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Absolutely Revolting

August 2003, no. 253

Welcome to the August 2003 issue of Australian Book Review!

Tony Barta reviews ‘Rights for Aborigines’ by Bain Attwood
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Contents Category: Indigenous Studies
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Article Title: Touching the Sides
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John Howard, someone has remarked, deserves to be remembered for his shabby key to political success: he gave Australians permission to leave their consciences in the cupboard. Paul Keating, who knew what was coming with Howard, said that, if you have to pick a horse in any political race, back self-interest because at least you’ll know he’ll be trying. Bain Attwood’s important new book is about the struggle to right the nation’s greatest wrong in the hundred years before Keating and Howard began their political careers. It is an inspiring story about a tiny minority of fighters and a depressing reminder of how long self-interest and indifference kept consciences safely locked away.
Book 1 Title: Rights for Aborigines
Book Author: Bain Attwood
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $39.95pb, 424pp
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John Howard, someone has remarked, deserves to be remembered for his shabby key to political success: he gave Australians permission to leave their consciences in the cupboard. Paul Keating, who knew what was coming with Howard, said that, if you have to pick a horse in any political race, back self-interest because at least you’ll know he’ll be trying. Bain Attwood’s important new book is about the struggle to right the nation’s greatest wrong in the hundred years before Keating and Howard began their political careers. It is an inspiring story about a tiny minority of fighters and a depressing reminder of how long self-interest and indifference kept consciences safely locked away.

Read more: Tony Barta reviews ‘Rights for Aborigines’ by Bain Attwood

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Damian Grace reviews ‘Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience’ by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker
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Contents Category: Neuroscience
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Article Title: Marriage of Minds
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Custom Highlight Text: This book is a joy to read. It is the fruit of collaboration across disciplines and continents between a neurophysiologist and a philosopher. They have written a polemical work that is a model of clarity and directness. Distinguished neurophysiologist M.R. Bennett, of the University of Sydney, and eminent Oxford philosopher P.M.S. Hacker have produced that rarity of scholarship, a genuinely interdisciplinary work that succeeds.
Book 1 Title: Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
Book Author: M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker
Book 1 Biblio: Blackwell Publishing, $69.95 pb, 477 pp
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This book is a joy to read. It is the fruit of collaboration across disciplines and continents between a neurophysiologist and a philosopher. They have written a polemical work that is a model of clarity and directness. Distinguished neurophysiologist M.R. Bennett, of the University of Sydney, and eminent Oxford philosopher P.M.S. Hacker have produced that rarity of scholarship, a genuinely interdisciplinary work that succeeds.

Read more: Damian Grace reviews ‘Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience’ by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker

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Martin Crotty reviews ‘The Premiers Of Queensland’ edited by Denis Murphy et al.
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Article Title: Drab Caricatures
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Queensland’s history is different in many respects from the older states, and similar only to Western Australia in features such as its vastness, its relative emptiness and its history as the last of the ‘frontier’ states. It is easy to caricature Queensland as historically and naturally conservative, even reactionary, by comparison to its more cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant counterparts in the south-eastern corner of Australia. This is the state in which, if Henry Reynolds’s estimates are accepted (as they still generally are, despite the notorious efforts of Keith Windschuttle), half of the 20,000 Aborigines killed in violent conflicts with European settlers in Australia met their deaths. This is the state that gave us Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all the corruption that went with his government. And this is the state that was home to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and that gave it twenty-three per cent of the vote and ten seats in the 1998 state election.
Book 1 Title: The Premiers Of Queensland
Book Author: Denis Murphy et al.
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $35 pb, 482pp
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Queensland’s history is different in many respects from the older states, and similar only to Western Australia in features such as its vastness, its relative emptiness and its history as the last of the ‘frontier’ states. It is easy to caricature Queensland as historically and naturally conservative, even reactionary, by comparison to its more cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant counterparts in the south-eastern corner of Australia. This is the state in which, if Henry Reynolds’s estimates are accepted (as they still generally are, despite the notorious efforts of Keith Windschuttle), half of the 20,000 Aborigines killed in violent conflicts with European settlers in Australia met their deaths. This is the state that gave us Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all the corruption that went with his government. And this is the state that was home to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and that gave it twenty-three per cent of the vote and ten seats in the 1998 state election.

Read more: Martin Crotty reviews ‘The Premiers Of Queensland’ edited by Denis Murphy et al.

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Partridge Wings reviews ‘North of Nowhere, South of Loss’ by Janette Turner Hospital
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Contents Category: Short Stories
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Article Title: Partridge Wings
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Janette Turner Hospital fans, possibly reminded of their affection for her by the recent publication of her latest novel, Due Preparations for the Plague (reviewed in the June/July issue of ABR), will find this anthology an interesting exercise in retrospection. Collected here are fourteen stories published between 1991 and 2002 in various periodicals and anthologies from around the globe.
Book 1 Title: North of Nowhere, South of Loss
Book Author: Janette Turner Hospital
Book 1 Biblio: UQP, $24 pb, 286 pp
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Janette Turner Hospital fans, possibly reminded of their affection for her by the recent publication of her latest novel, Due Preparations for the Plague will find this anthology an interesting exercise in retrospection. Collected here are fourteen stories published between 1991 and 2002 in various periodicals and anthologies from around the globe.

Read more: Partridge Wings reviews ‘North of Nowhere, South of Loss’ by Janette Turner Hospital

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Alan Atkinson reviews ‘Man of Honour: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father’ by Michael Duffy
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: Honour Games
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As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when the word is not used as often as it once was. Michael Duffy’s book about John Macarthur, one of the best-known inhabitants of colonial Australia, constructs him as a ‘man of honour’. It ought to be topical.
Book 1 Title: Man of Honour
Book 1 Subtitle: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father
Book Author: Michael Duffy
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $35 pb, 376 pp
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As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when the word is not used as often as it once was. Michael Duffy’s book about John Macarthur, one of the best-known inhabitants of colonial Australia, constructs him as a ‘man of honour’. It ought to be topical.

Read more: Alan Atkinson reviews ‘Man of Honour: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father’ by...

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