PHOTOGRAPHY

Australia: Beyond any price by Peter McConchie

Macmillan, $30.00 pb, 112 pp

After working many years as a fashion photographer overseas, Peter McConchie returned to Australia in 1997 and was over­whelmed by the environmental destruction he saw here. With increasing concerns about the future of some of the country’s most fragile ecosystems, and a desire to ‘reconnect with the land’, McConchie decided to create a book that would make environmental issues ‘more accessible to those outside the green movement’. Australia: Beyond any price is the result of that vision. Rather than showing areas already ravaged by development, McConchie chose to produce a photographic study of the country’s remaining pristine wilderness areas, including the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin; old-growth forests in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania; the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree in Queensland; Kakadu in the Northern Territory; and the Great Victoria Desert in South Aus­tralia. The result is a diverse collection of stunning photographs and in-depth text, focusing on areas where ‘unique and fragile environ­ments are under threat of destruction as a result of weak laws and outdated commercial activities’.

More than a glossy coffee-table book, Australia: Beyond any price is a stark reminder of what we stand to lose if we, and future generations of Australians, ignore our responsibilities to the land.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

A Girl’s Best Friend: The meaning of dogs in women’s lives edited by Jan Fook and Renate Klein

Spinifex, $32.95 pb, 210 pp

A Girl’s Best Friend, is a delightful collection of doggy tales – snippets and snapshots of lives enriched by the presence of ‘girl’s best friend’. Editors Fook and Klein, passionate dog owners themselves, have collated stories, poems and autobiographical pieces from eighty-six women and girls. Well-known writers, poets, academics, activists, artists and politicians, including Meg Lees, Rose Zwi, Anne Coombs, and Judy Horacek, have contributed. So, too, have the unknown, including fourteen-year-old Kathy Crofts and single mother Karen Lane. Yes, the book is biased (although there are a few cameo appearances by cats – and the editors mention a women-and-cat sequel!), but A Girl’s Best Friend makes for enjoyable reading, even for those without a dog. In fact, the publishers warn that ‘[even] if you do not have a dog ... this book ... will have you at the Lost Dog’s Home in no time.’

HISTORY

A Short History of the World by Geoffrey Blainey

Viking, $35 pb, 669 pp

It’s a big ask, but this bestselling book, now in paperback, is an impressive attempt at a global history. Geoffrey Blainey, who likes grand narrative history (à la Manning Clark – see ‘Twenty Years On’), manages in A Short History of the World to give a succinct account of the human race from its beginnings in Africa to the present day. Blainey’s focus, in the longue durée tradition, is on the forces that make history, not the individuals; he concentrates on technological advances, the role of religions and the influence of environmental factors.

Selective as his condensed account is, it convincingly and authoritatively traces important developments across time and space, zooming in for close-ups on various peoples and places at significant moments in their particular historical trajectories. His consideration of the role of the night sky and dreams, and of competitive sport as a mirror of larger global changes, is truly illuminating. Blainey’s conclusions on the current blurring of distinctions, the ‘shrinking of the world’ and the possibility for the first time of ‘world government’ may seem premature in light of recent events that suggest real differences still remain; nonetheless, this book is a remarkable achievement.

The Great Shame: A story of the Irish in the old world and the new by Thomas Keneally

Vintage, $24.95 pb, 732 pp

In the nineteenth century, the Irish population was halved. Thomas Keneally’s non-fiction epic, The Great Shame (first published in 1998), explores the three causes of this terrible depletion: famine, emigration and transportation to Australia. The book traces eighty years of Irish history, beginning with Hugh Larkin’s Ireland of 1834 and ending with mention of the twentieth-century (and ongoing) ‘ancient quarrel between Catholic Republicans and Protestant Loyalists’. It explores the lives of political prisoners sent to Australia as convicts, and contrasts the Ireland they left behind with the Australia they came to. It also traces the widespread resettlement of the Irish – from New York to the Saint Lawrence, to the high plains of Montana and the bush towns of New South Wales.

A book such as this requires intensive research. Keneally spent ten years researching and writing The Great Shame, as evidenced by the nearly one hundred pages of notes, bibliographies, acknowledgments and index. An epic indeed!

Sacred Places: War memorials in the Australian landscape by Ken Inglis

MUP, $39.95 pb 522 pp

Ken Inglis is one of Australia’s outstanding historians, with an impressive publication record. Few works of Australian history have been more celebrated than Sacred Places, his magnum opus. First published in 1998, it won just about every award that was going. The new paperback edition, very affordable, will enable more readers to enjoy this detailed, illuminating and wonderfully illustrated work. Sacred Places examines the role of war memorials in our society, and traces them back to the very first one, erected in 1850. The Great War, whose memorials encrust every town and city in the country, pervades the book: its tragic consequences and everlasting commemoration. At a time of rising interest in our military history, and continuing debate about the Anzac myth, this major work of history could hardly be more timely.

REFERENCE

The Oxford Companion to Australian History edited by Graeme Davison, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre

OUP, $99.95 hb, 722 pp

When it was first published in late 1998, OCAH (as the latest Oxford Companion soon became known) was lauded as an indispensable reference for readers and students. Edited by three senior historians, it boasts contributions (ranging from a couple of hundred to two thousand words) from more than three hundred writers and scholars, covering everything from Aboriginal art and land rights, to genocide and gentry, to Judith Wright and zoological gardens. Here is a one-stop reference to our history and culture in the broadest senses of the words.

Much, sadly or otherwise, has happened since 1998, and this revised edition, attractively produced and still reasonably priced, is to be welcomed once again. Entries have been corrected and updated. The one on republicanism, for instance, notes the latest retreat. The entry on the Olympic Games now records a certain happening in Sydney. Ian Hancock’s initial entry on John Howard stopped with Howard’s ascent to the prime ministership. Now it discusses his re-election in 1998 and praises his policy towards East Timor. But all reference books are transitory. Work on this revised edition had ceased when the Tampa affair transformed Australian politics and contributed to Howard’s recent entrenchment. Will Howard still be PM when the next edition appears? Regardless, this revised edition, complete with maps and a subject index, is as valuable and readable as ever.

BIOGRAPHY

The Devil and James McAuley by Cassandra Pybus

UQP, $28.00 pb, 322 pp

This controversial biography of the poet, ‘Ern Malley’ hoaxer, academic and founding editor of Quadrant, James McAuley, is now available in a revised paperback edition. While Cassandra Pybus provides an overview of McAuley’s life and career, her focus is on his development into an extreme conservative and Cold War warrior, which made him, in her eyes, ‘Manning Clark’s opposite number’. As such, this is not a conventional tracing of a life, but a study of an individual’s ideological preoccupations.

Pybus has been criticised for giving neither McAuley’s conversion to Catholicism nor his stance against Communism credence; instead considering these beliefs as simply the products of a tormented soul. Her ‘Postscript’ suggests that McAuley’s fear of his sexual, especially homoerotic, urges led him to ‘displace his terror onto the Devil and his communist agents’. Robert Manne, for one, has condemned her portrayal of anti-communism as an irrational response to Stalinism. In this revised edition, Pybus both emphasises that her work is not ‘a cultural interpretation of the Cold War’, while, at the same time, expanding the chapters revealing the CIA’ s role in the establishment of Quadrant.

It is inevitable that a man as multifaceted as McAuley, whom Gwen Harwood described as like ‘four or five men rolled into one’, will be subject to conflicting interpretations. This biography is an important contribution to the cultural history of Australia.

Maconochie’s Experiment: How one man’s extraordinary vision saved transported convicts from degradation and despair by John Clay

John Murray, $35.00 pb, 276 pp

Governor of the Norfolk Island convict settlement between 1840 and 1843, Alexander Maconochie, wrote Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, was ‘the one and only inspired penal reformer to work in Australia throughout the whole history of transportation’. This is quite a claim but, in his thoughtful and elegant account of the period, John Clay goes some way towards establishing its truth.

Maconochie’s ‘experiment’ was to offer carrots alongside the stick. In an era of often astonishing brutality, his convicts read, went to church, listened to music, and, on one famous occasion, were treated free of chains to an afternoon of theatre and punch. More importantly, though, they were allowed to work towards early release via a system of marks for good behaviour: rehabilitation, not retribution, was Maconochie’s goal, and that he achieved it is shown by the fact that, of the 920 prisoners released during his tenure, only two per cent were ever convicted again.

A system of such ‘extreme indulgence’ was always going to meet opposition, and the how’s, the where’s and the why’s of Maconochie’s dismissal all make good reading. But it is when psychologist Clay deals with the humanity and good logic of that system, and of Maconochie himself, that the book is at its best.

FOOD AND DRINK

A Year of Slow Food by David and Gerda Foster

Duffy & Snellgrove, $33 pb, 277 pp

Gerda and David Foster’s book is A Year in Provence meets Tom and Barbara from The Good Life. In A Year of Slow Food, the Fosters prove that you don’t have to expatriate yourself to experience a tranquil life of self-sufficient luxury from the land. Having escaped twenty-five years ago to Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands, the Fosters provide a glimpse of a year in their life producing ‘slow food’. The latter is ‘authentic tucker, neither fast nor fancy ... It is farm food, prepared only from the freshest of ingredients, that tastes as food should taste.’ Meandering through the four seasons, both husband and wife offer samples of their daily activities and diet dependent on nature’s cycle. Interspersed throughout are delightful recipes with wry asides about their ‘true’ preparation times and costs: ‘Brussels Sprout Eggah’ requiring a ‘dairy cow to first lacta­tion (say two-and-a-half years)’ and ‘Shortbread’ ‘about eight hundred dollars for a stud Jersey in full profit’! This book provides sustenance for body and mind with philosophical musings: ‘To manage domestic animals you need to cultivate their trust. Civilisation is thus based on premeditated betrayal.’ It is also a feast for the eyes with the inclusion of Peter Solness’s sumptuous photographs. A perfect gift.

Espresso: Melbourne coffee stories by Andrew Brown-May

Arcadia, $16.50 pb, 97 pp

Adelaide has noble grapes, Sydney has cocktails, but Melbourne has a love affair with coffee that might be deemed obsessive in other metropolises. The search for the perfect cappuccino, as a Sydney writer once remarked, haunts Melbournian’s conversation. Coffee somehow flavours the city. Places like Pellegrini’s are as famous as Myer or the MCG. The roots of this fascination go back to the nineteenth century, when coffee-stalls sprouted all over town and the temperance movement prompted the erection of grandiose coffee palaces for the salvation of souls. After World War II, Italian immigrants cultivated a new demand for, and appreciation of, coffee. In this small, stylish macchiato of a book, neatly produced by Arcadia (an imprint of Australian Scholarly Publishing), historian Andrew Brown-May traces the role of the sacred bean in Melbourne’s social life. The anecdotal material is superb; nostalgists and lovers of café culture will relish the brief histories of coffee outlets that subtly changed the city. The photographs are charming, even bizarre (e.g. this Sputnik espresso machine from the 1950s). There is a glossary for inveterate misspellers of all those curly but indispensable beverages.