Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Catholic Action and Anti-Communism: The Spanish Civil War Debate at the University of Melbourne, March 1937

Fay Woodhouse
The infamous Spanish civil war debate at the University of Melbourne in 1937 has attracted the attention of many writers in the more than sixty years since the event took place. The contention ‘That the Spanish Government is the Ruin of Spain’ was the subject of the University Debating Society’s first meeting held on 22 March. It was a well advertised public debate. Perhaps the most authoritative study to date is Amirah Inglis’ Australians in the Spanish Civil War.1 This work provides a descriptive account of the debate, albeit one that is necessarily circumscribed by ...
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Network Review of Books

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2001)

Reviewed by Noel Pearson in the September 2001 issue.
This is a very interesting book setting out a compelling theory on how the great majority of the world's population (the poor in the Third World and in the former communist states) are locked out of the ability to participate in and benefit from the key processes of capitalism: the ability to form capital. Hernando de Soto is active across the Third World working from the Institute of Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru in his words, the quest to create a non-discriminatory market system where the law helps everyone to have an opportunity to prosper. Though the communist states have ... read more.

Fumigated (2001)

Reviewed by Carolyn van Langenberg in the Dec 2001-Jan 2002 issue.
Fumigated by Australian poet Ioana Petrescu is a fine collection of insightful poems, most of which have been published in a variety of little literary magazines and poetry anthologies. She has also been broadcast on radio and her poetry has featured in a Street Art exhibition. The poetry in Fumigated shows why Petrescu's is a voice to add to the many good Australian poets who manage, despite the lack of publishing interest, to see their work between covers. Congratulations, therefore, to Ginninderra Press. Fumigated is divided into three parts. The first, From East to West, establishes ... read more.

The Money Shot: Cinema, sin and censorship (2001)

Reviewed by Pia Van Ravestein in the October 2002 issue.
Controversial? Yes. Though any piece of material that delves into the swamps of Australian cinema censorship in an able manner is bound to be. The Money Shot by Jane Mills is an intelligent work by a passionate writer who is well respected within the field of media analysis and screen studies, especially in regards to cinema and censorship. Mills' powerful and political style is backed up by a wealth of research on cinema analysts and film texts, while anecdotal evidence adds to an entertaining journey through representations of sin, censorship and sexuality in Australian national cinema. ... read more.

The Life and Soul of the Party: A Portrait of Modern Labor (2001)

Reviewed by Jim Chalmers in the Dec 2001-Jan 2002 issue.
The now vanquished Kim Beazley has been famously described as lacking the 'ticker' to be an effective prime minister. The criticism followed a now familiar theme; that Beazley was not a strong leader, he lacked vision and voters were unsure exactly what he believed in. Regardless of the validity of these claims in relation to Beazley, though many rightly questioned them, such criticisms have also been applied to the Australian Labor Party since the landslide election loss in March 1996 threw the Keating government onto the political scrap heap. What does Labor stand for? How does it respond in ... read more.

Mapping the Landscape (2001)

Reviewed by Marion Spies in the June 2002 issue.
This is a Festschrift in honour of Professor Ian Breward, an eminent Australasian church historian, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday in 1999. Breward is probably known best to the general public for his comprehensive A History of the Australian Churches (1993), which answers the long disputed question of whether there is an Australian (Anglican) theology and a general religiosity. He answers with a clear 'yes, of course', by showing mainly how Anglicans from Britain (as well as Christians from other European countries) have adapted themselves to a specifically Australian ... read more.

Until the Last Symphony Rises (2001)

Reviewed by Gail Taylor in the January 2003 issue.
Complex and Personal, Until the Last Symphony Rises, by Helen Hagemann, is an aria to all things female. Her use of language is infused with the sensual details of one attuned to life's mysteries: the fruit and the blood of life; how longing for love often leads to anguish, and then yet to wisdom. The 63-page book is divided into four sections: within borders, eros, femmes, and other-wise. Hagemann's poems are dense on the page and yet reveal a lyricism that works as a counterweight to her words, rich in syntax. It's almost as if Hagemann is working from her own vocabulary of all things ... read more.

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