The Chris Saliba Web Experience

Important Information About This Blog

2011-07-21T17:29:00.002+10:00

Hello readers. This blog effectively came to an end in December of 2009 when I started writing articles for the website Suite 101. I wrote at Suite101 from Dec 2009 to April 2011, and stopped when Google's Panda update decimated the page views on the site. All my articles written for Suite 101 can be read here.

Since April 2011 I have started a new blog called Chris Saliba's Book Reviews. The reviews are more polished and a bit longer at this new site. You can also sign up for regular updates at Chris Saliba's Book Reviews - every time I write a new book review it gets emailed directly to you.

Cheers!

Storms of my Grandchildren, by James Hansen

2010-06-23T18:55:00.003+10:00

I read this recently, but haven't written one of my longer posts that usually go up at Suite101.

At first I was unsure whether I would get through the book, as there is a lot of science in it. But Hansen's gentle demeanour and avuncular manner kept me reading.

This book is well worth looking into, as it goes into how science in general works,. ie. there is a lot of scepticism built into it.

A lot of the conclusions of the book are extrememly alarming. Hansen is mild-mannered, but the overwhelming evidence of the science has pushed him into activism and book writing to get the climate change science to the public.

If you want to get a close insight into how the front line science on this issue works, written in a friendly and engaging manner, then get this book.

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change, by Clive Hamilton

2010-06-10T13:46:00.003+10:00

I have a funny relationship with Clive Hamilton's books. I broadly agree with him, but I find his tone almost punishing. In short, he can be difficult to read, and you feel he always disapproves.

I read this book quite quickly and enjoyed it.

For those interested in the topic of climate change, it gives lots of interesting information that is easiy to read and digest.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

We Think The World of You, by J. R. Ackerley

2010-06-10T13:43:00.004+10:00

J. R. Ackerley's only novel is about the failure of desire to obtain it's object. In this case, the by product of a doomed love is a new relationship with a dog.

Faultlessly written, this novel mixes sadness with comedy to create a bitter-sweet story of lost love.

Read my full review at Suite101.

Blueprint for a Safer Planet, by Nicholas Stern

2010-06-10T13:38:00.002+10:00

Nicholas Stern is more famous for his Stern Report on the economic consequences of global warming. In his eminently readable Blueprint he offers an explanation of the economics behind reducing CO2 emissions.

Very accesible to the lay reader, and even quite enjoyable.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, by Richard Heinberg

2010-06-10T13:35:00.003+10:00

Years and years ago I read Heinberg's The Party's Over about peak oil.

Powerdown (admittedly, not a good title), takes a deep and philosophical look at society's dependence on fossil fuels.

Highly recommended!

Read my full review at Suite101.

The Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell

2010-06-10T13:28:00.003+10:00

This is a collection put together by Wordsworth edition titled 'Tales of Mystery and the Macabre.' These aren't really scary stories, although they do have their mysterious flavour. More to the point they exhibit Gaskell's great power as a story teller.

Read my full review at Suite101.

A Woman In Charge, a biography of Hillary Clinton by Carl Bernstein

2010-05-28T21:38:00.002+10:00

This is one fantastic biography. Really compelling reading of a very complex character.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell

2010-05-28T21:36:00.001+10:00

This is probably my least favourite book by Orwell. In fact, I found it quite boring!

Read my Suite101 review.

Our Betty: Scenes From My Life, by Liz Smith

2010-05-14T12:24:00.003+10:00

In this beautifully written memoir British actress Liz Smith retells key periods and moments from her life.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith

2010-05-14T12:17:00.003+10:00

I've long been of the opinion that so much of modern life is just useless busy work. In this book, John Kenneth Galbraith highlights the paradox of modern economies having to produce useless junk, thereby creating enough economic activity to keep employment full.

Written with Galbraith's dry wit, this book is essential reading.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Crude: The Story of Oil, by Sonia Shah

2010-05-14T12:04:00.002+10:00

A nicely written and researched book about the 'story of oil'. This is one of those books by a print journalist that looks at a subject from many differing views. So it lacks a cohesive, overall 'story' or 'narrative'. Published in 2004, it also seems just a tad dated now.

The early chapters that describe how oil formed in the ground reminds me of The Silent Spring in its poetic beauty. But then after a few chapters in the book becomes a series of essays on various oil topics: depletion, the activities of oil companies abroad, environmental damage, global warming etc. etc.

Worth a read nonetheless if the subject is of interest to you.

A Thousand Barrels a Second, by Peter Tertzakian

2010-05-13T21:19:00.001+10:00

Lousy title, but a really, really engrossing book. Tertzakian takes an historical perspective on oil which is rivetting and scary. Highly recommend reading this. I'm looking at buying his follow up book on oil depletion.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Home From Nowhere, by James Howard Kunstler

2010-05-13T21:13:00.002+10:00

James Howard Kunstler is one of my favourite authors, but I did not get into this book as much as I have his others. There's a lot of stuff about city planning etc. which could not hold my attention. I really go for Kunstler's acerbic wit, not his journalistic voice. When sharp critics write in this journalistic voice, describing people they meet etc., it can come across as being too much in earnest. I don't know, it just didn't grab me.

I loved the last chapter though, where he described his day to day life.

The book is really a weak part two of The Geography of Nowhere.

I'd urge people to read Kuntler's The Long Emergency before trying his other non-fiction books.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell

2010-05-10T08:35:00.002+10:00

George Orwell is always associated with everything utterly serious in writing, but he also wrote some quite amusing stuff. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a light, comic novel about an aspiring writer. It's one of my favourite books by Orwell.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Half Gone, by Jeremy Leggett

2010-05-06T17:50:00.002+10:00

Jeremy Leggett left the oil industry to become Chief Scientist at Greenpeace UK.

I was quite disappointed with this book. I thought it would be a comprehensive book on oil depletion, but it's really a mish-mash of the author's concerns. Half of the book is really taken up with concerns about global warming. Fair enough, but I wish the book had had more focus.

Sylvia's Lovers, by Elizabeth Gaskell

2010-05-06T17:47:00.002+10:00

This is Elizabeth Gaskell's penultimate full length novel. It's beautifully written, and very much points to the maturity of her last novel, Wives and Daughters.

The novel is, however, somewhat marred by its melodramatic ending.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film by Jimmy McDonough

2010-04-30T18:05:00.002+10:00

For fans of the great Russ Meyer, this book will not disappoint at all. I found it a rollicking fun read, with lots of fantastic interview material with the famous Russ Meyer girls.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

The Last Oil Shock, by David Strahan

2010-04-30T17:59:00.002+10:00

I knew nothing about this author, just picked the book up off the shelf at the Brunswick Library. Turns out it's quite a good look at all the political, economical, and supply / demand problems to do with crude oil.

If you're interested in the debate on peak oil, I'd heartily recommend giving this book a go.

Read my full review at Suite101.

The End of Overeating, by David Kessler

2010-04-28T09:42:00.003+10:00

I was none too impressed by this book. The section dealing with the food industry, and the science behind its foods, was interesting. But the last half of the book was pretty dire. Just the usual stuff about trying to impose limits on eating.

A bit of a bummer in my view.

Read my full review at Suite101

Twilight in the Desert, by Matthew R. Simmons

2010-04-28T09:36:00.003+10:00

This book famously set the cat amongst the pigeons when it was initially released. Simmons basically argues that Saudi oil reserves are not as large as the Saudi government makes out.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot, by Jeff Rubin

2010-04-28T09:31:00.002+10:00

Jeff Rubin is a Canadian economist. His book about the coming global oil depletion takes a more cheery view than most. Sure, there will be a few disruptions, but on the whole we will transition to a more contracted, smaller world. Economies will go local as the costs of transport become too prohibitive. This means goodbye to globalisation.

An interesting take on peak oil that won't leave you feeling gloomy.

Read my full review at Suite101.

Bitter Chocolate by Canadian Journalist Carol Off

2010-04-22T17:45:00.001+10:00

This is quite an informative and yet very distressing book about how cocoa beans are harvested in Africa's Ivory Coast, using child labour.

The book also provides a fascinating history of chocolate.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Food Politics, by Marion Nestle

2010-04-22T17:41:00.001+10:00

This is a complex and involved look at how the American food industry and its aggressive lobbying affects what food is sold and how it is marketed.

Marion Nestle is a favorite author of mine, who also wrote a terrific book called What to Eat.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Jack Welch Speaks, by Janet Lowe

2010-04-20T15:43:00.001+10:00

This is a fair and balanced over view of Jack Welch's work as CEO of General Electric by business journalist Janet Lowe.

The book is made up of interviews, with Lowe running her own commentary along side that of Welch's interview material.

For me it worked well as a very readable introduction into Welch's management style.

Read my full review here at Suite101

The Subprime Solution, by Robert J. Shiller

2010-04-10T22:38:00.002+10:00

I pretty much dismissed Shiller's Animal Spirits on these pages recently, and thought I'd just give the first few pages of this book a go and see if it compelled me to read the rest. To my surprise, I really enjoyed this book.

It's very much a look at the human psychology that causes bubbles in housing prices. Australians who are riding the booming housing wave at the moment should definitely read this book.

My full review at Suite101 can be read here.

The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan

2010-04-10T22:29:00.003+10:00

I enjoyed very much Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and so thought I'd try The Botany of Desire.

The book is basically a meditation on four plants: the apple tree, the tulip flower, the marijuana plant and the potato. Pollan's musings on these plants are interesting enough. He's one of those naturally gifted student types who pick up complex themes easily. It can make him sometimes seem a bit too smart and show-offy.

The worst of the essays is the one on the tulip, which veers closely to the self indugent. The better essays are on the apple and the potato, the latter being my favourite. This last essay points toward's Pollan's next book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I found this book to be okay, but thought anyone could really write their own rave on their favourite plants. There's nothing new in this book. I wish I had spent my time reading a more straight forward history of the potato, which in fact I think I will do next. Perhaps thanks are due to Mr Pollan after all for pointing me in this direction.

Bicycle: The History, by David K. Herlihy

2010-03-30T18:27:00.002+11:00

After long wondering how bicycles came into being, I decided to find out why.

David K. Herlihy provides a brilliant history of the bicycle, accompanied by glossy illustrations.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

2010-03-29T22:55:00.002+11:00

This is a well known classic by George Orwell. From memory it was the first book he published, insisting it not be published under his real name of Eric Blair so his parents wouldn't be offended.

Did Orwell I wonder invent this style of first hand reportage?

The book hasn't dated one bit, and is still wonderfully readable today.

Read my full Suite101 review here.

The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, by James Howard Kunstler

2010-03-26T16:15:00.003+11:00

James Howard Kunstler is my absolute favourite writer at the moment. I love his sharp witty style, marrying his aesthetic concerns with a rock hard intelligence.

This is my third work of non-fiction that I've read from Kunstler (he's also a novelist) and it was just as brilliant as The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere.

In this book Kunstler basically gives an aesthetic, environmental and historical overview of a number of famous cities. As ever, his criticisms of American cities are full of his acerbic wit.

Highly reccomended.

Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

2010-03-26T13:58:00.001+11:00

The erotic classic Venus in Furs is not what you'd think. Yes, it's about masochism, but it has a very human touch as well.

Read my full review at Suite101.

Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher

2010-03-24T21:27:00.002+11:00

This is a book based on her one woman stand up routine that discusses, amongt other things, Fisher's madcap mother and personal demons of drugs and depression.

A really enjoyable read, with quite a few laugh-out-loud gags.

Check out my full review here at Suite101.

Animal Spirits, by Robert J. Shiller and George A. Akerlof

2010-03-24T21:20:00.002+11:00

I read Robert J. Shiller's Irrational Exuberance, and should have learnt (or remembered) from that experience that the author writes in a rather dry, pedestrian (and yes, gulp, dull) style.

For Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism , Shiller co-writes with George A. Akerlof. Unfortunately, the result is still rather dry and dull.

The subject matter is fascinating, and really, the book should read like the classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay.

Perhaps academic types might enjoy this, which is a shame, as it should appeal to a wider readership.

Walt Disney and the Triumph of American Imagination, by Neal Gabler

2010-03-24T21:15:00.002+11:00

This is a very thorough and exhaustive biography of Disney. Perhaps a little too detailed.

Gabler tries to frame the discussion of Disney within a serious art and cultural context, and mostly succeeds.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

The Geography of Nowhere, by James Howard Kunstler

2010-03-19T17:47:00.002+11:00

James Howard Kunstler is one of my favourite writers at the moment. He's witty and sharp as a tack, mixing his environmentalism with an aesthete's eye for beautiful urban scenes.

The Geography of Nowhere lays blame for the parlous state of urban design at the feet of cars.

Kunstler is no to everyone's taste, but at least he believes 100% in what he writes, and is not trying to raise hell with his opinions just for the fun of it.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Marlene Dietrich, by her daughter Maria Riva

2010-03-19T17:43:00.001+11:00

This is a monster biography by daughter Maria Riva that goes into her molestation by one of Dietrich's friends.

Dietrich comes across as part ogre part genius in this amazing 800 page biography by her daughter.

It's well written and compelling stuff, but you do wonder about the intentions of these showbiz daughters. I guess they really see the flip side of the coin and are desperate to set the record straight.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Frederick the Great, by Nancy Mitford

2010-03-18T20:44:00.002+11:00

Nancy Mitford published this in 1970. It was her last book, before she was so cruelly taken by cancer.

Nancy wrote four biographies. This one is about the Prussian King, Frederick the Great. It's a big book, with gorgeous plate photographs.

The book describes in elegant and witty details the confusing (to this reader anyway) polititcal shenanigans of 18th century Europe.

I enjoyed reading it, but didn't fully absorb enough of the detail to write a proper review.

A Life of Contrasts, by Diana Mosley

2010-03-18T20:35:00.003+11:00

Two of the Mitford girls turned politically to fascism - Diana and Unity. Unity shot herself in the head when war was declared.

Diana found herself jailed during the war.

This memoir was written when Diana was in her late 60s. It's mostly written in an elegant style, with interesting parts about her involvement in the 1930s art and literary scenes. However, a strong tone of bitterness comes out about her incarceration.

Then there is of course the political stuff, about Hitler and the faultless political wisdom of her husband, Sir Oswald Mosley, whom she constantly refers to a "M". Weird!

The passages that dealt with politics I found creepy and conceited. Diana seems hell bent on not apologising for her friendship with Hitler. Nor will she discuss the mass murder of the Jews. One senses that this may be a backhander for being locked up during the war, simply because of her political sympathies. That's the best spin you can put on it. Otherwise you just assume she must still be quite sympathetic to Hitler.

I came across a biography of her at a local library. Perhaps I should investigate more.

You can read my full review here at Suite101.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Lowering Your Cholesterol, by Dr Joseph Klapper

2010-03-17T19:55:00.001+11:00

I'm not one for reading 'idiot's guide' type books, but this one has lots of useful and up to date information on diet and exercise that will keep you in tip top shape.

Read my full review here at Suite101 to get the skinny on reducing your cholesterol levels.

Fanny Hill: or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland

2010-03-10T09:19:00.002+11:00

The great pornographic classic turns out to be not so pornographic at all. In fact, no obscene words at all are used in the book.

A very humanistic novel.

Read my complete review here at Suite101.

Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley

2010-03-10T09:15:00.003+11:00

Charlotte Mosley always does a fine job of editing these collections of letters by the Mitford sisters. Mosley always provides many footnotes to help the reader place all the action of the letters in context.

Being a long time fan of Nancy Mitford, I very much enjoyed this collection. I also admired, as shown in the letters, Nancy's no fuss approach to her own writing. She knew her limitations as a writer, didn't beat herself up over it, and got on with the business of writing.

Read my full review here at Suite101

The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond

2010-03-09T19:18:00.002+11:00

I'm a big fan of Jared Diamond now, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

This book was published in 1991, before the two above books, on which much of his reputation rests.

It wasn't as good as his other books. The second half of the book was almost a prelude to Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse.

The first half deals with human traits and how similar we are to animals.

It's a very interesting book nonetheless, although when compared to his other two famous books, not up to that standard.

Read my Suite101 review here.

Heat, by George Monbiot

2010-03-09T19:15:00.004+11:00

This is the first book I've read by the famed English journalist, and I thought it very good.

Monbiot speaks a lot of common sense, and in a way, his writing reminded me of George Orwell in its earnestness.

The book basically asks for citizens to reduce their standard of living in order to combat global warming. The suggestions in the book didn't seem too radical to me.

You can read my full review here at Suite101.

A Very Short Introduction to Global Warming, by Mark Maslin

2010-03-04T17:38:00.002+11:00

I picked this up at my local library while perusing the books on the environment. It's published by Oxford University Press and is a neatly written short book that explains the science and politics of climate change.

It's written for the lay reader, and is not written in an alarmist, over the top fashion. I found it very accesible - even enjoyable.

Read my full review of the book here at Suite101.

Melbourne – A City Lost and Found, by Robyn Annear

2010-02-26T20:43:00.002+11:00

Robyn Annear wrote a witty and fast paced book about early Melbourne called Bearbrass.

Melbourne - A City Lost and Found deals with all the belle epoque architecture that was pulled down by the firm Whelan the Wreckers.

I enjoyed this book even more than Bearbrass. Annear is a cracking good writer who never bores her reader. You'll weep many a tear though over all the beautiful Melbourne buildings that were demolished, never to be seen again.

Read my full Suite101 review here.

How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

2010-02-26T20:39:00.002+11:00

I decided to pick this up and give it a whirl after reading the recent biography of Warren Buffett, The Snowball.

Buffett was a big fan of the book. It left a lasting impression of me. It's almost a philosphical book about the importance of self-control and being thoughtful enough to think of the other person.

In a somewhat dubious application of these virtues, Carnegie primarily suggests applying these values to business situations. In short, you can make a lot more money by focusing on good customer service.

However, the lay person who wants to get along hassle free in life can pick up many valuable tips from this book.

Read my Suite101 review here.

In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor

2010-02-24T18:21:00.002+11:00

Editor Charlotte Mosley has done it again with this delightful collection of letters between the youngest of the Mitford girls, Deborah, and renowned travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor.

An enjoyable book of letters that almost make an 'in tearing haste' autobiography of the two letter writers. The sort of book you enjoy for the sheer pleasure of reading.

Read my complete review here at Suite101.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

2010-02-18T18:47:00.003+11:00

I am a decade late to reading this book, first published in 1997. Better late than never. After reading Jared Diamond's brilliant Collapse, I'm now a fan.

Basically, this book maintains that environment determines how 'advanced' a culture becomes. The reason why Europe invented its technologies and economy was because their environment could help produce food surpluses, freeing up time for study and research.

Read my Suite101 book review here. Highly recommended!

Collapse:How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, by Jared Diamond

2010-02-11T17:50:00.004+11:00

This is a book I've long meant to read, but for some reason always put it off. Truth to tell, I'm a very lazy person and it seemed the subject matter would be difficult and complex to grasp. I didn't want to make the intellectual effort.

Alas, once I'd opened the first page I was hooked. This is an awesome book, and it follows what I've thought for a long time.

The basic premise of the book is how much of the advanced Western economy can the environment carry on its back?

Many economists and politicians think there is no limit. Jared Diamond describes those limits.

The section on Australia was particularly fascinating. All Australians should read this book, just to see our environment put in a global context. We live in a very fragile environment here.

Jared Diamond is refreshingly free of ideology and cant. He approaches problems from a common sense perspective.

I trust what he says.

Highly recommended!

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Quarterly Essay: Radical Hope, by Noel Pearson

2010-02-03T20:11:00.003+11:00

I wonder if the reason for the problems that plague this series of essays is the length. Noel Pearson is a writer and thinker whom I very much admire, and I was sure I’d really enjoy this essay.

But I was wrong. It was long and meandering, like so many of the Quarterly Essays.

It seems the writers sit down, find some 20,000 words stretching out before them, panic and wonder how they will fill the space. Noel Pearson even takes to extensively quoting himself!

There’s some stuff of interest in here. But a lot of it rehashes ideas Pearson has well and truly fleshed out in his articles and newspaper columns. Read those first, recently collected in a book called ‘Up From The Mission’. Then maybe give this a go.

These essays should be punchy and bursting with things to say. Instead they’re generally effete and unfocused. And with not a lot to say.
A disappointment.

Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers

2010-01-29T13:42:00.005+11:00

This is a crisply written novel very much in the English tradition of writers like Lewis Caroll and G.K. Chesterton. Which is slightly strange, seeing the author is Australian. But you'd never know.

The Mary Poppins of the page is quite different from the Julie Andrews incarnation presented by Disney. Ms. Travers's Mary Poppins has a lot more sharper edges. She's more unpredictable. I'm not sure I'd like to have her running my house, as anything could happen.

A brilliant, perfectly written novel. I look forward to reading the other novels in the series.

Read my Suite101 article on Mary Poppins here.

How Language Works, by David Crystal

2010-01-27T19:32:00.002+11:00

I found this book to be a bit long and repetitive in parts. And this is from someone who likes to read about language.

The problem for me was perhaps that it read a bit like a text book. David Crystal takes you through all the minor details involved in language, right down to the biological facts of how we make sound.

The more interesting parts dealt with the world's different languages and dialects.

I presume the student of language may find this book more interesting.

Maggie Darling, by James Howard Kunstler

2010-01-22T21:38:00.002+11:00

James Howard Kunstler wrote a book about peak oil called The Long Emergency which had a big influence on me. This novel by Kunstler is a kind of glittery satire, but it has a dark underbelly.

I very much enjoyed this novel and raced through it in a couple of days. It's sharp and sophisticated.

Read my full review here at Suite101.

Bond Street Story, by Norman Collins

2010-01-21T21:18:00.003+11:00

A novel about London life from the same author who brought us London Belongs To Me. While Bond Street Story is not as good the epic London Belongs To Me, it has many of the great qualities of that novel. Worth getting a hold of if you can. It's out of print, but if you're committed enough you should be able to get a copy second hand.

Thanks to Chris Hubbard for letting me read his copy!

You can read my full Suite101 review here.

Looking for Anne of Green Gables, by Irene Gammel

2010-01-14T17:48:00.003+11:00

A fascinating literary biography of the Lucy Maud Montgomery novel Anne of Green Gables. I never knew Montgomery was such a complex figure.

This book from professor Irene Gammel traces the literary, cultural and personal origins of this much loved classic.

You can read my full review here at Suite101.

Handling Edna, by Barry Humphries

2010-01-13T21:23:00.003+11:00

This is a fun, easy read more for Dame Edna fans than anyone else. In some sections it almost reads like the third volume of Barry Humphries's autobiography.

It's a strange late career book for Humphries, to again write about Edna. Obviously she has quite a hold on the author's imagination.

Visitors of my Web Experience can enjoy my full review for Handling Edna here at the Suite101 website.

Alain de Botton on The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

2010-01-08T21:32:00.002+11:00

This is a nicely enough written book, but it seems to me that Alain de Botton is ultimately quite a superficial writer. He has a natural ability, but doesn't say much of great depth.

You can read my full review of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work here at the Suite101 website.

The March of Patriots: The Struggle for Modern Australia, by Paul Kelly

2010-01-07T22:09:00.002+11:00

Viewers of the ABC’s political program Insiders and readers of The Australian will know of Paul Kelly. Every Sunday morning he descends, Zeus like, to give his authoritative commentary on the week in politics.

In the past, I must confess myself to being a fan of Kelly’s books, and an occasional reader of his columns in The Australian. I especially liked his The End of Certainty, which covered Australian federal politics in the 1980s.

The title of his new book, The March of Patriots, worried me from the beginning. Why such a turgid, militaristic title? It’s in Kelly’s style, I guess. He doesn’t so much write, as chisel his words out of granite.

I was glad to get to the end of The March of Patriots. I whinged frequently while reading it. Kelly is so conceited, he gave me a headache in the end. He is always claiming to reveal some deeper truth that no one else knew about, or to hold the definnite answer to any number of political conundrums.

For example, on page 198 the author talks about Keating's commitment to indigenous affairs.

"For the first time a prime minister made indigenous justice his main priority in time and politics. This had never happened before, and it will not happen again."

How can Kelly possibly know? This is an astonishing thing to say.

Kelly also likes to use a lot of religious language and religious metaphors. It’s just hyperbole. Bad writing, I think. Like this on Howard’s opportunity to apologise for the so-called stolen generations:

"Like Saint Peter, Howard had three opportunities to apologise – in 1997, 1999 and 2000 – and he refused on each occasion."

Kelly talks on and on about Howard in mystical terms. He obviously loves powerful men, hence the title.

Yet the patriotism that he attributes to Keating and Howard is difficult to find. Both Howard and Keating had their own idiosyncratic ideas about what Australia was or should be. For example, Keating wanted to cut with the British monarchy and establish a republic, whereas Howard was a staunch monarchist. Where ideology ends and patriotism begins is hard to figure out.

Of course there is plenty to interest readers and political junkies in the book. Kelly does a good job at covering all the major political and policy events of the Keating-Howard era.

Especially of interest (for me anyway) was the notion of how the population has not embraced free markets, unlike the political class, and Kelly’s admission that free trade has not got a firm footing in the electorate, and hence its future is not sure.

I also liked the section that discussed how much of a welfare state we actually live in, something Howard did not wind back.

"Professor Ann Harding, Director of the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), concluded in 2005 (analysing the first half of the Howard era) that the top 40 per cent of earners were supporting the bottom 60 per cent and, in particular the bottom 40 percent due to Howard’s redistribution."

You wouldn’t know it, would you?

If you like ‘authoritative’ style texts, with little to no sense of humour and absolutely no sense of self-doubt, then give this book a go. Kelly has a capacious mind and extraordinary intellectual stamina, but his book takes itself too seriously.

Up From The Mission, by Noel Pearson

2009-12-31T15:27:00.003+11:00

In my humble opinion, Noel Pearson is one of Australia's most interesting intellectuals. He looks at Australia and its history through a unique prism of indigenous rights, his training as a lawyer and his powerful intellectual curiosity.

So many other media commetators write a load of old pap about politics and society, but Pearson is more the genuine article. Writing on serious subjects is not some parlour game for him.

Most of the essays and articles in this collection you can find at the wikipedia page for Noel Pearson. I especially recommend his Light on the Hill essay (link provided for online copy.)

You can read my full review of Up From the Mission here at the Suite101 website.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, by Alice Schroeder

2009-12-30T18:35:00.002+11:00

Alice Schroeder's superb biography of Warren Buffett is probably my favourite book for 2009. It was a surprise read, because at the start I wondered if I really wanted to spend 850 pages on a bio of an investment king.

Turns out I did! Warren Buffett is my kind of guy, full of common sense and no frills. He's conservative, but in the good, old fashioned way.

You can read my full review here at the Suite101 website.

Keynes: The Return of the Master, by Robert Skidelsky

2009-12-23T08:45:00.002+11:00

If you are not familiar with all the - to me anyway - rather arcane language which is used to describe the varieties of economic theory, then you might find some parts of this book hard to grasp. In fact, the author even states that some of the ideas or theories held dear by various economic schools of thought, may seem mad to many people.

With regards to the global financial crisis the gist of it is, the beautiful numbers of the economic modeling were held more important to these economic theorists than reality itself.

Biographer Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, is perhaps most well known for his three volume life of John Maynard Keynes. Many years ago I read the first volume, but didn't pursue the following volumes. From memory, I thought his Skidelsky's style a bit dry and flavourelss.

This short book is okay if you're a lay reader, but only just. It's divided into three parts. The first deals with the global financial crisis, and how it all came about. The second part details Keyne's economic ideas, plus other economic schools of thought. The final section wraps up with some Keynesian solutions to the world's current economic dilemmas.

I can't say I enjoyed this book much. Reading about economic prescriptions is not really my cup of tea. My mind kept wandering back to the wonderful John Kenneth Galbraith's book The Affluent Society, which was more enjoyable on matters economic.

On the other hand, I'm not really qualified to review this type of book. I know little of the subject and struggle with some of the concepts.

The Freedom Paradox, by Clive Hamilton

2009-12-16T17:20:00.002+11:00

This is a difficult and dense book as it goes into the philosophies of Kant and Schopenahauer, amongst many others. The core of the book is a discussion of the concepts of ‘phenomenon’ and ‘noumenon’ – you could perhaps simplify these two ideas as the former being the image of the world as we come to perceive it, and the later as the world as it really is, or its very essence.

Kant had the idea that the world of objects was only real to us as a perception, or a ‘phenomenon’ of the mind. Two people might see a chair. One might say it was green, while the other person who was colour blind might not see that colour at all. Their perception makes reality.

The chair, however, is definitely a thing in itself.

Kant’s description for objects in themselves (the thing-in-itself) was called the noumenon. Or again, the essence.

He said the noumenon could not be understood because it ‘ lies absolutely beyond what we could know’.

Schopenhauer claimed we could get in touch with the noumenon, what he called ‘the will’, because it’s a part of our actual being. The noumenon lives in us.

Clive Hamilton, to cut a long story short, says if we can get in touch with this essence of the world, stripped away from the phenomena of the world, then we could access a deep, profound happiness and freedom.

As you can tell by the brevity of this post, the book did not powerfully affect me. The title of the book suggests some thoroughgoing critique of our modern culture, but The Freedom Paradox ends up spending most of its time discussing complex philosophical arguments. I couldn’t figure out how Hamilton wanted the philosophical narrative of his book to inform the implied subject of his book: the paradox of freedom in our modern culture.

In the end I found the book interesting, but not earth shattering. The book makes you labour intensely to follow the philosophical concepts discussed, yet there’s no intellectual pay-off at the end. The title of the book all sounds very impressive, but I thought its contents were really just a dry, plodding digest of many great thinkers.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health, by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie

2009-12-11T20:43:00.002+11:00

This is a really scary book about the toxins we come into contact with everyday in our domestic and suburban environments, written by two Canadian environmentalists. The authors ran tests on themselves, exposing their bodies to the types of toxins we find in everyday articles we use. Hence they'd spray themselves with deoderants etc. then test themselves afterwards for toxins.

The results scared me, and made me think twice about a lot of the things I use in my daily life.

You can read my full review here at Suite101 website.

All That Happened at Number 26, by Denise Scott

2009-12-09T21:57:00.003+11:00

After years of working the Australian comedy circuit, a career that involved stand-up, regular radio spots and TV appearances, performer Denise Scott has put pen to paper to write this warm chucklefest of a memoir.

The number 26 of the title refers to the home Scott and her husband bought when they were skinflint. Directly after her husband had bought the home at an auction, at Scott’s prompting, she immediately broke down, bawled her eyes out and declared she hated the house. Her flummoxed husband asked what the matter was. "Well, why did you tell me to bid?"

"Because we have to live somewhere and I knew all we could afford was some ugly, horrible piece of shit."

Amazingly, Scott and family (two grown up children, Jordie and Bonnie) still live at number 26 today. The reason? You adapt, says Scott, and soon learn to turn negatives into positives.

This attitude, of turning positives into negatives, underlines a lot of the comedy in this book. All Scott ever wanted was a nice suburban house, to live like ‘normal’ people with nice things. Instead all she got was a house that was frequently falling down around her ears, leaking water, and filled with furniture that was either found, borrowed or donated to the family.

Life at number 26 it seemed would never be normal, no matter how much Scott strived for middle class respectability and decency. One day the comedienne was shocked to come home and find her husband airing their filthy futon – with its years of built up mould from sleeping on it directly on the floor, ignoring the shop assistant’s advice to roll it up daily – out in the front garden. This was literally airing your dirty laundry in public.

So financially stretched were the couple that they thought nothing of even taking in unwanted underwear and sharing it, like the time they accepted a unwanted pair of underpants from husband John’s cousin, Gavin. They were a pair of pale-brown undies with dark brown trim and made of 100 synthetic bri-nylon. Scott described them as an ‘emergency pair’. One day she mindlessly put them on and went to a TV shoot for an SBS series called Piccolo Mondo. It turned out the love scene she was doing in the end required her to remove her underpants – Cousin Gavin’s as it turns out – while still on the set. Oh, the humiliation and embarrassment! The underpants didn’t fare well under the hot studio lighting.

"High temperatures and bri-nylon do not a good marriage make, that’s all I’m trying to say. My memory is of the wardrobe lady, looking as though she was about to dry-retch, gingerly taking my cousin Gavin’s underpants from me and holding them at some distance as she carried them off-set, where she was charged with keeping them on ‘stand-by’ in case we reached a point where I could put them on again."

As Scott says of her house, you adapt and you turn negatives into positives. In this case, she soldiered on with her career and made a decent living out of making radio and TV appearances, plus doing her stand-up comedy gigs. Scott even worked for a time as a writer for Steve Vizard’s Tonight Show.

All That Happened at Number 26 is a laugh a page book filled with much chaotic humanity. Her mad house filled with adventures is like a Chaucerian tale gotten out of hand: the Wife of Bath pissed on Chardonnay and watching television at 5.30 in the afternoon. It’s warm, funny and makes you ready to accept your own humanity.

Australians: Origins to Eureka, by Thomas Keneally

2009-12-08T17:51:00.000+11:00

In this new history of Australia novelist Thomas Keneally takes the reader from our continent’s origins, some 45 millions years ago, when the landmass that is now Australia broke away from the super-continent known as “Gondwana”. (The southern landmass Gondwana also comprised of India, Africa, South America and Antarctica. The name given to the other, northern landmass is Laurasia.)

Australians ends with the Eureka uprising, that extraordinary event of Australian history, which forged the iron in the nation’s democratic soul. Privilege, authoritarian government, political chicanery, the interests of money, nepotism, all would feel the inexorable, countervailing forces of popular democratic agitation.

“For Australia now seemed,” writes Keneally, “to the vast majority of its people – other than indigenes – a forum where crises could be resolved by constitutional and moral means. What would become an endemic cynicism about politics and the venality and jobbery of individual politicians had not yet possessed the souls of citizens.”

Who would have thought in 1788, when the first fleet arrived in Botany Bay with its cargo of petty pickpockets and forgers, that just a half century later it would hold its head up high as a beacon of political freedom, an exemplar of self rule?

Many of those first convicts who arrived at Botany Bay, having suffered a terrifying and traumatic journey by boat (Keneally’s descriptions of the horrors suffered at sea are dizzying), were victims of a great societal injustice. The enclosure acts, beginning in the 1760s, pushed the poor off the common lands that were used collectively for basic sustenance.

The privatisation of so much land forced the poor into the maw of the industrial revolution, working obscene hours under obscene conditions. Many had to weigh up death by starvation against their chances thieving. The consequences were harsh if caught. Many gambled and lost. The law could also be arbitrary. The innocent were often enough swept up in the law’s roughshod machinations.

“Before enclosure, smallholders and agricultural labourers’ families had the right not only to graze livestock on the common land, but to take from it undergrowth, loppings, peat, fish from lakes and streams, sand and gravel, and acorns to feed pigs. Enclosure put an end to these practices, and was occurring in many districts at a time when the great loom factories were coming into being and cloth spun in cottages was less sought after.”

Spurned by their native country, these convicts and victims of the harsh new capitalism would make their way in a new land. Australia soon became one of the world’s most extraordinary social experiments. The ability to make one’s own future, from a clean slate, seemed to appeal to an innate instinct that favoured creativity mixed with a desire for what was good. Convicts turned industrious capitalists themselves within a couple of generations. Cities were built; flourishing industries created. Not only that, in Australia the worker would have a say in government through their representative in parliament.

We all know of the exhausting ‘culture wars’ of the past decade or so. The debate has been about how the scales should be balanced between good and bad. Does the achievement of European civilisation – parliaments and trade – outweigh the violence and chauvinism shown towards the indigenous population, ending with their dispossession?

Keneally doesn’t enter that unresolvable debate here. Rather he shows a nation slowly creating itself under a bright, clear sun (with the occasional cloud in view). He describes often flawed yet remarkable individuals, situating their characters within the political and cultural winds that prompted, or made inevitable, their actions. Keneally seeks to understand – even sympathise – with the historical figures he studies and brings to life with his carefully drawn and deeply considered portraits.

While the achievements of European settlement were quick and fruitful, the other half of the story is one of loss and devastation. The most comprehensive descriptions of native life come from the 1790s. The well known character of Bennelong, from which we learn much of the Eora language group’s cultural and legal practices, provides a brilliant snapshot of Aboriginal life at the time in the Botany Bay area.

Despite this contact between Bennelong and Captain Arthur Phillip, communication between indigenes and Europeans was not sufficient to resolve conflicts and misunderstanding between the two peoples. As the Aboriginals found their lands usurped, their food supply choked off, they tried to defend their way of life. (Disease would also soon take hold. In 1789 a small pox epidemic ripped through local Aboriginal communities.)

Settlers continued to live in fear of being speared, Aboriginals suffered the rigours of a 19^th century European penal code that made no account of their culture or situation. Outright warfare existed between pastoralists and the Aboriginals in some areas. Keneally’s description of the Myall Creek massacre recalls the horrors (for this reader anyway) of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war.

Writes Keneally,

“Two kilometres out in the bush near a new stockyard lay a heap of twenty-eight butchered Kwiambal bodies, including Charlie, the three-year old station favourite. Most of the children had been decapitated by sword and the adults had been hacked to death.

The next day the killers seemed in excellent spirits as they breakfasted at Myall Creek, discussed the best features of their horses and made occasional reference to the killings. Anderson [a convict sympathetic to the local Kwiambal people] was particularly appalled to hear them speak of the pack rape of one of the younger women. When they saw Anderson’s disgust, Russell, the leader of the party, asked Ned Foley to stay with Anderson and make sure he did not do anything ‘unwise’”.

Other similar possible events will remain forever unknown. If the Aboriginals had been a culture with the written word, then how different would Keneally’s book have been. In Victoria, before the gold rush, the fate of the Kulin people remains a mystery. Governor La Trobe at the time urged caution:

‘La Trobe warned the regular police to proceed with moderation, but the pastoralists did not like such pussyfooting forbearance, and the extent of both good and bad which occurred in the land of Kulin before the gold manifested itself remains unknown.’

Australians is a grand and absorbing feast of a book. There were many sections that I lingered over slowly, savouring Keneally’s gift for bringing such a wide cast of characters to life, making the book a real experience. Keneally also writes in a witty, almost lapidary prose that is most appealing.

Keneally’s Australians makes for an enjoyable popular history that deserves a wide readership.

Running the War in Iraq, by Major General Jim Molan

2009-11-26T14:35:00.003+11:00

Major General Jim Molan was asked to go to Iraq in 2004 by then Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Peter Cosgrove.

Strangely enough, he was sent there without any real mission in mind, not even to work with the Australian soldiers. Hence Molan was in the unusual position of trying to find something to do in Iraq. Of Molan’s unemployment dilemma in Iraq, he writes, "A further complication for my aspiration to find an honest job was that I still didn’t have access to the highest level of US intelligence. Furthermore, I had to find something worthwhile, or I might as well go home."

There’s no real explanation in the book as to why this bizarre situation arose in the first place. In the end, he puts himself forward and eventually scores a job as Chief of Operations. Is this how wars are really run?

This is a rather strange and unsettling memoir. Maybe because the events it describes are still so close to ‘the fog of war’. Who knows?

Molan comes across as a simple, straightforward high level soldier, a ‘practical’ man (Molan’s self description). He strikes you as an old fashioned, conservative type. In fact, Molan seems like a kind of boring yet idealised cut out from a pre-war generation. As I read, the milieu of Barry Humphries’ Sandy Stone character kept coming to mind.

Contrast this character description against the awesome and terrifying war technology that Molan was using to kill insurgents, and unfortunately, the civilians that happened to be in the way. Molan was in charge during the controversial battle of Fallujah. The author describes how he can direct all of this bombing of insurgents from a comfortable office while enjoying a cup of tea.

‘This decision about collateral damage is no different in law from the decision made by a lieutenant platoon commander crouched down on the side of a road calling for an air strike on a position from which the enemy are firing at him and his troops. I just did it in a much more comfortable place while drinking Steve’s tea."

The book is full of those annoying acronyms that the American military uses. The worst though is what’s known as a ‘CDE’, which stands for collateral damage estimate. This is where the soldier tries to weigh up how many civilians could be killed by a strike.

Molan is quite dismissive of those who criticise the coalition for killing innocents. Yet as the acronym CDE shows, killing innocent people is something that is factored into the assessments for carrying out bombings.

Molan likes to highlight how the military agonises over the legality of what it does, having to consider key factors like, ‘proportionality, humanity, discrimination and necessity’, but I wasn’t so convinced. Then again, it’s easy for me to say so sitting here from my desk, with no experience of what soldiers experience in Iraq. Then again, if that’s how the debate is to be conducted, then only people with first hand experience should be allowed to comment on the war in Iraq, as it is fought.

Also of interest in the book is Molan’s attitude to the media.

"For many months now I had seen daily examples of the information war running in a parallel reality to the actual war. The information fight required less physical courage and sacrifice, but was just as important as the combat on the ground. Brigadier General Erv Lessel, who headed the strategic communications section in my operations branch, often reminded us of the dictum that ‘public information turns tactical success into strategic victory.’ I liked to look at it from the reverse: there is little point in winning the fight if no-one knows, cares or believes what you say."

You get the strong impression that Molan would really like to control the media and hence get rid of sniping journalists who are always disseminating lies, falsehoods, pre-conceived ideas and biases.

This is a book that tries to simplify horrific war conditions into an uncomplicated, straightforward narrative. Maybe this is what you have to do so as not to go mad. Whatever the case, Major General Jim Molan remains a creepy character for me after having read this memoir. His mix of simple, unaffected soldier and cold-blooded technocrat left me feeling very spooked.

This article by Jim Molan on Afghanistan is of interest:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/end-the-pussyfooting-in-afghan-war/story-e6frg6zo-1111118870890

Ask The Dust, by John Fante

2009-11-25T22:00:00.003+11:00

This book came to me by way the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club show. It’s written by American –Italian author John Fante. Published in 1939, the book reads like an autobiographical novel, except that it is quite self-mocking and a lot of the plot is quite ridiculous and surreal. (I don’t mean ridiculous as a pejorative; that’s part of its genius.)

The protagonist of the novel is young Arturo Bandini, who barely ekes out a living as a fiction writer. He’s had one story published at the start of the novel, in one of the lesser quality publications. Indeed, quite a few of the characters that Bandini comes into contact with think his first short story very much stinks. No matter, Arturo Bandini continues to fantasise wildly that he is destined to become one of the century’s greatest writers.

The great thing about Ask The Dusk is its authenticity. It may not be a great novel, but it’s definitely a gem. So much of it rings true, and John Fante, much to his credit plays the tone of the novel perfectly. It see-saws magically between farce and the surreal, dusty, downtrodden world of Los Angeles during the 1930s depression.

I’d place the novel somewhere along the lines of The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye. It’s about American adolescence, really.

If you enjoy American literature from that period, a literature that describes the cultural melting pot of young American society during the 1930s, and that does not provide a rosy picture, nor a pessimistic vision of urban decay, then you should treat yourself to this wonderful short novel. I had a great two days reading it, and will probably read it again some time in the future.

Car Wars: How the car won our hearts and conquered our cities, by Graeme Davison, with Sheryl Yelland

2009-11-18T18:08:00.003+11:00

Car Wars sounds like an overly dramatic title for a book that details the history of the car and its impact on the Melbourne landscape, but once the car goes from being a luxury item to a necessity of suburbia, then indeed war does break out.

This is the irony of the car, as presented in Car Wars. First the car was a gentleman’s toy, a pleasure only the rich could afford. Then as prices came down and more and more people could afford them, it was the car that started to create the environment. The sprawling suburbs could only come into being with everyone owning a car (and petrol being cheap).

I know when I was growing up in suburban Aspendale, in a brand new house on a street with lots of other new houses and quite a few vacant blocks, we had two cars. The walk to the station was 15 minutes and I seriously don’t think either of my parents ever, ever caught the train.

The second major change that the car wrought on the environment was the complex system of roads and freeways that became progressively more congested as time went on. When governments tried to build freeways through the inner city suburbs, they found the natives revolting.

Car Wars ends with the Kennett government and its CityLink project, a privatised tollway that caused many a headache.

Once you get to the end of the this book it becomes clear how many limits there are to the freedom the car can provide. The need to keep on creating costly and complex freeways to transport everyone from our ever expanding suburbs seems to make less sense than a cat chasing its tail.

This is a fascinating car and road biography of Melbourne, highlighting the possibility that we may have reached our road and congestion limit.

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, by Peter Maass

2009-11-13T16:29:00.002+11:00

‘It’s the devil’s excrement’, according to former Venezuelan oil minister Perez Alfonzo. Why? Oil acted like a dangerous, addictive drug on the Venezuelan economy. It gave a fantastic rush of money when oil prices were high, prompting profligate spending. Yet when prices dipped, there would always be the morning after.

In this wide ranging book journalist Peter Maass (he contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine and New Yorker) looks at all the ill effects oil has on individuals and countries alike. As you’d expect, Crude World is a depressing tale of extreme fear and greed.

The main thesis of the book is that oil creates volatility and havoc at all levels. For poor African nations like Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, plundering US oil concerns are happy to work with dictators and strongmen. The money that should go to the impoverished people of these countries is funnelled back to corrupt leaders who lead the sort of lavish lifestyles that would make Marie Antoinette blush.

Other countries, like Ecuador, find their environment despoiled by marauding oil companies. The unhappy histories of the Middle East are well known. War in Iraq and Kuwait, US meddling in Iran. Saudi Arabia is an unusual case all of its own. Its massive oil endowment has created a lopsided economy, completely captive to the vicissitudes of the global oil market. (90 per cent of the country's exports are oil, bringing in 75 per cent of the country’s revenues.)

Saudi Arabia has high unemployment, a large foreign workforce of professionals and an indolent class of royalty who all live on a stipend. Oil has allowed the population to explode, but reduced the pay checks of royal princes. A lot of young people (the Kingdom has a high youth population) have nothing to do, living off a virtual mono-economy that doesn't provide career paths.

Maass summarises nicely the ill effects oil can have on an economy (The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher made a similar argument recently, with regards to Australia’s export of coal):

"We’ve seen this before: as the oil sector grows, farming and manufacturing contract, unemployment expands, inflation rises due to the influx of revenues from oil sales, and the gap between rich and poor widens."

While we in the West can hold our nose when we read about these terrible troubles in the rest of the world, the reality is that our oil dependence means we help contribute to this ugly reality. Our leaders cheerfully extol the virtues of globalisation, but don't like to talk about the money that Saudi Arabia funnels into supporting fundamentalist causes.

Maass also gives an eye opening look from the business end of oil. How ironic, he notes, that we easily recall the names of superstar CEOs from the world of business. Yet the oil industry’s superstar CEO, Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil, is a complete unknown to us. The author gives an almost Dickensian description of the corpulent Lee Raymond. He is more medieval king that CEO.

"Raymond fascinated me. Despite his stature and power, he was nearly unknown outside the environmental lobby, which despised him, the financial industry, which swooned over him; and the oil industry, which feared him. (Exxon’s executive suite was known as "the God Pod".) Think of the tycoons who are part of the contemporary lexicon – Gates, Murdoch, Buffett, Jobs, Branson – and realise that absent from their ranks is the long time leader of one of the most profitable multinationals of the twentieth century. Raymond was smart enough and secure enough to neither crave nor need publicity, which he knew would invite unfriendly questions. He did what he had to do, meeting financial journalists to announce earnings, but little more. He turned down my requests to interview him."

A lot of the territory that Peter Maass covers in Crude Oil has been well documented elsewhere. What makes this book attractive is the extensive first hand reportage. Maass has access to a lot of good interview subjects, both high level political and business players, down to activists and the ordinary people affected by oil. This he mixes with an engaging and cheerful style. Maass has the novelist's gift for drawing lively portraits and is never at a loss for an evocative metaphor. It's these qualities that really made Crude Oil a very enjoyable book.

So often we are immersed in 'facts' on these economic and political questions. How refreshing it is to get a first hand description of real people rather than just the general sweep of events.

Crude Oil, despite its gloomy and depressing subject matter, ends in a rather upbeat tone. The problems of our oil dependence can be fixed by enthusiastically taking up the existing renewable technologies, we are assured. All we need is the will. This optimistic ending didn't work for me though, especially after wading through so much depressing reality. Peter Maass makes for a brilliant observer, but it seems obvious he hasn’t thought through very deeply the question of how we will segue from the oil economy to the new renewable economy.

And that day is coming sooner than later. In all likelihood we have used up half the world’s oil endowment. We’re quickly on our way to consuming the last half.

Crude Oil opens with an interview with Matthew Simmons, author of the influential Twilight in the Desert. Simmons is an investment banker, and a former energy advisor to George W. Bush. He has studied in depth the technical papers of the Society of Petroleum Engineers on Saudi Oil. What he found was that the Saudi authorities have vastly overstated the capacity of their reserves. He also found serious mismanagement resulting in damaged oil fields: all of the remaining oil may not be recoverable. He believes we could be in for serious trouble unless we can come up with an alternative energy source.

Even more pessimistic is James Howard Kunstler. In his book The Long Emergency Kunstler provides some unpalatable statistics for the reader to digest. The world's total oil endowment is some 2 trillion barrels. We have made our way through 1 trillion barrels so far, most in the last 50 years. At our current rate of consumption, we will empty out every last drop in 37 years.

That does not take into account any growth in the Chinese and Indian economies - or any other economy for that matter. Nor does it factor in the difficulties in extracting the last half of our global oil endowment. All of the remaining oil will not be recovered. (There is a range of technologies used currently to extract oil out of the ground, like injecting water into oil fields. They all use rising levels of energy, thus diminishing the value of the oil recovered.)

Babies born today will not be driving cars run on petrol when they hit their thirties. How will they drive their cars? How will food be transported? What will happen to all the new outer suburbs that are currently totally dependent on cars? Why aren’t governments planning for this?

Kunstler says the economy built by oil has been nothing more than a 100 year bubble – and it’s about to burst.

Can a new energy source ‘come online’ that has the value of the one trillion barrels of oil we’ve used so far, keeping us living a lifestyle we see as normal? Peter Maass thinks that if we work for it such a reality will come, yet the bulk of his book – the ugly politics, violence and money – speak of a troubling future.

The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century, by James Howard Kunstler.

2009-11-11T17:58:00.002+11:00

Consider this: In the beginning, there were 2 trillion barrels of oil. We’ve now made our way through half of our oil endowment. That means there are 1 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground.

That’s still a lot of oil. Although remember, it took us roughly the last 50 years to gobble that amount up. According to James Kunstler, if we were to continue consuming at our current levels, every single last drop of oil will be gone within 37 years.

But even that is an optimistic figure. You see, the top half of the oil is the easiest to get. The bottom of the barrel, as it were, is much harder to extract. Even Saudi Arabia now has to pump massive amounts of sea water into the ground in order to push the oil up.

Here’s another thing to consider. At the dawn of oil discovery, the energy requirements to get oil out of the ground were small. But now as the oil is much harder to get out, a lot more energy is used. Eventually it will reach a point where it simply takes too much energy to get the oil out of the ground. For example, if you were to use one barrel of oil in energy to get one barrel of oil out of the ground. Obviously this wouldn’t be worth doing.

To cap it all off, there are emerging economies like China and India. All of their people are going to want to drive cars and live lush Western lifestyles in the near future. So their populations will put more pressure on oil.

In short, we have 37 years to find a new energy source to replace oil. That’s a best case scenario. In reality it could be 20 years. Or we could see real changes within the decade, as it becomes clear that we have reached what’s known as ‘peak oil’.

Peak oil is not some left wing, greenie spoiler theory. It was developed by geoligist M. King Hubbert. He correctly predicted American oil would peak in 1970. He was spot on. He predicted global oil would peak around 2000. On this he has been wrong. No matter, a lot of eminent geololigsts and people who work within the oil industry know that we are close to that peak.

This peak in global oil will be confirmed a few years after the fact. That is, when we see supplies tapering off. When this time comes, it will obviously cause great alarm and a seismatic political shift. For our rich way of life, our very economy, is based on cheap oil.

The Long Emergency basically tries to look at this post-oil world, describing a rather bleak, reduced world where we will have to go back to a much more basic, some may say medieval, lifestyle. We will live in more tightknit communities, and we will spend a lot of our time in farming and producing food closer to where we live. Our current lifestyles, which are so devoid from reality, will be a thing of the past.

The Long Emergency, however, isn’t a kind of peer-into-the-future kind of book. It’s really a sustained cultural, economic and political critique. Kunstler really knows his stuff, and he writes in a no-nonsense, off-with-the-gloves style. The politics of the environmnt are very much divided along left / right lines. Kunstler is refreshing in that he has not time for all of this cant and just delivers his opinions straight. Frankly, I’m jealous of his assured and erudite writing style.

Here’s a sample:

"The free-market part of the equation referred to the putative benefit of unrestrained economic competition between individuals, and because corporations enjoyed the legal staus of persons, they were assumed to be on an equal foodting with other persons in a given locality. Thus Wal-Mart was considered the theoretical equal of Bob the appliance store owner, and if Bob happened to lose in the retail competition because he couldn’t order 50,000 coffee –makers at a crack from a factory 12,000 mmiles away in Hangzhou, and receive a deep discount for being such an important customer, well, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been given the chance."

Or here’s another favourite:

"The industrial experiment took the idea of currency (money) to the next level of abstraction – as hard currency can represent actual goods, so paper currency can represent hard currency and actual goods. As trade increased and took place over ever-greater distances, paper promises to pay hard currency began to steadily take the place of the hard stuff itself, which was cumbersome, hard to to lug around in large quantities, and subject to theft in transit. So to steamline these trades, all kinds of certificates were used as equivalents to hard currency: individual IOUs, bills of lading, letters of credit from rich people, promissory notes issued by guilds. In time, the use of paper certificates became more and more normative and conventionalised. Protocols of exchange were established. Institutions were created to process them. This process of managing monetary affairs – of wealth abstracted in paper – was called finance. "

The Long Emergency has 300 pages of this kind of dense analysis. I found it utterly stunning.
As you can tell, I was a big fan of this book. Kunstler has written two other books about suburbia, The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere. He’s also written a swag of novels.

You may disagree with a lot in this book. Perhaps this is all doomsayers stuff. Maybe a new super energy source is just around the corner. Kunstler could be all wrong about the modern market economy not being able to come up with some nifty ideas. I mean, I even read a recent release by my own party, the Greens, claiming that a rigorous emissions trading system would unleash the creativity of the market to solve our energy problems.

One thing is for sure, Kunstler is no bullshit artist. He most certainly believes what he writes about. I hope things don’t turn out as bad as he says. Although I think we would all do well to start thinking seriously, now, about what we’re going to do when the oil runs out. How will we make things, travel, conduct our current economic life, and most importantly, grow and transport food?

Once Were Radicals: My years as a teenage Islamo-fascist, by Irfan Yusuf

2009-11-04T20:57:00.004+11:00

Mr Yusuf is an Australian writer who frequently publishes opinion pieces in print and online media. I’ve always enjoyed his humourous slant on Islamic issues, so I thought I’d give his debut book a go.

A bit to my surprise, seeing the subject matter is growing up Muslim with Indo-Pakistani parents, I found this memoir to be a real page-turner. Before I knew it I was half way through the book, and by the time I got to the end I wanted a bit more.

For me one of the chief appeals of the book is the descriptions of the scholarly Islamic environment Irfan Yusuf was raised in. The descriptions of his educated, Urdu speaking mother are both endearing and funny. (Her anxieties centre around young Irfan doing well in his studies.)

The second half of the book describes the author becoming interested in political Islam. This leads him to make a few hasty conclusions about what it means to be a true Muslim. After much reading and soul searching, Yusuf rejects many of the tenets of political Islam. A lot of it he sees as enforcing monoculturalism and homogeneity.

Most non-Muslim Australians like myself see Islam through the lens of a hot and intemperate media. At the back of our minds, no matter how liberal we try to think ourselves, the media has created a mental template that equates Muslims with terrorism.

You should give this very enjoyable book a go as it will give you a more three dimensional, human picture of what it’s like to grow up Muslim.

The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, by Richard Sennett

2009-10-28T17:58:00.002+11:00

This book is interesting, as far as it goes. Richard Sennett mixes real life examples of people being chewed up by contemporary capitalism with his own philosophical ruminations. The results are a bit mixed. Sennett likes to give us the etymological roots of words to do with economics and the work place (for example, the word ‘career’ originally meant a road for carriages etc.), but the trouble is he doesn’t really develop any bigger meanings out of this. In the end you ask yourself, is the author really saying anything? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I can’t quite figure it out.

The book also has a bit of a dated feel. (It was published in 1998.) Maybe it feels slightly dated due to the huge global economic shocks of the past two years or so.

So I don’t know if I’d recommend you read this book. Instead I’d point the reader in the direction of Barbra Ehrenreich's wonderfully snappy first hand reporting in her two books Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. These books refrain from the intellectual fancy work of Richard Sennett and go right for the jugular.

Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov

2009-10-23T14:34:00.002+11:00

I knew nothing about this writer and novel, until it was recently brought to my attention. Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was a servant in the Russian government. In his free time he wrote novels and essays. Goncharov is thought to be his best.

Russian novels fail to ever disappoint me, and this book was no exception to that rule. The story follows Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov (what a great surname!) and details his utterly hopeless irresolution. In one part of the book he is likened to Hamlet, unable to be a man of action and usefulness. The main difference to Hamlet is that Oblomov is more of a comedy. The backflap of the Everyman hardback I read described it as a ‘Sluggard’s Comedy’, and I think this describes the book well.

The marvellous thing about Oblomov is the relentless psychological detail. The first hundred and twenty pages merely describes Omblomov lying in bed, dreading all the minor domestic details that he must attend to. If you’ve ever felt a dread in the morning, not wanting to go to work, or attend that meeting, or simply experienced that anxious knot in your stomach at the prospect of having to go out into the world, then you’ll relate to Omblomov’s groans and turning to the wall in search of some escapist fantasy.

The paradox struck me when reading though: is Goncharov describing himself, his own frequent dolorous moods in the morning, his own inertia? If so it’s ironic seeing it must have taken so much energy to write this novel.

A brilliant, effervescent novel of psychological realism. Thanks to Mr Chris Hubbard and the president of the Arden Valley Russian Literature Appreciation Society, Ms. S. Whiskers, for this reading suggestion.

Edward Koiki Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights, by Noel Loos and Koiki Mabo

2009-10-22T18:51:00.003+11:00

The heart of this book is a fragmentary autobiography by Edward Koiki Mabo, put together from interviews conducted by Professor Noel Loos, who teaches the history of black-white relations at James Cook University at Townsville. (The book was published in 1996, so I don’t know if he still teaches at that university.) In addition to Koiki Mabo’s autobiographical material, there is a personal memoir of Mabo by Professor Loos. The last part of the book concentrates on Mabo’s final years, and his struggle for the native title rights to his Torres Strait Island home of Mer.

Like most Australians, I’ve always had a general outline of what happened when Koiki Mabo challenged the legitimacy of lands declared to be the possessions of the British Crown. However, recently I watched the last episode of the SBS series, The First Australians. This episode dealt explicitly with Mabo’s achievements, and I found the episode so moving that I decided to try and read up more on Koiki Mabo.

I don’t have to go into Mabo’s extraordinary achievement in overturning the whole idea of terra nullius. To think that a man from the fringes of Australia, on a little known island to the east of the Torres Strait, could turn how Australia thought of itself on its head, beggars belief. It mystifies why we don’t have a national day in the man’s honour. Then again, maybe not.

This book is okay. I didn’t find it too riveting a read though. The autobiographical part was never completed. Nevertheless, it does give the reader a good impression of Mabo’s character, temperament and thinking. He seemed to have a simple and clear minded idea on what he wanted to achieve, uncluttered by political ideology. The most pressing case for Mabo was to get the best possible deal for his people.

Students of Mabo will no doubt find this book indispensable. Those already interested in Koiki Mabo and his achievements will find this rewarding reading. But for those looking for a bigger political and cultural picture, this won’t really fit the bill.

I guess you could say the bigger political and cultural picture was what I was after.

Nevertheless, Edward Koiki Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights provides a valuable document of a man who changed Australia for ever.

Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay

2009-10-07T22:30:00.002+11:00

In short, this is a very queer and perverse book. I was quite surprised by the tone and style of the writing, which is quite baroque and artificial. It seems to almost parody itself in its flamboyance and flowery descriptions. Before you even get to the novel proper, you’re given a dramatis personae of all the characters, as if you were reading something stagy like a play.

In fact, I note that political sketch writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Annabel Crabb, purloined a line or two to lampoon Kim Beazley in her book on the Labor party in opposition, Losing It.

Annabel Crabb:

"That night – Wednesday 4th June – the busy main strip of the Manuka dining precinct was treated to the comparatively rare sight of Kim Beazley, propelling himself along the footpath with all the inconspicuousness of a Spanish galleon in full sail."

Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock:

"Now an immense purposeful figure was swimming and billowing in grey silk taffeta on to a tiled and colonnaded verandah, like a galleon in full sail."

Lindsay is describing the appearance of Mrs Appleyard, head mistress at Appleyard College. In fact, much of Annabel Crabb’s humorous writing style you can see must come from Joan Lindsay.

The only mystery for me with Picnic at Hanging Rock is why it’s gained such a reputation for being a true story. I too thought it was a true story until only recently. However, I don’t see how anyone after they’ve read the actual text could entertain such an idea. It’s wilfully over the top and self dramatising. Read in a particular way, it comes across almost as black comedy. (Even the deaths must be treated exotically. Sara Waybourne’s corpse gets a gala treatment, her body found in a beautiful garden bed; Dora Lumley and her brother Reg’s death by accidental fire come across as another comic travesty.)

When the indomitable Mrs Appleyard must write letters to the parents of the missing girls, rather than be consumed by grief at the looming tragedy, she rather angrily laments losing some of her best pupils, and the academic reputation of the college sliding with the disappeared girls. Then Mrs Appleyard goes on to wish that the college dunce, Edith Horton, had gone missing instead!

Still not satisfied with these impure thoughts, Mrs Appleyard lambasts Greta McCraw, the missing mathematics mistress. In another humourous passage, witness statements are taken from girls who last saw Greta McCraw talking ‘wildly of triangles and short cuts.’

Lindsay obviously relishes these kinds of ironies, a maths teacher getting lost. By the time I got to the end of the novel, I thought that Picnic at Hanging Rock was perhaps Lindsay’s revenge on Clyde Girls’ Grammar, which she attended as a day-girl in St Kilda. What else can explain the way the author describes in such a feast of language the slow and mad disintegration of Appleyard College and its head mistress?

Mrs Appleyard herself almost reminded me of something out of a Jean Genet play, like Madame out of The Maids. She is described as amazingly steely, but unable to control fate and destiny. (She likes to tipple on whisky in private.)

Check this quote out:

"For the first time in many weeks she thought of the mathematics mistress and brought her fist down on the dressing-table with such force that the combs and brushes and curling pins danced on its polished surface It was inconceivable that this woman of masculine intellect on whom she had come to rely in the last years should have allowed herself to be spirited away, lost, raped, murdered in cold blood like an innocent school girl, on the Hanging Rock."

Mrs Appleyard is clearly a nut case! What fun Joan Lindsay must have had lampooning some old headmistress that drove her crazy at Clyde Girls’ Grammar. But wait, there’s more! Lindsay finishes off the mad woman by hurling her off Hanging Rock in a comic, ludicrous death scene. A spider at the scene is smart enough to scuttle away to safety. It’s the kind of macabre comedy that the poet Emily Dickinson would have concocted.

"An eagle hovering high above the golden peaks heard her scream as she ran towards the precipice and jumped. The spider scuttled to safety as the clumsy body went bouncing and rolling from rock to rock towards the valley below. Until at last the head in the brown hat was impaled upon a jutting crag."

This is the kind of finish the Marquis de Sade would have given his Justine, a perpetual victim. Boing, boing, boing, splat! Mrs Appleyard starts out as an imperious Sadeian heroine, but is in turn victimised by nature itself.

Madness, fate, nature, the inability to control all, finally consumes the head mistress.

Jean Genet wrote in one of his novels that the only way to avoid the horror of horror was to give into it. I think this is what Mrs Appleyard is forced to do.

Battlelines, by Tony Abbott

2009-10-01T12:51:00.004+10:00

This book purports to provide future intellectual and policy directions for conservative politics, or more to the point, future direction for the Liberal Party. I thought the book would have more ideas and an overall modern conservative program. Afterall, the blurb on the back of the book asks ‘What’s next for the conservative side of politics’.

If that’s the kind of book you’re looking for, this is a pretty potted effort. It’s more of a mixed bag of personal history, restrained opinion, first hand ministerial experience and a list of prescriptions to improve government bureaucracy. The centrepiece of the book is a call to, if not abolish the states, at least reduce their power. The appendix of Battlelines contains a proposed bill to allow more Commonwealth power in areas of shared responsibility with the states.

This may strike the reader as ironic, seeing Abbott is such a staunch Monarchist. One of his main criticisms of becoming a republic is that it would give too much power to a newly elected president, especially if we had a directly elected model. (I agree with this, by the way.) Yet he wants to concentrate more power in Canberra.

Tony Abbott can seem unusually modern at times. For example, I was surprised to read this rather extraordinary line:

"In politics, what’s not reported might as well not have happened."

Then again, it may explain why he seems to constantly pop up for television interviews.

Much of Battlelines reads like a long love letter to John Howard. Abbott goes over much of the Howard government’s achievements, and unequivocally thinks John Howard the exemplary style in leadership. (How interesting to contrast this against Peter Costello’s memoirs, where Howard is a shadowy, ill defined figure.) You get the impression that Howard is a bit of a father figure to Abbott. What else can explain this unblinking devotion?

There is much that is salutary in Abbott’s effort to write this book, but by the time I got to the end I realised why I could only go so far with the author. Abbott writes in a nice plain style, and his thinking comes across as neatly organised, yet every now and again there is a surliness in the writing. It’s subtle and passes you by, but sometimes its very weirdness sticks out and cries for attention.

For example, in a section where Abbott suggests that maybe a different category of marriage should be envisioned, one with a no-divorce option, the author writes:

"Certainly, if the law is to establish a new type of legally recognised relationship for gay couples, it might also manage to enshrine once more, for those who want it, a type of marriage that approximates to the Christian ideal."

Does he really see gay marriage as being a precursor to ‘Christian ideal’ marriage, a ‘death-til-us-part’ marriage? No, he’s just having a subtle back-hander at gay marriage advocates.

Then there are silly sub headings like ‘Environmentalism might hurt the environment’. I mean, this kind of irony is so lame and we know what the subtext of it is: environmentalists are a bunch of economic vandals who don’t have a clue about what they’re doing. Why not just come out and say it rather than sulking?

Another sub heading is called ‘Kings in Their Own Cars’, and pursues a defence of car drivers against any type of critic, legitimate or not: ‘For too long, policy makers have ranked motorists just above heavy drinkers or smokers as social pariahs.’ Really? Abbott fails to discuss the volatility of oil prices, time wasted in traffic congestion and the car fumes we all now breathe. Not to metion the heath impacts of taking in so many toxins along with our oxygen. No, because car drivers are absolute monarchs. It seems Abbott wants to keep car drivers wrapped up in cotton wool about the negative aspects of our car culture.

The impression I get at the end of this book is of a man with nowhere to go intellectually or ideologically, and he’s angry about his limited options. The Postscript is called "Days from Hell". He airs a few grievances over the fact that his colleagues did not think he would be suitable as a leader for the Liberal Party.

"Six years’ hard work in parliament as Leader of the House of Representatives, nine years as a minister managing fraught portfolios, and regular intellectual advocacy on behalf of a sometimes rhetorically challenged government seemed to count for little or nothing."

It seems to me Tony Abbott is in a world he can’t possibly change (think green politics, Aboriginal rights, feminism, gay rights). He wishes it wasn’t that way, and he would like to be able to think he could wish upon a star and these political and cultural realities would vanish. His problem is to fuse his antipathies to gay rights, environmentalism, feminism etc. with his own cultural agenda. And it seems he can’t possibly do it. He has to be civil about gay rights and the environment, paying a polite kind of lip service. He may tolerate these movements, but perhaps secretly finds them intolerable.

Indeed, I sense that his default position, going by the below quote, would be that of a morals campaigner. Here’s a line from the Days From Hell postscript:

"As an ambitious politician, I had never had the slightest intention of becoming a morals campaigner."

I’d be more interested to see Tony Abbott as a morals campaigner. It’d be fascinating to hear his views on a range of subjects, without the check his own political ambitions have put on his (perhaps?) true calling

Emily Climbs, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

2009-09-30T17:46:00.002+10:00

This is the second in the series of Emily novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery and covers its heroine’s teenage years. In order to go to Shrewbury College, Emily must promise not to write fiction, or made up stories.

In Emily Climbs Emily very much starts putting in the hard yards required to make it as a professional writer. This means dealing with the heart break of endless rejection slips. But all the hard work pays off in the end, and Emily gets her work published and is even in the end offered a lucrative writing job. Surprisingly, she knocks it back.

Like the first novel, one of the chief charms of Emily Climbs is how authentic a description it is of the writer’s ambition. For this alone it makes fascinating reading.

I looked up the Wikipedia page for Emily Climbs and was interested to find see this quote from Montgomery:

"People were never right in saying I was Anne. But in some respects, they will be right if they write me down as Emily."

Apparently at the time of writing, Montgomery was transcribing all of her early journals, material which very much influenced the writing of the Emily series. And boy does it show.

I perhaps enjoyed this novel even more than the first one. Unfortunately, from what I hear, the third novel is not as strong as the first two. No matter, that should not discourage readers from enjoying the first two.

You can find my Lucy Maud Montgomery files here.

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, by Peter Singer

2009-09-25T13:11:00.002+10:00

In this book Peter Singer argues that we should all as a minimum give 5% of our income to charities that assist people suffering dire poverty in developing countries.

Quite reasonably, Peter Singer goes through the psychological reasons that bar us from assisting people who are for the most part out of sight and out of mind. Because we don't rub shoulders with starving children on our streets everyday, it means we can neatly compartmentalise this poverty as an abstraction. We are more likely to help people who are in our vicinity, people with whom we are sympathetic.

To try and overcome this inbuilt aversion to giving away money to people a half world away, Singer appeals to the more rational side of our nature. With an array of ethical examples, he shows how spending money on useless Western frivolities could be money employed to actually save lives, or greatly increase quality of life for many.

A tragic example is the women who suffer fistulas due to becoming pregnant too young, or having bodies not well enough developed due to poor nutrition. They leak urine or faeces and no matter how much they wash themselves they cannot get rid of the smell. They become ostracised from their communities, until they can get an operation for the fistula. Reading about this sort of terrible misfortune really is heartbreaking.

The offputting thing about this book is that Singer does seem to frame most of his ethical arguments around numbers. This amount of money could save this many lives or perform this many operations. Even those who give huge amounts of money, like Bill Gates, still get some criticism. Singer goes over the value of Gates' property and some of his expensive toys. Is it right, Singer asks, for Gates to have these expensive toys when he could save so many more lives by selling his luxury goods and donating the money. It leaves you with the feeling that no matter how much you give away, there's still more you could give, still more economies you could make in your life to make way for giving to others.

Also, Singer seems to be saying that the economies of these poor countries can be fixed purely through charity. Would we almost be turning them into welfare dependencies? Singer looks at the argument from a rather narrow perspective. Issues like how developing countries feel about receiving so much welfare come to mind.

But these are small points. I'm a fan of Singer, and some of these examples of Western waste juxtaposed against the suffering of poor countries are startling.

For me, the most engaging parts of the book highlighted the creativity people used to solve the problems of poverty. I think this is a way where people can really become engaged in a problem and feel a part of the solution. Like the two people who started up the GiveWell website, that does assessments on how well charities use their money.

If I’d been writing this book, I’d have taken it from that point of view. Show people things they can help to build and make which would improve lives and then I think you’d get more people involved. Giving money on a regular basis reminds me of my Catholic upbringing, where the collection plate was passed around.

But then again, I don’t know much about this topic. There are billions of people around the world in desperate want. Locating a charity that you know does good, and then giving them money, will obviously help poorer people. The task is how to make this an activity that people can genuinely feel an integral part of, rather than as someone who merely holds a pen that writes a cheque.

The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of our Dry Continent, by Michael Cathcart

2009-09-24T18:39:00.002+10:00

The introduction to this remarkable book says early sections of The Water Dreamers were published in various publications between 1995 and 2006. That’s a long gestation period for a book, some fourteen years, and it shows in the text’s nuanced and considered approach.

Cathcart has obviously meditated long and deeply about his subject, illuminating his thoughts with a reading list that often resembles a cabinet of exotic and bizarre curios. (The details of the Burke and Wills funeral make for Gothic horror: two glass-topped coffins displayed the corpses for public mourning. Wills’ skull was missing; Burke’s hands and feet were eaten by dingos. The Age called it ‘indescribably disgusting’.)

In one section that deals with late nineteenth and early twentieth Australian novels, stories of uninhibited imperialism and racism, Cathcart notes, ‘I suspect that most readers will be startled to learn that such a literature exists in Australia.'

As the title suggests, The Water Dreamers is very much a portrait of the white Australian subconscious. When the first fleet landed, they brought with them an attitude formed by the wet climate of their homeland. To turn Australia into a Garden of Eden, one that abideth forever, there must be an abundance of water. The fevered dreams of settler imagination soon clashed against reality, as Australia proved to be unforgivingly dry.

This led many heroic explorers to search out water, and later when that project was found wanting, nationalist hopes turned to hydro-engineering. To talk realistically about the limits of water in Australia was seen as verging on treason.

A good case in point is Griffith Taylor, an analyst in climatic conditions, who claimed that Australia’s central arid zone was too hot and dry to permit farming or settlement. This was deemed dangerously unpatriotic talk. For his intellectual honesty, Taylor found his book A Geography of Australasia (1914) banned by the Western Australian government from the state’s schools and university.

As Cathcart writes, ‘The equation was clear. An optimist was a patriot. A pessimist was a traitor. Taylor was libelling Australia.’

Taylor’s career was soon stymied by the Senate of the University of Sydney (one of his enemies was a member). In 1928 he accepted a chair at the University of Chicago. Australian populism had won out over reality. The Sydney Morning Herald confessed itself blessed to see him go.
While one half of this book highlights 200 years of Australian water folly, of wild dreams ending with a 21st century water crisis, then the other half of The Water Dreamers is a vividly imagined history of Aboriginal dispossession.

On this Cathcart writes in a powerful and poetic vein, describing how Aboriginals struggled to retain their land against creeping white usurpation. While whites would continue to carpet Aboriginal lands with all the trappings of European civilisation, their delusions of superiority meant no one considered that the Aborigines’ 40,000 odd years of experience in Australian water management might yield some insights.

Rather, Europeans continued to see most of Australia as a dead, arid land haunted by a death-like silence. This is a secondary theme of The Water Dreamers. The introduction states, ‘This is also a book about silence’. We are frequently asked to imagine the sounds and silences of the past.

Cathcart extensively describes what the Australian landscape sounded like. The quotes from contemporary sources repeatedly demonstrate a gloomy dread of the timeless silence. It sends a shudder through many an explorer’s soul.

‘The land did not whisper seductive entreaties into the ears of the explorers. In fact, it often repelled them with a mighty and ‘death-like silence’ – a vast indifference that threatened to reduce the men themselves to silence, or to bone.’

In much of these accounts there is almost a hostility to the natural environment, a wish to erase the deathly silence with the busy hum of capitalist industry. It highlights how Australians have struggled to harmonise with their natural environment, carpeting it over with English gardens, Empire architecture and sprawling motorways.

Notes Cathcart, ‘In fact, the explorers’ journals express anxiety, tedium and alienation more often than they proclaim a triumphal geography.’

There is a darker history yet: the activities of the lawless squatters and their impact on the first Australians. The success of the pastoral industry was built on Aboriginal blood. Ironically, it’s the squatters that produced the colonial economy that genteel urbanites, liberal in their attitudes, would live on. An inheritance we all now take advantage of.

The Water Dreamers is a haunting and thought provoking history of a dry land that refuses to yield to the fevered imagination of its colonisers. With our current water crisis do we continue to dream on, or do we submit to the land and live within it?

The first Australians have had some 40,000 years of experience in understanding Australia’s eco system. According to Cathcart, there is still hope for us, even if it has taken 200 years for the realisation to dawn that Australia is a dry land that will shape us, and not we it.

Wake In Fright, by Kenneth Cook

2009-09-23T21:51:00.002+10:00

Wow! You have to read this book, especially if you’re Australian or come from a country that has a nihilistic drinking culture and high suicide rate. I read this riveting page-turner in two sittings. One half in the morning with my cup of coffee, and the other half in the evening. The novel is written in a taut, economical prose that has a menacing, suspenseful atmosphere. You just keep waiting for the next bad thing to happen, and wonder how bad it will be.

Wake In Fright chronicles five days spent by school teacher John Grant in the outback mining town of Bundanyabba, or ‘The Yabba’ to locals. Grant was only to spend one night in the town before catching a flight to Sydney for his holidays, but gets waylaid by a bout of gambling and drinking. Losing all his money, he finds himself destitute. Not to worry though, in Bundanyabba there are always men ready to buy you a beer.

In fact, you could almost say that beer is almost one of the main characters in the novel. Everyone drinks and drinks and drinks. It made me sick just contemplating all the drunkenness.
Here’s my favourite quote on the subject. Page 142:

"Peculiar trait of the western people, thought Grant, that you could sleep with their wives, despoil their daughters, sponge on them, defraud them, do almost anything that would mean at least ostracism in normal society, and they would barely seem to notice it. But refuse to drink with them and you immediately became a mortal enemy. What the hell?"

The scenes describing a drunken gang on a kangaroo shoot are amazing and terrifying. Again, alcohol plays a major part.

"Being drunk is warm and soft and there is no pain and it does not really matter about the kangaroos that are shot and breathe horribly and disappear in the night, or about little kangaroos that you cut to pieces before they die.

Grant killed many kangaroos that night and once even made a disastrous attempt to eviscerate one before he was sure it was dead; and it flopped about with its entrails spilling.

Everyone laughed, and they laughed again because Grant was covered in blood and they drank all the whisky and all the beer and their shooting became wilder.

Someone fired a bullet through the roof of the car and someone else fired one through the windscreen, and everyone laughed again."

None of the men eat the meat, except for the creepy alcoholic doctor Tydon, who we are led to believe is a closet homosexual. Tydon takes care to always cut off the testicles of the kangaroos, put them in his pocket and save them for later eating. He claims they are the best bit to eat. The meat is actually used to feed their dogs, being ‘too gamey’ for human consumption.

In a later scene, Grant is sexually molested by Tydon, and remains forever polluted by this experience. Again, this happens after a night of nihilistic drinking.

Words cannot express what an amazing book this is. Media reports today talk about Australia’s drinking problem, especially with its youth and culture of binge drinking.

This book so fundamentally resonates that it could have been written today, and still be considered shocking, cutting edge literature. Anyone who has grown up in Australia and found themselves at a barbecue or party or pub with the slabs of beer piled high and the men drinking and drinking and laughing and turning red in the face from all the booze, will recognise so much of the culture described in Wake In Fright.

This is a truly shocking book. More shocking is that it was published in 1961, during Menzies’ long reign. I thought that period just produced genteel tea parties and men in suits going to boring office jobs.

This is the kind of Australian literature that leaves all other Australian novels in the dust, as far as I’m concerned, bringing out into the open a heart of darkness never discussed in Australian life.

Forget your Helen Garners, your Tim Wintons and David Maloufs. Here’s the real deal.

We of the Never Never & The Little Black Princess, by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

2009-09-17T18:45:00.002+10:00

After reading Michael Cathcart’s brilliant book on the Australian landscape, The Water Dreamers, I was inspired to try and read up on some of the literature he discussed.

Jeannie Gunn, a Melbourne school teacher and later tireless welfare worker for returned service men from the First World War, wrote only two books in her lifetime. Prompted by friends to recount her experiences in book form, the very able Mrs Gunn produced the autobiographical novella The Little Black Princess in 1905. Three years later, in 1908, We of the Never Never was published, after being rejected by no less than six publishers.

The Angus and Robertson edition I got from the library published both autobiographical novels, in an abridged version, together in 1982. It seems odd that an abridged version would be published of an Australian classic, by an Australian imprint, for Australian readers. However, on further inspection, abridgement is probably a euphemism for having purged the book of some of its more unpalatable details.

For example, a chapter originally titled ‘A Nigger Hunt’, has been retitled ‘A Surprise Party’. You can guess who is going to be surprised. Apparently the ‘N’ word has been dropped from other parts of the text. This is rather curious. Even the American’s don’t purge the ‘N’ word out Huckleberry Finn.

Okay, let’s not linger on Australian denial. What to make of We of the Never Never? Well, it’s an odd book. Gunn writes in a vigorous, witty style, and there can be no denying she’s an entertaining and sharp writer. She’s sort of like a Nancy Mitford of the outback. You always find a smile involuntarily curling on your lips as you read her descriptions. So this is in many ways a romantic and sentimental portrait of the remote Elsey cattle station Mrs Gunn lived on for a year, a place she never again returned to. I say the book is odd because it juxtaposes this flighty style, that of the urban Melbourne school teacher, and uses it to describe the toughness of bush life. You feel Gunn must be pulling a gauzy material over her lens to soften things a bit and give the landscape and its people a more dreamy appearance.

Not only has Gunn put vaseline on her camera lens. So have the future editors of the book. I’ve just downloaded a copy of the novel from the Gutenberg press site. The dreaded ‘N’ word appears some 18 times. I feel cheated now. I wish I’d read the original version.

Here’s a section that I can’t find in the abridged version, from the chapter titled A Surprise Party which is the only chapter in the book that deals with frontier violence.

"I wasn't going to say anything about it before the "boys," he said, "but
it's time some one gave a surprise party down the river;" and a
"scatter-on" meaning "niggers in," Maluka readily agreed to a surprise
patrol of the river country, that being forbidden ground for blacks'
camps.

"It's no good going unless it's going to be a surprise party," Dan
reiterated; and when the Quiet Stockman was called across from the
Quarters, he was told that "there wasn't going to be no talking before
the boys."

The shocking thing is that the book is so extraordinarily popular. I think it’s sold about a million copies. Yet it has been sanitised.

The Little Black Princess is not written in the witty, flighty style of Never Never. It deals more directly with her experiences of Aboriginal life. Her attitude towards ‘the blacks’ is at once romantic and condescending. She talks about how wonderful their sign language is, and how there is a method in the madness of some of their cultural practices. But at bottom she thinks they’re basically stuck in an immature, childlike state.

Worse still for the Aboriginals, they are without a Christian God.

‘It is very, very hard work to teach any blackfellow the truth of God’s goodness and love. They have no god of any sort themselves, and they cannot imagine one.’

At the back of all of this there is the unspoken sense that they really are a dieing race, just waiting for civilisation to take over, ‘when bush-folk will have conquered the Never-Never and lain it at the feet of great cities’.

Interesting, Mrs Gunn’s dream of conquering the land with civilisation was turned on its head in 2000 when the land, including the original Elsey homestead that appeared in We of the Never Never, was returned to the original owners, the Mangarrayi people. It took over a decade for the Mangarrayi people to achieve it, but they did.

Writing this post has been a bit of a lesson for me. Thanks to the Internet I could pull up an original edition of Never-Never.

Thanks also to the astute Mr Chris Hubbard for bringing to my attention the fact that I was reading an abridged version of Mrs Gunn’s work, and suggesting that the reason for the abridgement was that the novels might contain what would now be considered now racist language.

Last note:

You can read Alan Ramsey’s article on the long battle for the original Aboriginal owners to regain their land at the below link:

http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2@paradigm4.com.au/msg00471.html

Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It, by Kelly D. Brownell, PH.D and Katherine Bat

2009-09-16T16:55:00.004+10:00

This is an interesting book to contrast with Gina Kolata’s ponderously titled Rethinking Thin, which I reviewed recently for this blog. Rethinking Thin basically had an ‘it’s all too hard’ attitude to weight loss, and summed up with the bizarre argument that Americans are probably better off being of a chunkier persuasion. She kind of saw it as a sign of economic progress.

In contrast to Kolata’s laid back attitude, Kelly D. Brownell (Director of the Yale Centre for eating and weight disorders) and Katherine Battle Horgen sound off every alarm possible and end every chapter with an impassioned call to action.

For these authors, there is no doubt as to why we are experiencing an obesity crisis. It’s mostly to do with environment. An environment that bombards us at every turn with food advertising, and from a very young age. Making matters worse, most of the food information we get comes from the mega advertising campaigns of the big food companies. Government advertising campaigns simply can’t match the dollars put up by the likes of McDonalds.

So you get the situation where people make nutritional decisions based on what they see written on a packet of chips. Anyone who reads the blurbs on a lot of junk foods will be amazed at the growing list of silly information that is provided for consumers. Like lollies saying they are 99 percent fat free, leading people to think they are a good health choice.

That’s the media environment. The authors also note that the physical environment is more and more tailored to cars and less and less to exercise and physical activity. We need more bike paths and places to take a walk.

To make all of this happen – less advertising, more parkland to play in – will take action from citizens. Hence the book’s repeated calls to action. Leaving obesity management to government on its own will not get nearly enough done. Also, government is in thrall to the big food producers, who have enormous power.

The text of this book is pretty messy. The authors pile up lots and lots of statistics and information, so you get quite a wallop. Yet I wish the book had been neater and didn’t have such a rushed and breathless way about it.

That’s a shame, because this is the sort of book I’d be reluctant to recommend to the lay reader.

The authors should go back to the drawing board and writer a simpler, more user friendly version, with a neat guide at the back on where further information can be obtained.

Brownell and Horgen are preaching to the converted at The Chris Saliba Web Experience. However, with Food Fight, I don’t know who they’re trying to appeal to - the average punter or industry specialist.

A messy pot of factoids.

The Case for God: What Religion Really Means, by Karen Armstrong

2009-09-11T22:12:00.001+10:00

Karen Armstrong is a tireless writer on religion - historical and contemporary. In this new book she expresses her exasperation with what Armstrong calls the often 'facile' modern day debate on God and religious belief.

In our own scientific, rational era, we are hamstrung when approaching religion. Our debates are tit-for-tat, unable to approach subjects like religion that demand nuanced thinking. Even amongst fundamentalists themselves, they take a literalist, scientific approach to the holy texts, reading them in a way that would be completely foreign to earlier ages.

In a way, our modern era tries to evaluate the validity of religion by testing whether it can be scientifically 'proven' to be true. If I have caught Armstrong's argument correctly, this is like trying to prove scientifically that Shakespeare is a great writer, or Aretha Franklin a great singer. It simply makes no sense.

Armstrong likes to draw this analogy between art and religion. Like literary critic Harold Bloom, she seems to read the sacred texts as great literature. (Bloom I think referred to characters in the bible as literary characters, akin to Shakespeare's Hamlet.)

We should approach religion, Armstrong says, like we do a great work of art, to try and elicit meaning and derive comfort for life's sufferings. Science may help us to successfully treat cancer, but it can't assist us in coping with the trauma and grief such a diagnosis brings us.

Armstrong closes her book with a critique of writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and their narrow-minded atheism. She claims that the scientific rigour they claim to bring to their thinking is glaringly absent when dealing with religion.

Moreover, this narrow-minded atheism, with its sweeping condemnations, is only helping to inflame the religious debate. Rather than engaging in a nuanced conversation, these writers are indulging in heavy-handed tactics. Nor is their knowledge on the subject that deep.

As ever with Karen Armstrong's books, it is fascinating to follow the thinking and reading of this brilliant and illuminating scholar. Armstrong's erudition is awesome. I also love the way Armstrong really engages the reader, working very much as an educator. She breaks down words and meanings wonderfully into their basics. We are always provided a detailed etymology of the words used, and how their meanings have changed over time.

This is one of the main themes of the book. Studying religion is hard and takes time and commitment. It's not easy. However, the rewards for the persistent are very great.

Many readers should find this both a compelling history of various religious practices and a passionate yet calmly reasoned argument in favour of a more mature and informed religious debate. Fans of her books I don't think will be disappointed.

Emily of New Moon, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

2009-09-04T18:15:00.003+10:00

This is the first in a series of three autobiographical novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery, about growing up in rural Canada. I don’t know much of the biographical details of Montgomery’s life, so I don’t know how much of Emily of New Moon is fact and how much fiction. In fact, I don’t even know if the novel is supposed to be autobiographical, it’s just that it very much reads that way.

The story is about a young orphan, Emily Byrd Starr (I know, what a name!), who goes to live with relatives at New Moon Farm (again, the sort of literary excess that Emily herself would be scolded for by her teacher Mr Carpenter.)

That accounts for Emily’s exterior life. As far as I know, Montgomery was not an orphan. So this can’t be an autobiographical detail. Yet she imagines it so much in her fiction (counting the newly exhumed and published 9th novel in the Anne of Green Gables series, that makes some 12 novels whose main character happens to be an orphan.) it seems that Montgomery may well have thought herself to be at least spiritually an orphan.

The interior life of Emily Byrd Starr is quite obviously autobiographical, for it tells of the young orphan’s desire to be a writer. This is, I would venture, what really drives the novel: the questing writer in search of herself.

Montgomery describes the naked desire of the writer to achieve wealth and fame. To be adored by the multitudes for your genius and creativity and sheer ability. Gertrude Stein put it better: when asked why writers wrote she exclaimed, ‘For the praise, for the praise.’

But at core, the real reason that Emily writes is simply because her daemon drives her. This is what the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called one’s ‘will’.

Emily has this compulsion, the need to write everything down – everything from her day to day observations, right up to the flowery and affected poetry she indulges in. For Emily, the threat of running out of paper can almost bring on an anxiety attack.

As I was reading these passages, I was distinctly reminded of a passage I read in a biography of Charlotte Bronte. A local shop proprieter described the sisters -–Anne, Emily and Charlotte – on their frequent visits to pick up supplies. The one thing that made them anxious was that there should be enough stocks of paper for them to buy. In fact, as I read Emily of New Moon Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre kept coming to mind, and I was pleased when a line from Jane Eyre was actually quoted in the text.

So, in a way, this novel is very much about the process of writing, or more accurately how writers bring themselves into being. For the reader, the joy is to be invited along on this romantic quest. We get to be a part of the creative process by imagining along with Emily.

If you’re like me, and dabble in the occasional literary composition, you may find that Emily of New Moon prompts you to ruminate on reading as an act of creativity in itself. Again, I say this because the novel invites the reader to imagine becoming a writer. With no one to look over our shoulder and giggle at this flight of fancy, we as readers let ourselves go and imagine ourselves as artists in the act of creation.

I’ve long been a fan of the French artist Marcel Duchamp’s theory that the artist is only half the work of art – the viewer is the other half who completes the work. The artist and musician, Prince, has made similar statements in the liner notes of his albums. In the liner notes to Prince’s The Rainbow Children album he lists the instruments as being played by ‘Prince and ……U’. That is, he considers the listener to be equal in the technical and creative process of making the album. The Canadian writer, John Ralston Saul, notes that a good novelist makes the reader feel almost like they had written the novel themselves.

I felt that Lucy Maud Montgomery had a spirit of this in Emily of New Moon. The lesson that is drawn for Emily at the end of the novel is that she should only write about what she knows from personal experience. Only in this way can her writing be authentic. This is a somewhat painful but necessary lesson, for Emily and the reader alike. We don’t like to see Emily disappointed in her quest to be a writer. Yet we know the painful criticism of most of her work as rubbish by her teacher Mr Carpenter opens another door for Emily. It allows her to improve herself as an artist.
This is a novel about a young girl in the act of self-creation as a writer. It reminded me a lot of Charlotte Bronte’s Jayne Eyre, but without that novel’s unfortunate excesses. I look forward to reading the second novel in the series.

Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss – and the Myths and Realities of Dieting, by Gina Kolata

2009-09-04T13:39:00.004+10:00

This is a weird book. I picked it up off the shelf at the library as I’m interested in learning some of the more technical aspects of dieting, from a scientific point of view. Things like calories, the efficacy of low carb diets etc. The blurb on the book made it look interesting enough – a history of diets, bracketed by the author’s close observation of a live scientific study comparing the Atkins diet against a low-calorie diet.

However, from the get-go, you could tell that the author, Gina Kolata, the science writer for The New York Times no less, was very much biased against the entire notion of dieting, or rather reducing calories, as a way to lose weight.

It’s no wonder then that, after reporting the feelings and emotions of those dieters she followed in the study, and providing a section at the end of each chapter discussing their progress and quoting at length from the subjects themselves, that Kolata didn’t even bother to provide the ultimate findings of the study!

From the way Kolata writes, it seems she felt there was no need to, as she was right all along: dieting as a way to lose weight is useless. The writing covering the dieters responses is invariably glum, with an end quote always giving a general air of hopelessness. As the subtitle of the book makes clear, this is one of the 'myths' of dieting, that it will help you to lose weight. The reality is that it won’t.

Kolata will have no truck with the idea that the reason people could be putting on so much weight in advanced Western countries is the preponderance of salty, fatty foods promoted by huge food conglomerates. Instead the answer must surely lay elsewhere, like in the obese person’s biological make-up.

Yet when you read about what the dieters are eating in the study groups, you just think: no wonder they're getting big! I mean, doughnuts for breakfast, tubs of ice-cream before bed, two Big Macs for lunch, plus fries, coke etc. One dieter is horrified at the idea of eating celery as a snack between meals.

Instead of focusing on these dense calorie foods, and the problems of a business culture that promotes them, Kolata looks to our genetic make-up. Maybe some people are wired in such a way that they are always feeling hungry and cannot stop eating. Hence we are told about scientists' discovery of certain hormones, namely leptin, that supresses the appetite. I did find all of this material interesting. It does seem to explain why some people can simply ‘forget to eat’ and not feel hungry, but others are quite often famished (I raise my hand as belonging to the latter category.)

However, it does not explain why America (and Australia for that matter), have the fattest populations. Could it be people guzzling all those unnecessary calories in soft drinks? Less and less exercise

Not for Gina Kolata. She claims that larger weights could be a sign of improved health! She quotes one study that contradicts the numbers on another study for health outcomes for the overweight. The study she prefers says that overweight people have health outcomes just as good as, or even better than, people of normal weight.

How can this be? As I’ve written before, with science you can endlessly argue back and forth the details of a study.

This book did open up my eyes to a few new different viewpoints. It seems quite reasonable to say that some people are more genetically disposed to eat more, to feel those hunger pangs more insistently. And I have read that it is possible to be overweight and still be quite healthy. Indeed, I see lots of swimmers and bike riders who are quite chubby, but keep up a mean speed.

Overall I found this book to be quite at odds with itself. Kolata says that weight is not a problem really, but still hopes that science might come up with some miracle drug that will help keep people thin. Much of the book is hostile to dieting as a ‘fad’, yet she herself longs for some new definitive scientific breakthrough.

As I said, this is a weird book. Kolata does not seem so much a science writer as some mad polemicist, hell bent on discrediting calorie controlled diets. She even gets the number of calories in a pound wrong, claiming there are 3600 when there are in fact 3500 calories per pound (check it out, on page 124.)

The Lucky Country, by Donald Horne

2009-08-29T18:45:00.004+10:00

I’ve long wanted to read Donald Horne’s classic, and now I have. I don’t know what to make of it though.

It’s written in a sophisticated, urban style, which is well enough as its 250 odd pages paints Australia as a dreadfully parochial backwater. Horne is witty too. And his elegant writing style holds up well 45 years after the book was originally published (1964).

Yet in a lot of ways this is a long opinion piece about something very broad and abstract: a whole country. True, he does break Australia down into a lot of subjects for individual dissection. I found his chapter on Menzies fascinating. But the trouble for me when reading these opinion pieces on national character is that I can’t figure out if what the author is saying is true. I have nothing to test what the author says against my own experiences.

Here is an example. I think I know what Horne means, then again I’m not so sure.

"Australians ‘learn’ their culture. They ‘learn’ it as if it described their own life and attitudes, when in part it does not, and this process seems to make the relevant in the culture they ‘learn’ also unreal. This sense of unreality can affect even those who have ‘learned’ their culture very thoroughly: they cannot detect the difference between their own society and the societies of the culture they have ‘learned’. But some of the valuable parts of the culture they ‘learn’ – its awareness of horror, failure, inadequacy can also seem unreal."

Horne goes on in this vein for a little while longer. It was doing my head in typing it up, so I’ve stopped. You get the idea though.

I remember George Orwell wrote a short book, during the second world war, which was about the national character, called The Lion and the Unicorn. Reading Orwell make all these pronouncements about English character, I thought, can this possibly apply to every Englishman and woman?

This is a curious book about Australia in the 1960s. It makes Australia sound like a pretty boring, vapid place. No wonder it drove people like Barry Humphries semi-mad and gave us characters like Dame Edna – the personification of Melbourne.

Horne said it would be inevitable that we would have much higher Asian immigration. That came to pass. And he also insisted that Australia would have to become more innovative and competitive. The Hawke-Keating era ushered that in.

However, The Lucky Country gave me a kind of creepy feeling. It has an artificial air.

Sophisticated, sharp, witty, urbane, yet kind of unreal. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to read another Donald Horne book.

The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed The World), by Karen Armstrong

2009-08-28T16:51:00.001+10:00

This is a neat, clearly written short history of the Bible, starting with the myths and oral traditions that created the basis for the text we have today as the bible, then following the way the Bible has been interpreted and read right up to the current day.

Many of us who don't study Biblical history think the Bible just kind of sprung into life a couple of thousand years ago, with one God as its centre piece. The wonderfully humanistic scholar Karen Armstrong shows how the text of the Bible is in fact the work of many authors whose work overlaps each other.

The Bible, we learn, is a work of extraordinary and intense editorship. Not only that, it's a living, breathing work that has been reinterpreted and re-imagined throughout history.

This is the main lesson that Armstrong wants to draw: the Bible resists literal interpretation. The modern idea, favoured by so many evangelicals and fundamentalists, to read the Bible as literally true, is wrong. Some groups even want to bring back Old Testament Law, an idea close to madness.

The Bible Karen Armstrong presents here is one that has fired the imagination and creativity of millions throughout the millennia. The modern religious insistence of literal readings are against its history and purpose and even, paradoxically, its meaning.

Armstrong's The Bible ends on a bummer note, with the fundamentalists having hijacked the Bible for their own purposes. I guess Armstrong's lesson is that the Bible is extraordinarily rich in complexity and ambiguity, and that it can be read by secularists, as well as the devout, as deeply rewarding literature.

Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, by Tristram Stuart.

2009-08-26T11:06:00.002+10:00

British author Tristram Stuart raised pigs as a teenager. Like humans, pigs are single stomached omnivores. To feed his unfussy charges, Stuart asked his school canteen for leftovers. Food soon started coming in by the sack load from local bakers, markets and farmers. Further investigation found supermarkets and retailers tossing out great mountains of perfectly good food. His pigs thrived, and soon grew big enough to eat. Here was an economic lesson: rubbish could be turned into bacon.

Soon Stuart found that if the food was good enough for his omnivorous pigs, then it was good enough for him. Yet amazement at all this free food soon turned to disgust at its waste, and eating discarded food became a protest at the obscene levels of waste in our food system.

Today’s urban hunter-gatherers who forage in supermarket dumpsters call themselves ‘freegans’, and you’ll be quite amazed at what they can haul out of a bin. Stuart once found boxes of fresh mangoes in a supermarket skip and made them into lassi drinks for a friend’s wedding.

Waste, however, is no alternative lifestyle guide. Nor is it some mad Greenie’s recycling manifesto. Stuart pulls his focus back from the dumpster to give a big picture view of the shocking inefficiencies in the way we make and market food. When the veil is lifted on how food is farmed, processed, marketed, sold and often thrown away your jaw will hit the ground.

Perfectly good vegetables get chucked because they’re not of an elegant enough shape; inaccurate and overly cautious ‘use-by’ and ‘best-before dates’ cause perfectly edible food to be binned; gourmet food outlets throw out enormous amounts of dainty delectables rather than give them away. In Australia, dumpsters groan with food that could be given to the poor.

Recently on SBS's Insight Program, Woolworths' Environmental Manager Kane Hardingham confessed to throwing out 65,000 tonnes of food a year. "We know that's a waste," he admitted. You can say that again.

The West’s high meat diet is another area that involves much waste. For every 10 kilograms of cereals fed to cattle, one kilogram comes back in beef. Huge resources are put into creating meat: some 40 per cent of the world’s cereals are fed to farm animals. The world's poor are in stiff competition with Western farm animals for food. One third to a half of the carcase is simply thrown away, and Stuart urges meat eaters to start eating offal: livers, kidneys, lungs, hearts, tongue, brains and so on.

It’s not just the food, either. Every wasted mouthful has many unthought of knock on effects: water usage, greenhouse gas emissions, increasing pressure on cereal prices.

The good news about food waste is that this is an environmental and waste problem that would be painless to fix. Convincing people of the savings involved in eating rather than binning food would provide a windfall to individuals, nations, and ultimately the globe’s environment.

Stuart quotes the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation economist W. H. Bender who says global food demand could decrease by 20 per cent if rich countries reduced waste and poorer countries reduced post-harvest losses. This alone would liberate 294 million hectares of cropland and 659 hectares of pasture land. That's a lot of pressure taken off the environment.

‘If there were a global democracy’, says Stuart, ‘among the first measures proposed by poorer people would probably be a cull of livestock fattened on cereals and a proscription of the unnecessary waste of food.’

While we can’t very well stick that uneaten sandwich in an envelope and mail it to Africa, there are always poor people struggling in rich societies. Why can’t businesses donate more of the food they throw away, freeing up the pay packets of the poor? The complexities of this problem are highlighted in the case of US behemoth Wal-Mart sacking employee Jeffrey Janes for taking meat out of the companies waste bins and cooking it for his workmates. Janes was awarded $167,000 for wrongful termination.

How many calories does the Western body need? Due to our sedentary lifestyle, only about 1900-2000 calories per day according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Stuart suggests we should provide about 30% slack in the food system to account for fluctuations in production. Currently Europe and the US makes around 3500-3900 calories available to each of its citizens. Australians can’t be far off this figure.

With so many health, environmental and equity issues surrounding our over consumption of food, perhaps public health policy makers should be focusing on a guideline calorie consumption figure for its citizens. Eating only 2000 calories per day would be a simple concept that people could easily remember.

With the global financial crisis still unfolding, and finance Ministers and Treasurers the world over looking under the cushions for extra money, here is a book that can identify a wealth of savings. Perhaps Treasurer Swan should be urging more Australians to lick their plates clean.

The Limits of Power, by Andrew J. Bacevich

2009-08-21T13:36:00.003+10:00

This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but here goes. I was just doodling on the Internet at work, and brought up the Amazon website. You know how Amazon ‘remembers’ what items you’ve looked at recently. Well, it had this list of ‘recommended’ books that I read, and The Limits of Power, by Andrew J. Bacevich was one of them.

Anyhoo, I read briefly one of the Amazon reviews, and it talked about how the author layed a lot of blame for America’s current situation at the feet of the electorate. Myself, I’ve often had a theory that the quality of the vote equals the quality of the politician. When people whinge about how bad their politicians are I often think, well, that’s easily solved. Stop voting for them, and actively demand better ones.

I totally loved The Limits of Power. Bacevich is a professor of history and ex-army man. Tragically, he lost his only son, Andrew John Bacevich, First Lieutenant U.S. Army to the Iraq war in 2007.

Bacevich puts forth his argument under three main themes: the profligacy that is built into America’s consumer economy (which even affects political decision making); the overreach of American foreign policy and its snake oil merchant leaders (most notably Ronald Reagan); and its military crisis, over run by civilian ‘experts’ obsessed with technocratic solutions (prime example here is Donald Rumsfeld.)

There’s no beating around the bush in this pithy 182 page book. Bacevich doesn’t waste the reader’s time. It’s a relief when you read these books and know that the author has spent a long time figuring out in his or head what they are on about before committing it to paper. Bacevich has obviously thought deeply and at length on what he writes about. This is someone who writes out of genuine conviction and concern.

For all of that, Bacevich’s program is a pretty simple one. The Limits of Power is a book that really begs for the reinstatement of common sense in politics and policy making. In economics, he calls for nothing less than the nation to live within its means. America is in a state of chronic over-reach, thinking that controlling Middle Eastern oil, and global geo-politics in general, will make the country happy and prosperous. Bacevich points out that this is in fact having the opposite effect.

My favourite part of the book was where he held up as an example of useful common sense President Jimmy Carter’s exhortation to the country to use less oil and start thinking about conservation. This was during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when OPEC raised prices sky high. (Please note, Bacevich is also critical of Carter’s performance as president.)

This policy of conserving energy was unpopular. Then comes along Ronald Reagan who says Americans deserve to be able to consume as much energy as they want, whatever the cost. (Didn't Reagan remove the solar panels Carter had installed at the White House as soon as he got in?)

This is what allows Bacevich to be so critical of the American public. They embraced Reaganomic with all of its fake, glitzy glamour.

Once again, the overall tone of this book is common sense. It’s not making the US any happier a country by being so over extended – Americans consume too much and try to control too much of the world in the deluded belief that this will make them happy. It’s not.

This is a good book for anyone living in a decadent democracy living beyond its means. For anyone fed up with the West’s empty consumer culture. For anyone sick of smooth talking technocratic politicians who don't speak in plain English.

The ABC’s Background Briefing program recently ran a podcast of a talk by Bacevich on the Afghanistan war. It’s worth a listen here.

Losing It: The Inside Story of the Labor Party in Opposition, by Annabel Crabb

2009-08-20T18:47:00.003+10:00

The title of this book makes it seem hopelessly dated, but I enjoyed Ms. Crabb’s Quarterly Essay so much I was eager for some follow-up reading.

Boy, oh, boy. Talk about ‘step back in time’. It seems ages ago that Labor was a party that seemed consigned to eternal opposition.

Crabb chronicles all the various Labor Party leaders in opposition. We go from Beazley, to Crean, to Latham, and end up with Beazley again. The book ends with Beazley as leader. Who would have guessed that within a bare two years Kevin Rudd would be prime minister?

This is a good, useful history of Labor’s years in opposition. It highlights how shakey the Howard Government was from 1996 until 2001, the year of the Tampa. From then on the Howard Government was very assured.

It seems depressing – to this reader at least – that the electorate can be so manipulated by irrational fear. I vividly remember the Tampa saga, and always thought it a huge beat-up. How could the country become so convulsed when 400 people, without even a boat, tried to seek asylum? The fear and loathing ran white hot, and it ran on and on for years and years. And to think this kept Howard solidly in government for years to come, turning any kind of rational debate on its head.

But I digress.

Losing It has much interesting behind the scenes detail that political junkies will lap up. It is also written in Annabel Crabb’s inimitable style. Here’s my favourite quote:

"That night – Wednesday 4th June – the busy main strip of the Manuka dining precinct was treated to the comparatively rare sight of Kim Beazley, propelling himself along the footpath with all the inconspicuousness of a Spanish galleon in full sail."

I fear this book is now pretty much consigned to collecting dust, but Crabb’s lively prose and sense of humour made it enjoyable for this reader. You should give it a go to if you're interested in Australian federal politics.

Bad Money, by Kevin Phillips

2009-08-19T17:47:00.003+10:00

Kevin Phillips has been intimately studying the American economy in a series of fascinating books over the last decade. His overall thesis is that all countries that became arrogantly imperial rose to power and then fell away in much the same way. They all rode some new found energy source to get them ahead, and once they got going, they married their booming economies to arrogant religious ideas. I probably haven’t explained it very well, but in nutshell I think that explains Phillips’ overall argument.

For example, the Dutch used and exploited wind and water as forms of energy in the 18th century and ran a formidable imperium; then the British discovered coal and created the steam engine in the 19th century, helping them create the British Empire; and finally, the Americans discovered oil, which gave them enormous power.

The interesting thing for all these societies was that once they became powerful they developed an arrogant religion that explained their success in divine terms. God loved them so much he made them rich. Look at U.S. fundamentalist religion today, and its evangelical prosperity theology.

Alas, all these powerful countries were eventually overtaken by some new, smart, energetic nation on the make. Phillips thinks we will see this next nation emerge in Asia.

I’ve read Phillips’ previous two books, American Theocracy and American Dynasty. This one is pretty much an update on the subject matter of those books. For those who don’t know by now, the US has far too much debt and its dependence on foreign oil is a huge problem. Worse still, the oil is coming from unstable regimes like Saudi Arabia. Phillips is pretty pessimistic that the democratic process can save America. The electorate simply can’t concentrate on the complex problems at hand.

Phillips has a dry wit and I agree with much of what he says (or what I understand of what he says, as I know zilch about economics). His historical analysis is fascinating, as he refuses to be convinced of the current day optimism of everything working out well in the end. Like Shakespeare, when Phillips looks to the past, at the history of Holland and the British Empire, all he sees are analogies to the current day situation, prompting him to the conclusion that, indeed, ‘the past is prologue’.

This is not a cheerful book. But you must read Kevin Phillips!

Stop At Nothing, The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, by Annabel Crabb

2009-08-14T16:38:00.001+10:00

I’ve always admired Annabel Crabb’s columns and sketches for the Sydney Morning Herald, so I was heartened when I learned she’d written the most recent Quarterly Essay. How would she do, I wondered, when grappling with the 20,000 word essay format, as opposed to the pithy 800 word column?

Very well indeed, it turns out. I worried at the beginning that the essay might just end up being another one of her gag fests, but Crabb has turned out an exceptionally well-crafted essay. Crabb walks around from all angles of her subject, brush between her teeth, trying to paint a well-rounded portrait. She canvasses colleagues, friends, those who have been burnt by Turnbull, political combatants, and the great master practitioner himself, John Howard.

We learn that there is ‘good Malcolm’, the charming and engaging, and ‘bad Malcolm’, the ambitious so and so who eats people up and then spits them out again. There’s the generous and philanthropic giver to charities, the man who even dug deep into his pockets to help out MP Ross Cameron, even after Cameron had bagged him in Parliament. Then there’s the bloody-minded business man who doesn’t think twice about launching vexatious litigation to undo his opponents.

Annabel Crabb also gives us a good going over of Turnbull’s business dealings, and shows his willingness to go far and beyond what any mere mortal would do to achieve their ambitions. Chillingly, you get the impression of a man who has absolutely no scruples when it comes to getting what he wants. Those who criticise are the ‘jealous’ of this world, those who can only ‘carp’.

To illustrate her subject’s chutzpah, Crabb quotes Turnbull’s definition of the word, and says how well it applies to his own business dealings.

“Chutzpah is a wonderful Yiddish word, which is best defined as the characteristic of a man who kills both his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the basis that he is now an orphan.”

He’s probably right. I’d like to be rich and powerful like him, but because I haven’t got the gumption, all I can do is whinge about the likes of Turnbull.

So what’s the final conclusion that Crabb draws after her study of Malcolm Turnbull? She quotes Senator George Brandis’s opinion that Turnbull is an optimist. Then elaborates:

“But optimism seems a quaint indulgence at the moment, doesn’t it? Like Turnbull himself, optimism doesn’t seem to fit the epoch. In so many ways, Turnbull is a politician constructed for prosperity; for the golden years. For building libraries and studying the twelve great cultures and being funny and interesting and knowing who Pliny was.”

Crabb cuts Turnbull’s prospects short by reminding us that politics is not a meritocracy. There is a lot of luck and timing involved, and basically, the timing is not right for Turnbull. Let’s face it, Kevin Rudd was simply there at the right time. And John Howard, before him, was there at the right time. Admittedly, Howard did make a good deal of his own luck by simply hanging around. But didn’t he also write himself off as being Lazarus with a triple by pass? Luck actually surprised Howard too.

I’ve always felt that Turnbull wants to be Prime Minister of Australia because it would be one more toy to add to his collection. His thinking seems to be that he can simply will it into being, using his own chutzpah. But the forces around politics are much bigger than in business. He doesn’t need to persuade a group of individuals of his worth, he needs to convince a voting population of millions of his worth, and most of those aren’t interested at all in politics.

Full marks to Annabel Crabb for turning out this wonderfully written essay. She holds the readers attention with her engaging descriptive powers and imaginative leaps, which never leap too far but always ring true with the reader’s common sense.

She writes with a novelist’s care, always choosing the right word in every situation. Indeed, I was trying to think of which novelist? I don’t know at the moment, but I’m sure the answer will come to me at a later date.

This essay is probably unique amongst the Quarterly Essays in being a full bodied portrait by a perceptive and sensitive observer. Crabb has no ideological axe to grind, but is more the amused observer of power, often reducing her men and women to fascinating miniatures.

This line exemplifies Crabb’s approach. After describing how inside the party room many of the new Howard MPs elected in 1996 denigrated those with university degrees, and how Howard also gave more money to private schools, Crabb writes:

“That Howard could simultaneously denigrate university elites while defending high-school elites is a striking demonstration of his powers.”

There’s a sad and doleful tone in all of this. This line by the essayist stuck with me especially, “Politics in Australia presently has about it a sense of exhaustion.”

Or mabye Crabb is exhausted with politics? Let's hope not.

Aboriginal Melbourne: The lost land of the Kulin people, by Gary Presland

2009-08-13T12:43:00.001+10:00

My local library had a flyer advertising a talk with the author of this book. Due to this, I presumed Aboriginal Melbourne must have been just released, but it turns out it was first published in 1985. I don’t know what Mr Presland does now, but his bio in the book describes him as an archaeologist.

This is a short history of the original people of the area that now constitutes Melbourne, with plenty of useful illustrations that help give the reader a visual idea of Koorie Melbourne. Melbourne originally was occupied by five language groups or tribes that formed a confederacy or nation called Kulin, which was their common name for ‘human’.

What amazed me as I read about the original landscape of pre-European Melbourne was how the original Kulin people managed to travel such distances without getting lost. To my Western brain, that can only think in terms of roads and maps and amenities, it seems amazing that a people could have such a knowledge of what to us modern day Australians is simply so much wild bushland. Yet the first Australians knew the land like the back of their hand.

One of the great tragedies of European settlement was of course the superior attitude of the whites. This meant that Aboriginals, and their culture and knowledge, were not taken seriously at all. In fact the opposite took place: it was better to erase their culture and ‘save them’ by making them Christian. Hence so much valuable information was lost about how the first Australians lived.

This is a fascinating book about the ‘lost land of the Kulin people’ that tries as best it can to paint a picture of the natural environment before it was carpeted over with roads, houses, factories and all the other forms of industrialisation we call modern Western civilisation.

Reading this history makes you realise what a terrible tragedy it is that the Kulin people lost their land and lifestyle, and what a tragedy for the Europeans that we couldn’t stop and learn all that the Kulin people would have had to teach us about the land that we now occupy as Melbourne.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica

2009-08-10T18:35:00.005+10:00

I've long had a theory about education. It goes something like this. At the age of around 13, young students should undergo some kind of test to figure out what their hobbies are and where their natural abilities lie.

So, if someone is good at sport, then their education should be tailored more to subjects like physical fitness, health, diet etc. In short, they should lean more towards studying a basket of subjects that would help them find employment in that area.

While doing this, they should continue to study English and Mathematics as the bread and butter of their education. However, while studying English this doesn't necessarily mean they should study Jane Austen. Let's face it, some people will never get much benefit from studying Jane Austen, especially boys who are natural sportsmen. To me, this just seems unrealistic, and as long as students are proficient in writing and reading English, who cares about Austen? (Don't get me wrong, I love Jane Austen. I just think it's unreasonable to expect some people to share my admiration for her novels.)

I say this because I feel that I wasted a lot of years in school, and am convinced that had I left school at 13 it wouldn't have made much difference to my future prospects.

Sir Ken Robinson, in this book, The Element, has a roughly similar theme to what I outlined above. He says education needs to move away from standardised testing to a more customised education model.

We need to take a different approach to measuring intelligence and ability. We need to recognise there are different types of intelligence. Being able to add two plus two and get four is one type of intelligence. But also, being given a piece of clay and being able to create a plate or a cup is another type of intelligence.

Seeing creative possibilities is another form of intelligence again.

Ken Robinson says when teaching young students we should try to identify what their natural talents are and encourage them, trying to turn that talent into a career. Moreover, he says the future economy is going to rely on creative types who can dream up new ideas. Climate change, the new technologies that it will demand, is a prime example of this. In a recent essay by our own prime minister, Kevin Rudd, he highlights how education can improve the GDP of nations.

This book is not all about education, although that is a prime focus for Robinson. More generally, the theme of the book is how when we mix what our natural aptitude is with what we're passionate about, we are 'in our 'element'. It goes without saying, we're also very happy in this state.

This sounds easy enough, but unfortunately there can be many obstacles to finding one's natural 'element'. Some are social. Disapproving family or unsupportive and unenthusiastic friends. Robinson sites studies that show how we overwhelmingly 'go with the flow', agreeing with people when they are clearly wrong, just to fit in. If a group says black is white, we will agree with the group because social pressure to conform is so strong. Scary, huh?

Other obstacles are, surprisingly enough, in the education system itself. Students are discouraged from following their natural 'element' by teachers and the education bureaucracy.

The Element you would put under the heading of 'self-help'. It's clear and well written. I'd recommend it to parents who have a child struggling in school, people who are bored with their jobs and looking for a new career, or simply anyone who finds their life in a bit of a rut and is looking for a new direction. As Robinson refreshingly says, it's never too late in life to discover your 'element'.

Enron: Anatomy of Greed, by Brian Cruver

2009-07-30T12:15:00.003+10:00

Written by a young insider who barely lasted a year in the company before the whole thing started to fall to pieces, Brian Cruver lifts a veil on the groovy, irresistible Enron culture that so attracted young business school graduates.

Cruver starts off by describing his pleasure and excitement at being hired by Enron. Everything about the place – from its architecture to its aggressive business culture – was Cruver’s dream come true. Dubbed the millionaires factory, Cruver aspired to joining that club too. However, small things niggled from day one. His friend, who worked at a stock broking company, would constantly call Cruver with unsettling bits of information about Enron that he'd just read, casting doubt on the company.

Turns out, his friend was right. As Cruver says in the beginning of the book, no one at Enron wanted to believe that the company was in deep trouble. They just wanted to believe that the amazing profits would roll on forever. That is, they wanted to believe money would continue to grow on trees.

Now I know that these people work hard, study long to get where they are, and deserve to be rewarded for their effort. But one has to wonder about these companies that have amazing stock prices and are called ‘millionaire factories’. Shouldn’t someone be questioning the whole culture of making massive amounts of money? Don't business schools teach their students the very basics of balance sheets? Aren't they taught economic history, like the fact that Ponzi schemes always come undone?

Don't get me wrong, I love our capitalist system. I love the creativity of making and selling. I love the technological innovations that the market has fostered. Yet when we get to the point of wanting to make loads and loads of money for no other reason than to be rich, not comfortable, then something’s wrong.

I thought Brian Cruver would wrap his book up with some sort of lesson that had been learnt. Rather, Cruver tries to figure out what greed actually means. Boy oh boy!

"When does desire – for money or material goods or whatever – become excessive? We live in a world in which desire builds things, invents things, cures things, and discovers things. But when does this desire become gratuitous? Is it excessive to want a better life – to want more adventure, a bigger house, a nicer car, fancier clothes, or premium dog food?"

Premium dog food? Obviously, Cruver is confusing basic human creativity with greed. Humans often want to create things – cures for illness, great inventions – not because it will make them more money than they can ever possibly spend, but because they have an instinctive need to create something, or do something that will help others.

There’s a line that commonly goes around that if we paid politicians more, we would get better ones. But I seriously doubt this. Australia’s two top pollies, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, have millions and millions of dollars in the bank. Would giving them more money improve their performance? I doubt it. This seems to be the argument Cruver is following, a common business argument: if you reward people with enough money, no matter what type of person they are, you will get the best results. We’ve seen this culture develop into huge pay packets for CEOs and the upper management echelons. Yet look at the corporate America now!

Here is the author again on greed:

"I don’t think it’s that simple. I think greed – or excessive desire – is defined by the means, not the end. It’s the behaviour that should be tested for excessiveness. Greedy is a term that applies to someone who lies, cheats and steals in the name of possessing more than they need or even desire. Financial success alone doesn’t equal greed, but being a scumbag with financial success does – that’s where the line should be drawn."

All of this ‘moral grappling’ about greed doesn’t seem convincing to me. Cruver joined Enron because he wanted to be one of those people who could make millions. Moreover, he wanted to make millions by creating ever more arcane and sophisticated financial products and flogging them off to whoever he could convince needed them. Indeed, in the book, he had a hard time trying to get buyers for his bankruptcy derivatives.

This is one of those fairly stock standard insider books. Cruver has a decent sense of humour and a way of describing events. Also, I very much appreciated his description of how derivatives actually work. It’s probably the first time I’ve properly understood them.

He also gives the reader all the details they need to know about the sudden decline and fall of Enron. Yet his own analysis of the whole affair, what it means culturally and economically, is pretty thin and unimpressive. It’s hard to see the greed of Cruver’s generation of M.B.A graduates producing anything of great social benefit, unless you find highly artificial financial products a boon to society.

Happy? Exposing the cultural myths about happiness, by Tony Wellington

2009-07-29T21:36:00.003+10:00

Recently I've been thinking about the subject of happiness. Or more pointedly, the false avenues that the economy and our politics leads us down in search of our happiness. When reading Peter Hartcher's book on the end days of the Howard government, he quoted the former PM as saying:

‘The fact that you are better off now – everybody’s better off – is lost if you compare yourself with your neighbours who might have done even better than you, and if you don’t have as much as you’d like.’

This seemed pretty extraordinary to me. Certainly not a recipe for social cohesion. Or indeed happiness.

I've also been reading a bit of G. K. Chesterton, the great British writer. He says the very opposite: that less is more. Enhancing one's happiness, according to Chesterton, means using your imagination and making the best of the world you've been given.

With these two contrasting views in my head, I wanted to look into the concept of national happiness indexes, hoping to write some sort of article about the subject. This brought me, quite by accident, to Tony Wellington's book on happiness.

Wellington's book is not a 'how to become happy' type of book. It's basically a pretty thoroughgoing critique of our modern Western culture: politics, media, economy, the happiness industry itself. The ultimately ironic point that the book makes is that, in searching out happiness, we have only made ourselves unhappy. How could this be?

Essentially, by always comparing ourselves with others, and using the over the top media culture we live in as a distorting mirror to seek out our reflection, we are doomed to be disappointed. By wanting more of everything - money, fame, beauty, mass adulation - we are discounting the small pleasures of everyday life.

One of Wellington's main culprits for our unhappiness is money. Our economy, and the political system that backs it up, calls for citizens to amass larger and larger amounts of money. We may be richer than previous generations, but having double the wealth does not translate into double the happiness.

Our economy is also self-defeating, as we gobble up more and more of the world's natural resources. We're all digging ourselves into a pit. Wellington says our politics really needs to change, but he sees little chance at the moment of any dramatic changes.

Despite that mild pessimism, or realism, I feel this book is absolutely spot on. If anything, this book clarified a lot of what I've been thinking for the past few years. For that reason, I found this book quite consoling. Happiness, Wellington says, is a by product of our day to day, hum drum lives. Cooking, gardening, taking a nice walk, enjoying nature - there are the true pleasures we find in our life. We don't find happiness in chasing fame, money, beauty or any of the other trappings of modern life. More to the point, anticipating great happiness is a sure recipe for creating disappointments in life.

So lower your standards, count your blessings, and start enjoying life!

To me Happy? reads like a book of common sense. All of our modern obsessions are discounted as ways of making us happy. In fact, I'm sure G. K. Chesterton would have very much agreed with Tony Wellington on the true sources of our happiness.

Wellington backs up his arguments with a wide range of references and interview material.

Tony Wellington's conclusions may disappoint many, but I found them very satisfactory. Life is really about the simple things. This is where happiness is found. Turn your back on money and the silly promotions of the advertising world. Enjoy a walk in the park or baking a cake. The best things in life turn out in the end to be free.

Further Chronicles of Avonlea, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

2009-07-24T12:52:00.005+10:00

This book follows on in the same vein as the first Chronicles of Avonlea that I wrote about a few posts back. In fact, I don’t have much to add to my original post. This is more of the same tales of rural life in Canada in the early part of the twentieth century.

I enjoyed them just as much as the first, and hence give this volume a hearty recommendation. Read my post for The Chronicles of Avonlea here.

It is worth noting here as well that a long lost volume in the Anne of Green Gables series is to be released. That will make volume nine. It was finished before Montgomery’s death, but has never been published in full, as the author intended.

Read about this ‘new’ book The Blythes Are Quoted here.

Molesworth Street, by Winsome Roberts

2009-07-23T10:08:00.002+10:00

This is volume three of the Hotham History Project, Hotham being the original name for the suburb of North Melbourne. I’ve walked up and down Molesworth Street several times, and thought it quite a pretty street, but wondered why on earth they put those ugly commission houses on one side of the street. What a mistake that was.

This short history by Winsome Roberts details some interesting aspects of North Melbourne’s hilly terrains. Anyone familiar with North Melbourne will know that to get to Molesworth Street you have to travel up hill. This area, which included the posher parallel street of Chapman Street, used to be known as Hotham Hill. The real estate was a bit more expensive in Chapman Street, and Molesworth Street property prices were just a step down from that.

When you travelled down the hill, the accommodation in the valley became more congested and cheaper. Some sections of the valley were notorious.

In 1887 the North Melbourne Advertiser lamented the poor conditions in areas such as Arden Street:

‘…when the state of the area extending from Arden street to where the ground rises in the direction of Hotham Hill is taken into account, a question for serious consideration is at once opened up. This part of the town is composed for the most part, of small and ill ventilated cottages, whose inhabitants are to be seen in filthy deshabille at all hours of the day, while the swarms of dirty children thronging the right of ways and alleys, form an unpleasant reminder of how our costly Education Act has failed in reaching juvenile waifs and strays of society.’

Indeed, not much has changed. I know of one pub in the Arden Street area that retains this rather unsavoury character. Recently I saw one pub patrons happily urinating in the Arden Street with little regard for common decency. I also know of one marauding Arden Street cat who likes of terrorise the locals, and in fact caused one woman to be held hostage in her own home.

Ms. Roberts’ history concentrates on the period between 1840-1905, and is fascinating for the portrait it builds of the smalls businesses and local identities that lived and worked in the area. Most interesting to me was the social stratification, of the well off and well to do in Chapman Street hobnobbing at Melbourne Town Hall, to the resentment of the hoi-polloi down in the valley, living in their cheap timber houses and suffering floods and the horrible filth of household effluent running through the streets.

There is one charming story that Roberts tells of how people in the valley would let out their livestock at night, once the Inspector of Nuisances had gone to bed. This would allow the local goats to make their way up Hotham Hill and feast on the ‘succulent blooms’ of the richer gardens.

Amazingly, there were lots of businesses that were run in Molesworth Street, although many of these were short lived. Women ran a lot of businesses as well.

While this book is only a history of one street in North Melbourne, it is enormously helpful in building up a picture of Hotham life in the late nineteenth century. How different things were then to now. Where once North Melbourne was a busy area of small businesses, making things and providing services, now most of the businesses in the area are trendy food places, and a large proportion of the population students, preparing to enter professional life.

Now I may complain about the noise of North Melbourne, with cars passing and apartments constantly being built, but at least it doesn’t stink. The descriptions of North Melbourne without sewerage, of turds floating down laneways, is enough to turn the stomach.

The Next 100 Years, by George Friedman

2009-07-22T16:06:00.002+10:00

The title and blurb for this book was interesting enough for me to want to give it a go. Friedman is an American political scientist and founder of his own private intelligence business.

Friedman sees the United States as the dominant global power for the next hundred years. He says that nations go through three stages in their rise and decline: barbarism, civilisation and finally, decadence.

Gore Vidal once joked that the United states went from barbarism to decadence without stopping for civilisation. Friedman has the opposite view. He believes that the US is not in decline, as many on the left like to think, or dream, but rather in an early barbaric, immature period. Europe, he says, or more pointedly, countries like France and Germany, are in a state of decadence. They don't believe in anything. (Sounds like Donald Rumsfeld's derisive line about France being old Europe.)

The basic idea of this book is, by using the intellectual discipline of geopolitics you can basically map the broad outlines of what the future will be like. The discipline of geopolitics considers the many physical factors that make up the characters, and hence destinations, of nation states. Things like where a country is situated, closeness to other nation states, resources etc. etc., all determine the character of a country.

More interestingly, Friedman implies these factors over ride the democratic determination of the voters themselves. No matter who the US votes in as president, they will be unable to change the country's 'destiny'. In this case, the US pursuing its role as a global hegemon.

This raises rather curious questions. Friedman paints a picture of a militarily and technologically dominant US, controlling everything on the earth’s surface from space. The way it’s painted here, you get the impression of this militaristic behemoth, connected in some way to a democratically elected polity.

Democracies, you would think, were supposed to work like this: the people elect governments to do what they want. It turns out democratic processes in the end don't count for much. What really drives democracies like the United States is a mixture of things like destiny, the military and technolgy.

I don't mean to sound cynical about Friedman's theory, because it's an interesting one, and one that has been discussed by other people, even the likes of John Pilger. That author has long said that no matter how liberal the president elected, the US always pursues its program of global power. Nonetheless, it's an interesting problem to contemplate.

Anyway, that all aside, what's the book like? Well, the first half I found interesting and absorbing. Friedman is a smart and learned guy about international affairs. He makes lots of interesting points. Because my knowledge of international politics is limited, I can't say whether what Friedman says is right or wrong, but it seemed he made a strong case for his opinion on global history and contemporary events.

That's the good part.

Then you get deep into the second part of the book, and whoa! Things just seem to enter the realm of science fiction. In one chapter on the future of war technology Friedman calls a space centre a 'Battle Station', then informs us he's called it that simply because he thinks it's a 'cool name'. Bad move. It makes the author look like a teenage kid getting excited about a new toy. Then again, he is describing the US as being in an adolescent phase. Maybe Friedman is a part of that adolescence.

The trouble with The Next 100 Years is, the further the book predicts out, the more you wonder how on earth can we know what major wars will happen in 2080? It just seems utterly ridiculous.

Friedman says at the beginning of the book that if you'd told people in 1950 what life would be like in 2000, they would have thought you mad. In the author’s words, 'common sense' cannot be used to predict the future. But if we as people cannot employ common sense, then what do we have? Friedman gives us his science fiction fantasy.

It then comes down to this. You can only take the second part of the book as a kind of subconscious dream of the author. Indeed. the second part of the book reads like a Donald Rumsfeld wet dream. It's hard not to think that the author simply believes in America's right to rule the world, unquestioned, which is pretty scary.

I must admit, I did find some of the sections describing future technological innovation as utterly enticing. No wonder the author gets so intoxicated. How will we get our energy in the future, once the oil runs out and cuts in carbon emissions are agreed upon by all countries? Answer: massive solar panels in space that will suck up massive amounts of energy and then shoot it back to earth. The bad news for greenies like me is that this energy will be used for war. Bummer!

George Friedman has written other books on the future of war technology. These parts of The Next 100 Years I found fascinating, and would certainly look at pursuing some of his other writings.

This book to me reads like a visceral fantasy of unrivalled American power into the next 100 years.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, by Margaret Atwood

2009-07-16T18:21:00.003+10:00

Margaret Atwood is not the first name you think of when coming to a book written about ‘Debt and the shadow side of wealth’. As everyone knows she’s a super famous novelist, poet and essayist. In my simple mindedness, I assumed that any book about debt must really concern itself with such technical issues as banking, national economies, regulation etc.

Atwood, however, tackles this subject from a different angle. She investigates rather the psychological, religious and literary aspects of debt. She has tried to uncover the very human essence of what it means to be in debt. Hence Atwood starts in antiquity, in ancient Egypt, and moves through the major religions. As ever happens, study religious texts and you find yourself discussing literature and philosophy.

A lot of time is spent discussing Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge. In the final chapter the author creates her own version of Scrooge, called Nouveau Scrooge, a kind of young financial whiz kid from our own time. He is reluctantly taken on a tour of two possible worlds. One of environmental degradation, and one of harmony based on our current green ethos, turned into a virtual green utopia.

The moral lesson is: we have taken on loan so much from nature, indeed our whole economy is based on what we can squeeze out of the environment, that it is now time to ‘payback’ . We’re all in debt to nature, and must now settle accounts.

I really enjoyed this book, which was originally broadcast as part of the Massey Lectures, on Canada’s public radio service. Atwood employs a lot of humour and keeps the tone quite conversational and informal. It’s nice to feel like you’re sharing a chuckle when reading such an esteemed author.

I also liked Atwood’s unique thinking on the topic. She made me think about debt in an entirely new way. This is one of those books that leaves you ruminating on the questions it has raised for days and weeks to come.

Thanks to Mr Chris Hubbard for bringing this book to my attention.