The Anzac Connection
Edited by Desmond Ball
George Allen and Unwin, $9.95 pb, 170 pp
086861503 X

This collection comprises eight essays, all written before Lange’s anti-nuclear declaration on the Australian-New Zealand defence connection. The authors agree that it is a connection of very long standing and immutable strength, despite potential differences of strategic interest in the future. From the mouths of babes!

Hardly had this volume been as­sembled than such an eventuality occurred, and this is duly noted on the blurb. This book is thus extremely useful for explaining the unobvious part of the ANZUS triangle – the unbreakable Anzac bond. The Minister for Defence, Kim Beazley, has been at pains to protect this relationship while dealing desperately with the Americans. This book (though printed in an awful typeface, difficult to read) is essential to that part of the debate.
by Robert Pascoe

From Me To You Making & Giving Memorable Gifts
by Elspeth Renshaw & Stephanie King
Williams Collins, illus., index,
$24.95 hb, 166 p,
000217 4812

Are you giving handmade gifts this Christmas? From Me To You will stimulate ideas for gifts. Most of the book is devoted to those which are edible – pates, preserves, sauces, breads, sweets, icecream – there are also lovely smelly things too, sachets, potpourri, hand cream herb bouquets. Present packaging and wrapping, if you carefully read the text, are presented in original ways. Easier still is to gives the book to someone who likes doing things – if you can afford it.
by S. M. Stewart

How Did It Begin?: Customs & superstitions and their romantic origins
by R. Brasch
Fontana, $7.95, 352 p,
000 6368980

So you want to know the origin of the crossword puzzle, the sailors bib, or the word ‘quiz’? Brasch has 350 pages explaining our superstitions, customs of civil and military life, and religious, sporting and business practices. Amongst the sixteen pages of illustrations can be found photos of swagman carrying his matilda and of pre-Christian hot cross pubs excavated at Herculaneum. This is a re-printing of a 1965 publications, with new material added. This is a readable, compact compendium for the curious.
by John Anwyl

Herbal Delights
by Judi McKee
Leisure Press $3.95 pb, 40 p,. illus,.
094959805 4

This is a most valuable work. Its small size belies the mass of valuable information in it. The fourteen herbs are concisely described. Some may question the ones chosen – oregano for example is not there. However general gardeners and cooks will probably be satisfied. The growing notes are for Australian conditions, and are easy to follow. The section on using herbs contains excellent ideas on beauty and a small number of recipes. McKee has written an ideal work especially for those setting out to discover the joys of herb growing.
by Graham Dudley

The Working Class And Welfare: Reflections on the political development of the welfare state in Australia And New Zealand. 1890-1980
By Francis G. Castles
Allen and Unwin, $11.95 pb, $24.95 hb, 128 p, index,
0 86861 661 3 pb 0 86861 669 9 hb

Two provocative texts on aspects of the history of social welfare in Australia. Kennedy contends that social work began as a ruling-class strategy to disorganise a mobilizing working class in the 1890s. Castles argues that organised labour in Australia and New Zealand succeeded in making these societies more nurturant of the poor but oscillated between economist and incon1e­maintenance strategies. Neither historian seems to have con­sulted the work of the other. to the detriment of both arguments. Private charity and social welfare are not discontinuous phenomena: rather. the transition from one to the other occurs in an irregular and incomplete fashion. Thus. as Kennedy admits. working-class responses to the depression of the 1890s usually ameliorated the local effects of poverty. Or. pace Castles, not all social welfare initiatives came directly from social democratic pressures.

Both books deserve a place on library shelves and in the curricula of welfare history courses. and are in themselves an interesting contrast of styles. Castles is measured and highly organized in his style and form of argument. Kennedy speaks as one who came from a battler’s childhood: the experience of having an alcoholic father. he tells us in a frank foreword. got him interested in this field. He unites with genuine if eclectic conviction. and the book will worthily provoke good seminar debates.
by Robert Pascoe

The title Marx’s Lost Aesthetic makes two claims - that Marx had an aesthetic, and that it was lost. Here is the stuff of a good narrative here: What was Marx’s aesthetic? How did he come to have it? Why, when and how was it lost? This in the story Margaret Rose sets out to tell from the perspective indicated in the subtitle, Marx’s relation to the visual arts.

She begins, therefore, with the Nazareens - a school of Romantic painting that dominated early nineteenth-century Germany and was prominent in England. Influenced by Heine, the story goes, the young Marx rejected the idealism and spiritualism of the Nazareens, and the system of state patronage that supported it. He then went on to develop a rationalistic and materialistic aesthetic - one that rejected the idealism of Hegel and Kant and owed much to Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity as alienating of human consciousness and to Saint-Simon’s notion of the artist as an avant-garde producer/administrator/educator. Having told us this about how Marx arrived at his theory of art, Rose then moves on to the ‘what’ of his aesthetic.

There are three subtypes in the rapidly growing genre of ‘feminist social theory books’. One is the book which talks about ‘women and’ or ‘women in’ a specific area - the ‘herstory’ book designed to fill in gaps left in his official accounts of society. There were lots of these in the early seventies, but they’re getting rarer now as it becomes clear that we need a whole new narrative rather than a story with patches of interest to women it. Another type is the book of theory per se, which sets out to depict and explain gender­based inequality. There are many of these, from. a variety of perspectives, and some of them have had a lasting impact on many academic disciplines and on individual lives. And finally, there are books - on the whole recent arrivals - which are concerned with collating the results of the researchers and theorists who produce types one and two. This third type introduces and explicates theoretical debates and empirical findings, and functions as a guide, gloss and summary of a particular area of scholarship.

The blurb on the back of Lie of the Land informs us that the collection ‘reeks of Australia’. Apart from being an unfortunate phrase, the offer of a specifically Australian effluvium is too limiting a promise for this wonderful collection of stories. Clanchy’s world is more expansive, and the lie of the land is in no way circumscribed or even. Set in India and Ireland, as well as in different parts of Australia, Clanchy’s stories are vital and restless, and they offer us undisguised accounts of people in conflict with their environment, with others, and with themselves.