guide to release from suffering.
Corrie Hulse, The Mantle
Hwang is perhaps the most intensely compassionate writer I’ve ever encountered, telling stories of great suffering with great tenderness and without sensationalism.
Nerd Daily
Six Square Metres: Reflections from a Small Garden by Margaret Simons
In Six Square Metres Margaret Simons, queen of the tiny vegetable garden, heartened me with her radiant pragmatism.
Helen Garner, The Saturday Age
[A] considered and meticulously observed book written by an author who is willing to share the tribulations and joys of a blended family, a fast-paced life and the endless smell of French fries. By doing so, she permits us to consider our own plot — in life and in gardening.
Chris Gordon, Readings
Packed with wit, wisdom and the occasional gardening tip.
Brisbane News
It’s a testament to Simons’ wit and humour that a book on “gardening-related reflections” held my interest so. The vignettes range from musings on life, death and human connections to likening John Howard to a brassica and uncovering the leg of a Barbie doll in the compost. A delightful ode to the rhythm of the seasons and “life continuing in messy fashion no matter what plans we make.
Shu-Ling Chua, BMA Magazine — Top 5 Books of 2015
In the tradition of Germaine Greer, Vita Sackville-West, and Katharine S. White, Simons proves herself a modern doyenne of wry garden writing.
Publishers Weekly
A mix of sunny optimism and beady-eyed realism, Simons’s memoir celebrates the small joys and ‘sheer stubborn hope’ of both gardening and family life.
Shelf Awareness
Helen Garner, The Saturday Age
[A] considered and meticulously observed book written by an author who is willing to share the tribulations and joys of a blended family, a fast-paced life and the endless smell of French fries. By doing so, she permits us to consider our own plot — in life and in gardening.
Chris Gordon, Readings
Packed with wit, wisdom and the occasional gardening tip.
Brisbane News
It’s a testament to Simons’ wit and humour that a book on “gardening-related reflections” held my interest so. The vignettes range from musings on life, death and human connections to likening John Howard to a brassica and uncovering the leg of a Barbie doll in the compost. A delightful ode to the rhythm of the seasons and “life continuing in messy fashion no matter what plans we make.
Shu-Ling Chua, BMA Magazine — Top 5 Books of 2015
In the tradition of Germaine Greer, Vita Sackville-West, and Katharine S. White, Simons proves herself a modern doyenne of wry garden writing.
Publishers Weekly
A mix of sunny optimism and beady-eyed realism, Simons’s memoir celebrates the small joys and ‘sheer stubborn hope’ of both gardening and family life.
Shelf Awareness
Six Square Metres: Reflections from a Small Garden by Margaret Simons
In Six Square Metres Margaret Simons, queen of the tiny vegetable garden, heartened me with her radiant pragmatism.
Helen Garner, The Saturday Age
[A] considered and meticulously observed book written by an author who is willing to share the tribulations and joys of a blended family, a fast-paced life and the endless smell of French fries. By doing so, she permits us to consider our own plot — in life and in gardening.
Chris Gordon, Readings
Packed with wit, wisdom and the occasional gardening tip.
Brisbane News
It’s a testament to Simons’ wit and humour that a book on “gardening-related reflections” held my interest so. The vignettes range from musings on life, death and human connections to likening John Howard to a brassica and uncovering the leg of a Barbie doll in the compost. A delightful ode to the rhythm of the seasons and “life continuing in messy fashion no matter what plans we make.
Shu-Ling Chua, BMA Magazine — Top 5 Books of 2015
In the tradition of Germaine Greer, Vita Sackville-West, and Katharine S. White, Simons proves herself a modern doyenne of wry garden writing.
Publishers Weekly
A mix of sunny optimism and beady-eyed realism, Simons’s memoir celebrates the small joys and ‘sheer stubborn hope’ of both gardening and family life.
Shelf Awareness
Helen Garner, The Saturday Age
[A] considered and meticulously observed book written by an author who is willing to share the tribulations and joys of a blended family, a fast-paced life and the endless smell of French fries. By doing so, she permits us to consider our own plot — in life and in gardening.
Chris Gordon, Readings
Packed with wit, wisdom and the occasional gardening tip.
Brisbane News
It’s a testament to Simons’ wit and humour that a book on “gardening-related reflections” held my interest so. The vignettes range from musings on life, death and human connections to likening John Howard to a brassica and uncovering the leg of a Barbie doll in the compost. A delightful ode to the rhythm of the seasons and “life continuing in messy fashion no matter what plans we make.
Shu-Ling Chua, BMA Magazine — Top 5 Books of 2015
In the tradition of Germaine Greer, Vita Sackville-West, and Katharine S. White, Simons proves herself a modern doyenne of wry garden writing.
Publishers Weekly
A mix of sunny optimism and beady-eyed realism, Simons’s memoir celebrates the small joys and ‘sheer stubborn hope’ of both gardening and family life.
Shelf Awareness
Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt
Tessa McWatt brings the traditional campus novel bang up to date … This polyphonic novel owes an obvious debt to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, but nevertheless [McWatt] manages to make this exuberant but bittersweet tale something all of her own.
Lucy Scholes, The Observer
A wryly passionate, slyly political and engrossing concatenation of London lives, that only a Londoner by choice could have written.
China Miéville
The search for love is at the heart of Tessa McWatt’s work as a writer, and so it is in Higher Ed. Her characters are by turns wise and foolish, hopeful and sometimes — movingly — so very near defeat. But they all continue to search … In dark times, they want to walk to the light. We watch them and hope that they make it.
Ronan Bennett
The ecosystem of a London university is more of a jumping-off point than the focus of this frequently bleak take on the city and the scattered lives straining for purpose within its melée … In a manner reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, a senseless accident brings the disparate lives [of McWatt's characters] together … Authentic.
Catherine Scott, TLS
Situated within a select group of metropolitan-England-today novels that range in outlook from despairing to hopeful (Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani, Margaret Drabble’s The Radiant Way, Zadie Smith’s NW, and Jackie Kay’s Trumpet), Higher Ed stands in the sensible middle. As though motivated by E.M. Forster’s dictum to “only connect”, the five key characters of McWatt’s magnetic novel are muddling through … McWatt conjures a familiar world of uncertainties, in which fallible but striving individuals find basic needs — security, community, bonds — difficult to attain. Kind to her characters, but never blind to their iffy choices or restrictive circumstances, McWatt gradually grants the members of this loosely interrelated tribe some respite. Her generous vision suggests that people might not get exactly what they desire, but, since the world’s a huge, complicated place, it may provide them with something else, something ultimately beneficial.
Maclean’s
Wonderful narration. Wonderful map of the archipelago. Embark and discover it!John Berger
A finely tuned sense of sadness and quiet despair haunts all of the characters in Tessa McWatt’s tenderly observed view of East London life.
Atom Egoyan
Written in a captivating polyphonic style reminiscent of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and NW, Tessa McWatt’s big-hearted novel animates her five characters effortlessly.
Quill & Quire
I enjoyed Higher Ed hugely. The writing was finely tuned and the characterisation sharply focused. As vibrant as the city it depicts.
Jonathan Kemp, Author of London Triptych
Tessa McWatt’s Higher Ed is a vibrant, beating heart of a book. Characters come together from vastly different backgrounds, united by longing and displacement and bursting forth in McWatt’s vital, witty, raw prose. A book that contains multitudes, Higher Ed is less about how we are different than the ways in which we are the same. Sly, brainy, and razor-sharp, McWatt's writing is unmissable.
Grace O’Connell
Higher Ed injects a welcome dose of diversity into a tale about universals: love, loneliness and the search for belonging. It revels in the collision of two hitherto distinct genres: the campus novel and the multivoiced immigrant saga set in London's gritty fringes … [McWatt] pushes at the boundaries of what we've come to expect from stories about universities, about London and the uncertain times in which we live.
Trilby Kent, Globe and Mail
Sincerely affecting.
Carly Lewis, National Post
If you want a novel to get truly stuck into, Tessa McWatt’s Higher Ed is an unflinching look at the impact of public spending cuts on a down-and-out London university … Rather like a grittier version of John Lanchester’s Capital [Higher Ed is] a story about the challenges and quirks of urban living … McWatt brilliantly and sympathetically contributes to the conversations being had all around contemporary London.
Runnings in Heels
Set at a fictional east London university, Higher Ed paints a picture of the city that is both realistically multicultural and, from its academics to waitress characters, realistically insecure. Wry and funny, evoking a world you’ll recognise, Higher Ed should appeal to fans of Zadie Smith and Monica Ali.
Emerald Street
[C]ombines campus novel (historically a distinctly white-male genre) with a Zadie Smith-like sense of a thoroughly multicultural London … satirises with sharp wit the precariousness of academic life.
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
Five sympathetic characters blunder and blag their way through demanding periods of their lives. Loneliness, guilt and looming penury drive each of them into a quirky melee of sometimes weird but always enticing decision-making and action-taking … Higher Ed resounds with the delightful clang of clumsy truth.
Joseph Crilly, Irish Times
McWatt’s tangled tale of five flawed, frustrating people is … so vividly written that you’ll miss hanging out with her characters well after you’ve finished the book.
Elle Canada
The diversity of voices in the novel is impressive … Each character’s story comes with its own richness.
Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
Lucy Scholes, The Observer
A wryly passionate, slyly political and engrossing concatenation of London lives, that only a Londoner by choice could have written.
China Miéville
The search for love is at the heart of Tessa McWatt’s work as a writer, and so it is in Higher Ed. Her characters are by turns wise and foolish, hopeful and sometimes — movingly — so very near defeat. But they all continue to search … In dark times, they want to walk to the light. We watch them and hope that they make it.
Ronan Bennett
The ecosystem of a London university is more of a jumping-off point than the focus of this frequently bleak take on the city and the scattered lives straining for purpose within its melée … In a manner reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, a senseless accident brings the disparate lives [of McWatt's characters] together … Authentic.
Catherine Scott, TLS
Situated within a select group of metropolitan-England-today novels that range in outlook from despairing to hopeful (Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani, Margaret Drabble’s The Radiant Way, Zadie Smith’s NW, and Jackie Kay’s Trumpet), Higher Ed stands in the sensible middle. As though motivated by E.M. Forster’s dictum to “only connect”, the five key characters of McWatt’s magnetic novel are muddling through … McWatt conjures a familiar world of uncertainties, in which fallible but striving individuals find basic needs — security, community, bonds — difficult to attain. Kind to her characters, but never blind to their iffy choices or restrictive circumstances, McWatt gradually grants the members of this loosely interrelated tribe some respite. Her generous vision suggests that people might not get exactly what they desire, but, since the world’s a huge, complicated place, it may provide them with something else, something ultimately beneficial.
Maclean’s
Wonderful narration. Wonderful map of the archipelago. Embark and discover it!John Berger
A finely tuned sense of sadness and quiet despair haunts all of the characters in Tessa McWatt’s tenderly observed view of East London life.
Atom Egoyan
Written in a captivating polyphonic style reminiscent of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and NW, Tessa McWatt’s big-hearted novel animates her five characters effortlessly.
Quill & Quire
I enjoyed Higher Ed hugely. The writing was finely tuned and the characterisation sharply focused. As vibrant as the city it depicts.
Jonathan Kemp, Author of London Triptych
Tessa McWatt’s Higher Ed is a vibrant, beating heart of a book. Characters come together from vastly different backgrounds, united by longing and displacement and bursting forth in McWatt’s vital, witty, raw prose. A book that contains multitudes, Higher Ed is less about how we are different than the ways in which we are the same. Sly, brainy, and razor-sharp, McWatt's writing is unmissable.
Grace O’Connell
Higher Ed injects a welcome dose of diversity into a tale about universals: love, loneliness and the search for belonging. It revels in the collision of two hitherto distinct genres: the campus novel and the multivoiced immigrant saga set in London's gritty fringes … [McWatt] pushes at the boundaries of what we've come to expect from stories about universities, about London and the uncertain times in which we live.
Trilby Kent, Globe and Mail
Sincerely affecting.
Carly Lewis, National Post
If you want a novel to get truly stuck into, Tessa McWatt’s Higher Ed is an unflinching look at the impact of public spending cuts on a down-and-out London university … Rather like a grittier version of John Lanchester’s Capital [Higher Ed is] a story about the challenges and quirks of urban living … McWatt brilliantly and sympathetically contributes to the conversations being had all around contemporary London.
Runnings in Heels
Set at a fictional east London university, Higher Ed paints a picture of the city that is both realistically multicultural and, from its academics to waitress characters, realistically insecure. Wry and funny, evoking a world you’ll recognise, Higher Ed should appeal to fans of Zadie Smith and Monica Ali.
Emerald Street
[C]ombines campus novel (historically a distinctly white-male genre) with a Zadie Smith-like sense of a thoroughly multicultural London … satirises with sharp wit the precariousness of academic life.
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
Five sympathetic characters blunder and blag their way through demanding periods of their lives. Loneliness, guilt and looming penury drive each of them into a quirky melee of sometimes weird but always enticing decision-making and action-taking … Higher Ed resounds with the delightful clang of clumsy truth.
Joseph Crilly, Irish Times
McWatt’s tangled tale of five flawed, frustrating people is … so vividly written that you’ll miss hanging out with her characters well after you’ve finished the book.
Elle Canada
The diversity of voices in the novel is impressive … Each character’s story comes with its own richness.
Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging by Tessa McWatt
Powerful and provocative.
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.
2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation
Beautifully written and courageously told.
2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.
2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation
Beautifully written and courageously told.
2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation
The Genes That Make Us: human stories from a revolution in medicine by Edwin Kirk
David Ferrell, Canberra Times
Both an account of the human stories at the heart of Kirk’s practice and a beginner’s guide to genetic medicine, The Genes That Make Us tells of the significant progress that has been made in genetics over the past two decades, while also signalling how far there is left to travel.
Diane Stubbings, Australian Book Review
This new book sets out to share the experiences and anecdotes of a career in genetic medicine more than two-decades long, while narrating segments of the history of genetic pathology and exploring the world of genes today and to come … Kirk makes effective use of footnotes to deflate the academic style and maintain a sense of personality and fun.
David Ferrell, Canberra Times
Both an account of the human stories at the heart of Kirk’s practice and a beginner’s guide to genetic medicine, The Genes That Make Us tells of the significant progress that has been made in genetics over the past two decades, while also signalling how far there is left to travel.
Diane Stubbings, Australian Book Review
The Dragons and the Snakes: how the rest learned to fight the west by David Kilcullen
Disturbingly brilliant. David Kilcullen, ever the thoughtful observer of wars and the people who wage them, captures the changes in warfare that already confound — and threaten to overwhelm us. He correctly shows that we are mentally and physically unprepared for the new nature of conflict, and will likely pay dearly for it.
Stan McChrystal, partner at McChrystal Group
David Kilcullen has produced another thoughtful, important book. At a time when some believe that the return of competition with great powers (i.e. dragons) might serve as an emotional cathartic to help forget the long war against jihadist terrorist organisations (i.e. snakes), the author exposes and transcends that false choice. His ideas about how to fight for peace in a dangerous world should be read and discussed not only by diplomats, defense officials, and military officers, but also by citizens concerned about securing a better future for their children.
H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and the forthcoming Battlegrounds
To absorb Kilcullen’s insights is to be forced to rethink national and international security in this new century and to adjust military and nonmilitary institutions to a host of new realities. Senior policymakers have no choice but to do so.
Gary Hart, member of United States Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees
An eye-opening look at the state of strategic balance between the United States and its rivals, large and small … The author delivers a detailed and unsettling analysis of how America’s rivals have adapted to the modern strategic landscape — and how they hope to defeat us. Essential reading for anyone concerned with America’s future on the world stage. STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus Reviews
This book should be read by everyone in uniform.
The Times
An impressive exposé on how terrorists and non-state actors outmanoeuvre conventional militaries … At the heart of The Dragons and the Snakes is a Darwinian dialectic between the mighty dragons and the snakes that seek to subvert and outflank them … The Dragons and the Snakes is based on a formidable array of military and political sources.
Malise Ruthven, The Financial Times
Interesting and provocative.
The Sunday Times
Kilcullen is a welcome guide, offering a neat summation of how both nation-states and terrorist groups alike learned to cope with America's conventional military primacy … Kilcullen's approach offers readers accessible insights into what are complex and dynamic trends.
Diplomatic Courier
David Kilcullen offers a wide ranging analysis of the strategic environment since 1993 ... compelling.
Will Leben, Australian Outlook
A dazzling performance ... This is a book that will keep you on your toes. It paints a breathtaking danger-laden picture of a world perennially at war, and of the strange and mesmerising process by which a snake eventually rears up, as fire-filled as a dragon.
Peter Craven, The Saturday Paper
Kilcullen argues persuasively that while the United States has been mired down in forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our current and potential adversaries have gotten the jump on us. His book offers readers a skilfully annotated road map of contemporary conflict, describing in clear, measured prose how and why the days of American strategic and military preeminence are now behind us.
Daily Beast
Kilcullen’s The Dragons and the Snakes is a timely invitation for the West to get its strategic house in order with some new thinking.
The Bridge
An incisive work that has deservedly garnered a great deal of attention and is likely to be of enduring importance in debates about the decline of Western power.
RealClearDefense
Timely … This book should be essential reading for anyone concerned about America’s future and Australia’s place in the global order it created.
Peter Masters, Military Books Australia
Stan McChrystal, partner at McChrystal Group
David Kilcullen has produced another thoughtful, important book. At a time when some believe that the return of competition with great powers (i.e. dragons) might serve as an emotional cathartic to help forget the long war against jihadist terrorist organisations (i.e. snakes), the author exposes and transcends that false choice. His ideas about how to fight for peace in a dangerous world should be read and discussed not only by diplomats, defense officials, and military officers, but also by citizens concerned about securing a better future for their children.
H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and the forthcoming Battlegrounds
To absorb Kilcullen’s insights is to be forced to rethink national and international security in this new century and to adjust military and nonmilitary institutions to a host of new realities. Senior policymakers have no choice but to do so.
Gary Hart, member of United States Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees
An eye-opening look at the state of strategic balance between the United States and its rivals, large and small … The author delivers a detailed and unsettling analysis of how America’s rivals have adapted to the modern strategic landscape — and how they hope to defeat us. Essential reading for anyone concerned with America’s future on the world stage. STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus Reviews
This book should be read by everyone in uniform.
The Times
An impressive exposé on how terrorists and non-state actors outmanoeuvre conventional militaries … At the heart of The Dragons and the Snakes is a Darwinian dialectic between the mighty dragons and the snakes that seek to subvert and outflank them … The Dragons and the Snakes is based on a formidable array of military and political sources.
Malise Ruthven, The Financial Times
Interesting and provocative.
The Sunday Times
Kilcullen is a welcome guide, offering a neat summation of how both nation-states and terrorist groups alike learned to cope with America's conventional military primacy … Kilcullen's approach offers readers accessible insights into what are complex and dynamic trends.
Diplomatic Courier
David Kilcullen offers a wide ranging analysis of the strategic environment since 1993 ... compelling.
Will Leben, Australian Outlook
A dazzling performance ... This is a book that will keep you on your toes. It paints a breathtaking danger-laden picture of a world perennially at war, and of the strange and mesmerising process by which a snake eventually rears up, as fire-filled as a dragon.
Peter Craven, The Saturday Paper
Kilcullen argues persuasively that while the United States has been mired down in forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our current and potential adversaries have gotten the jump on us. His book offers readers a skilfully annotated road map of contemporary conflict, describing in clear, measured prose how and why the days of American strategic and military preeminence are now behind us.
Daily Beast
Kilcullen’s The Dragons and the Snakes is a timely invitation for the West to get its strategic house in order with some new thinking.
The Bridge
An incisive work that has deservedly garnered a great deal of attention and is likely to be of enduring importance in debates about the decline of Western power.
RealClearDefense
Timely … This book should be essential reading for anyone concerned about America’s future and Australia’s place in the global order it created.
Peter Masters, Military Books Australia
The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Wieringa
The gifted Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa is a bold, intelligent stylist, unafraid of exposing the ugliness of society juxtaposed with the vagaries of human nature. [A] taut, intense contemporary thriller of multiple exploitations.
Eileen Battersby, The Guardian
The sentences are concise, propelling the action along and keeping readers on the edge of their seats … a vital must-read.
Clayton McKee, Asymptote
The Death of Murat Idrissi is powerful tale of identity, relationships and the desire to both fit in and to escape … The Death of Murat Idrissi is a dark and deeply profound tale that examines the fragile humanity of ordinary people and exposes just how cheaply a life can be valued. FOUR STARS
Erin Britton, NB
As scintillating as it is unforgiving, this tiny diamond of a novel from Dutch author Tommy Wieringa is such a masterpiece of compression it could stand as an object lesson for students of creative writing … [A] deceptively simple, yet intricately layered, tale of complicity and exploitation.
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
A compact novella pulling powerful punches. A must read.
Alice Farrant, Shiny New Books
Based on a shocking true story, this novel will make you question your belief in humanity … The book is short, a fast read, at an almost breathless pace. It will make you appreciate where you are now.
Sophie Foster, Q Weekend
It has the grip of a nightmare that is all too plausible.
David Mills, Sunday Times
The prose is tight, the story packed into 100 pages, stripped of superfluous detail as a short story might be … Engaging and thought-provoking.
Anne Goodwin, Annecdotal
All of a sudden the pace takes off, rocketing the reader to a satisfying conclusion.
Lauren Novak, Adelaide Advertiser
A powerful and moving tale. It confronts the horror and cruelty of the migrant dilemma with understated but stark honesty.
Graeme Barrow, Daily Post
[A] sleek literary thriller … While the underdeveloped Murat functions primarily as a political symbol, the women’s ill-fated journey leads to an emotionally complex and ultimately chilling transformation. Wieringa hits the mark with this intelligent outing.
Publishers Weekly
Brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens … A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller. STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus Reviews
Eileen Battersby, The Guardian
The sentences are concise, propelling the action along and keeping readers on the edge of their seats … a vital must-read.
Clayton McKee, Asymptote
The Death of Murat Idrissi is powerful tale of identity, relationships and the desire to both fit in and to escape … The Death of Murat Idrissi is a dark and deeply profound tale that examines the fragile humanity of ordinary people and exposes just how cheaply a life can be valued. FOUR STARS
Erin Britton, NB
As scintillating as it is unforgiving, this tiny diamond of a novel from Dutch author Tommy Wieringa is such a masterpiece of compression it could stand as an object lesson for students of creative writing … [A] deceptively simple, yet intricately layered, tale of complicity and exploitation.
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
A compact novella pulling powerful punches. A must read.
Alice Farrant, Shiny New Books
Based on a shocking true story, this novel will make you question your belief in humanity … The book is short, a fast read, at an almost breathless pace. It will make you appreciate where you are now.
Sophie Foster, Q Weekend
It has the grip of a nightmare that is all too plausible.
David Mills, Sunday Times
The prose is tight, the story packed into 100 pages, stripped of superfluous detail as a short story might be … Engaging and thought-provoking.
Anne Goodwin, Annecdotal
All of a sudden the pace takes off, rocketing the reader to a satisfying conclusion.
Lauren Novak, Adelaide Advertiser
A powerful and moving tale. It confronts the horror and cruelty of the migrant dilemma with understated but stark honesty.
Graeme Barrow, Daily Post
[A] sleek literary thriller … While the underdeveloped Murat functions primarily as a political symbol, the women’s ill-fated journey leads to an emotionally complex and ultimately chilling transformation. Wieringa hits the mark with this intelligent outing.
Publishers Weekly
Brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens … A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller. STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus Reviews
Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change, Emotional Awakening, and the Emerging Science of Neurostimulation by John Elder Robison
In this fascinating book John Elder Robison raises deep questions: what does TMS do to the brain? Will it permanently change his experience of music, his emotions, and his ability to read faces? And if autism involves disability as well as talent, if we alter the different wiring in an autistic brain, is this a good thing? Robison’s honest, brilliant, and very personal account helps us understand the perspective of someone living with autism.
Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University
John Elder Robison is an extraordinary guide, carefully elucidating the cutting-edge science behind this revolutionary new brain therapy, TMS, alongside the compelling story of the impact it has on his relationships, his thinking and emotions, and indeed his very identity. At the heart of Switched On are fundamental questions of who we are, of where our identity resides, of difference and disability and free will, which are brought into sharp focus by Robison’s lived experience.Graeme Simsion, Author of The Rosie Effect
Switched On is a mind-blowing book that will force you to ask deep questions about what is important in life. Would normalising the brains of those who think differently reduce their motivation for great achievement?
Temple Garden
Switched On is an eye-opening book with a radical message … The transformations [John Elder Robison] undergoes throughout the book are astonishing — as foreign and overwhelming as if he woke up one morning with the visual range of a bee or the auditory prowess of a bat.
Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Astonishing, brave … Switched On details Robison’s discovery of his rich new emotional life … Switched On reads like a medical thriller and keeps you wondering what will happen next … [Robison] takes readers for a ride through the thorny thickets of neuroscience and leaves us wanting more. He is deft at explaining difficult concepts and doesn’t shy from asking hard questions. This is a truly unusual memoir — both poignant and scientifically important.
Amy Ellis Nutt, The Washington Post
[H]onest, scientific, personal, and full of rock and roll … After Robison was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, he participated in an experimental transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study, which changed his life. Robison reflects on what he learned while delving into the science behind autism treatment and celebrating the people who were with him through truly difficult moments along a path of self-discovery … Robison's memoir contains as much vulnerability and honesty as it does discussions of neuroscience and autism.
Publishers Weekly
Fascinating for its insights into Asperger’s and research, this engrossing record will make readers reexamine their preconceptions about this syndrome and the future of brain manipulation.
Booklist
Like books by Andrew Solomon and Oliver Sacks, Switched On offers an opportunity to consider mental processes through a combination of powerful narrative and informative medical context. Readers can put their hands, for a moment, on the mystery that is the brain.
BookPage
A fascinating companion to the previous memoirs by this masterful storyteller.
Kirkus Reviews
Both memoir and neurological study — and, no doubt about it, neurology is a trending new reading topic.
Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University
John Elder Robison is an extraordinary guide, carefully elucidating the cutting-edge science behind this revolutionary new brain therapy, TMS, alongside the compelling story of the impact it has on his relationships, his thinking and emotions, and indeed his very identity. At the heart of Switched On are fundamental questions of who we are, of where our identity resides, of difference and disability and free will, which are brought into sharp focus by Robison’s lived experience.Graeme Simsion, Author of The Rosie Effect
Switched On is a mind-blowing book that will force you to ask deep questions about what is important in life. Would normalising the brains of those who think differently reduce their motivation for great achievement?
Temple Garden
Switched On is an eye-opening book with a radical message … The transformations [John Elder Robison] undergoes throughout the book are astonishing — as foreign and overwhelming as if he woke up one morning with the visual range of a bee or the auditory prowess of a bat.
Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Astonishing, brave … Switched On details Robison’s discovery of his rich new emotional life … Switched On reads like a medical thriller and keeps you wondering what will happen next … [Robison] takes readers for a ride through the thorny thickets of neuroscience and leaves us wanting more. He is deft at explaining difficult concepts and doesn’t shy from asking hard questions. This is a truly unusual memoir — both poignant and scientifically important.
Amy Ellis Nutt, The Washington Post
[H]onest, scientific, personal, and full of rock and roll … After Robison was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, he participated in an experimental transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study, which changed his life. Robison reflects on what he learned while delving into the science behind autism treatment and celebrating the people who were with him through truly difficult moments along a path of self-discovery … Robison's memoir contains as much vulnerability and honesty as it does discussions of neuroscience and autism.
Publishers Weekly
Fascinating for its insights into Asperger’s and research, this engrossing record will make readers reexamine their preconceptions about this syndrome and the future of brain manipulation.
Booklist
Like books by Andrew Solomon and Oliver Sacks, Switched On offers an opportunity to consider mental processes through a combination of powerful narrative and informative medical context. Readers can put their hands, for a moment, on the mystery that is the brain.
BookPage
A fascinating companion to the previous memoirs by this masterful storyteller.
Kirkus Reviews
Both memoir and neurological study — and, no doubt about it, neurology is a trending new reading topic.
Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal