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Showing 1 - 14 of 14 items
By Jean McKay. 2001
The exploded view is a diagram which shows how each component of an object relates to the whole, and is…
usually applied to machinery. McKay uses it to explode everything from macaroons to metaphors. In her alphabetical essays she explodes language and her world view, taking a variety of things apart, from babies and crabapples to funerals and acorns, and putting them back together in unexpected ways. Some strong language.By Robertson Davies. 1996
A collection of Robertson Davies' reflections on books, reading, and writing. These essays, book reviews, and other writings, taken from…
a selection which he had planned to publish before his death, reveal Davies at his vintage best. 1996.By Albert Camus. 1991
In the title essay, the French philosopher and writer develops an affirmative attitude towards life, even though life is regarded…
as meaningless and absurd. The other essays also deal with the theme of affirmation in the face of absurdity. 1991. Uniform title: Mythe de Sisyphe.By Jonathan Franzen. 2002
A collection of fourteen essays from the author of The Corrections. Although the subjects range from the sex-advice industry to…
the way a super-max prison works, each piece wrestles with essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, and the hidden persistance of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include an essay on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease and a rueful account of the author's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey writer.Contents: My Father's Brain -- Imperial Bedroom -- Why Bother? -- Lost in the Mail -- Erika Imports -- Sifting the Ashes -- The Reader in Exile -- First City -- Scavenging -- Control Units -- Books in Bed -- Meet Me in St. Louis -- Inauguration Day, January 2001.By Ramona Koval. 2012
The Best Australian Essays 2012 presents the country's most eloquent voices at the peak of their powers. Helen Garner, Anna…
Krien and Romy Ash discuss animals; David Marr, Rhys Muldoon and James Button discuss those of the political variety. Peter Robb meets Akira Isogawa, J.M. Coetzee considers Les Murray's black dog, and Gillian Mears her award-winning novel.John Bryson reflects on the drawn-out, unnecessary agony of the Azaria case. With humour, Louis Nowra walks in the shadow of death, while Lee Kofman's teenage passions unfurl in a time of war. There's Andrew Ford on John Cage, Maria Tumarkin on food, Clive James on Pauline Kael, and Nick Bryant on Gina Rinehart. These are essays full of insight and wit, on the subjects that moved us in 2012.By Robyn Davidson. 2009
This year's Best Australian Essays ranges far and wide. There are portraits of Michael Jackson, Samuel Beckett, the kookaburra, Julia…
Gillard and Charles Darwin. There are dazzling pieces on commerce and cricket, extinction and translation, perfume and politics. There are journeys through landscapes scorched and recovering, and reflections on turning points both public and deeply personal. For Robyn Davidson, the best essays 'put oneself and the world to the test.' Here is a collection of pieces that do just that - and also entertain, inspire and provoke. Contributors include: David Sedaris, Tim Flannery, Tim Winton, Annabel Crabb, Chloe Hooper, David Marr, Drusilla Modjeska, JM Coetzee, Noel Pearson, Robert Dessaix and more.By David Marr. 2008
It was the year of Wall Street’s collapse and Australia’s apology, of a film-world tragedy and an art-world scandal. In…
Best Australian Essays 2008, David Marr has selected great writing from a turbulent time. With eyewitness accounts from crisis zones and film sets, deserts and campaign trails, and tales of failing banks and wounded birds, hitchhiking and footy jumpers, mourning brothers and raising children, music, media, art, love and obscenity, these wonderful essays paint a vivid picture of the year that was.By Robert Drewe. 2010
This year's Best Australian Essays offers riveting snapshots of the nation's "current loves and angers, its art and myths and…
amusements and gender concerns - and its propensity for bushfires." From Alex Miller on the creative imagination to Mark Dapin on crime myths, from Amanda Hooton on Miss Universe to Tim Flannery on the inner lives of animals, this is a collection that takes the pulse of the nation's writers and thinkers and finds them in rude health. A deeply satisfying collection for that long summer read. Contributors include: Clive James, Christine Kenneally, Shane Maloney, David Marr, Mark Dapin, Andrew Sant, Guy Rundle, Peter Conrad, Jo Lennan, Tim Flannery, Maureen O'Shaughnessy, Ian Henderson, Amanda Hooton, Anne Manne, Elizabeth Farrelly, David Brooks, Sunil Badami, Les Murray, Janet Hawley, David Malouf, Shelley Gare, Paul McGeough, Murray Bail, Kathy Marks, Alex Miller, Melissa Lucashenko, Lorna Hallahan, Pauline Nguyen, Carmel Bird, Nicolas Rothwell, Robert Manne, Sarah Drummond, Gerard WindsorBy Robert Manne. 2014
‘Some essays in this collection plunged me into thought. Some caused me to weep. Some brought tears of laughter. Some…
essays won me over by the power of their imagination. Some by their analytic clarity. Some by their excruciating honesty. Some by the pain of things past or present faced without flinching.’ - Robert Manne. In The Best Australian Essays 2014, Robert Manne assembles his picks of contemporary non-fiction writing. Tim Winton reflects on the impact of landscape on the Australian character; Helen Garner remembers her mother with a raw and stirring poignancy; Christos Tsiolkas wonders how the Left forgot their origins; Tim Flannery traces the history of the Great Barrier Reef and fears its destruction. With essays traversing madness, liberty under the rule of Tony Abbott, the enslaving of horses and the legacy of Doris Lessing, this sharp collection offers lucid insight, shrewd understanding and heartbreaking empathy.By Drusilla Modjeska. 2006
It has been a good year for essays. The latest Best Essays annual contains life and travel stories, explorations of…
art and politics, that will illuminate and divert. There is Robert Hughes on Rembrandt, and Gideon Haigh on Google. J.M. Coetzee on translation, and David Malouf on Shakespeare. Robyn Davidson goes to Tibet, and Hazel Rowley to Brazil in search of Sartre and de Beauvoir. And there are pieces on many of the year’s key political and social stories that bring depth and eloquence to the public conversation.By Geordie Williamson. 2016
In The Best Australian Essays 2016, Geordie Williamson curates the year’s best non-fiction writing from Australia’s finest writers. The result…
is a collection that reads as a wake-up call: from Jo Chandler on the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and Richard Flanagan on the Syrian exodus to Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani’s inside account of life on Manus Island. There is also space for Bowie, TV box-sets and Aussie rules. Spanning politics, music, literature, art, ecology, linguistics and more, this anthology showcases the nation’s most eloquent and insightful writing.By Robert Manne. 2013
In The Best Australian Essays 2013, Robert Manne draws out this year’s most distinctive voices. This superb collection encompasses the…
personal, with Robert Dessaix’s distant summer of love and touch-typing and Helen Garner’s reaction to the death of Jill Meagher; and the political, with Chloe Hooper and Pamela Williams reflecting on the last days in office of Gillard and Rudd, while Christos Tsiolkas tells us why we hate asylum seekers and Julian Assange warns of the internet’s threat to civilisation. In the spaces between, Richard Flanagan and Murray Bail peer into the world of art, David Free savours the legacy of Monty Python, Julian Meyrick remembers Margaret Thatcher, and Tim Flannery reveals the terrors of jellyfish.By Ramona Koval. 2011
The Best Australian Essays 2011 offers up bliss and illumination in equal measure - from the pleasures of the flesh…
to the events that convulsed the world in a year of change. Paul Kelly meditates on Frank Sinatra, and Robert Manne excavates the past and thoughts of Julian Assange. Inga Clendinnen dreams on cricket memories, and Anna Krien delves into the saga of the St Kilda schoolgirl. There is Peter Robb on Italian food, Anthony Lane on News of the World, Gail Bell on rats and Richard Flanagan on photography. This is a collection with something for everyone that never wavers in its quality. Contributors include: Gillian Mears, David Malouf, Nicolas Rothwell, Robert Manne, Anthony Lane, M.J. Hyland, Craig Sherborne, Anna Krien, Inga Clendinnen, Gail Bell, Helen Elliott, Morris Lurie, Maria Tumarkin, Andrew Sant, Shakira Hussein, Lian Hearn, Amanda Lohrey, Paul Kelly, Peter Robb, Clive James, Delia Falconer, Richard Flanagan and Andrew O'Hagan.By Bronwyn Donaghy. 2006
On 21 October 1995, Anna Wood went to a party and took an ecstasy tablet. Three days later she was…
dead. A life destroyed. A family devastated. She was just fifteen. She was leaving school to start the job of her dreams. She was beautiful, she had a loving family and countless friends. Bronwyn Donaghy interviewed friends, family members and numerous professionals in order to write the story of the circumstances surrounding Anna's death and of her family's decision to try and turn tragedy into a positive force for good.It is a story of our times, a story with powerful resonances for Anna's generation and their parents, for counsellors, doctors and teachers, for anyone who values the sanctity of life.