Category Archive: Non-Fiction
The Mushroom Tapes
Conversations on a triple murder trial (By Chloe Hooper, Helen Garner, and Sarah Krasnostein, 2025) Erin Scutter was born in 1974 . Her mother Heather is said, rather vaguely, to have been an academic (“an expert in children’s literature”) and her father, even more vaguely, “a company director”. Although her mother is important in this tale, her father is not. In May, 2025 Erin (now Patterson) was tried for three murders and an attempted murder. Famously, in 2023, Patterson had invited her estranged husband Simon, his parents, his aunt and his uncle, to lunch at her house in Leongatha, New…
Continue Reading →Australia: A History
Mr. Abbott at the launch
(By Tony Abbott) (2025) Many, many years ago, Mark Twain wrote: “Australian history is .. picturesque; It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies & all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. Full of surprises, & adventures, & incongruities *& contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true!” Australia’s 28th Prime Minister has written a history of Australia, explaining that he did so to try, not to counter, but to balance-correct, the currently prevailing ‘black armband’ narrative of those determining that the ancient evil of colonisation can and should be redressed now,…
Continue Reading →Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy
(By Henry A. Kissinger, 1957) Kissinger spent most of his adult life dealing with a revelation and a revolution; the discovery of nuclear fission. He recognised that nuclear weapons changed how nations would conduct foreign policy. Ever the realist, Kissinger knew that nuclear weapons would slow but not stop war, and he grappled with the two-sides of the coin thereby tossed: that possession of nuclear weapons, no longer held in monopoly, would either prevent all war, or lead to global catastrophe. He also thought, presciently, that neither arms limitations agreements, exchanges of information such as sharing of flight plans or…
Continue Reading →Saltwater Μansions
(by David Whitehouse, 2025) It is not clear how long Whitehouse’s investigation into the disappearance of a woman he calls ‘Caroline Lane’ took, but it was not a quick process. Compare that with the short time it took reporter David Jones of the Daily Mail, upon publication of “Saltwater Mansions”, to discover and disclose the real name of the woman who disappeared, the actual block of flats in which she lived and the identity of her family (one of whom is falsely and titillatingly described by Whitehouse as “a former pop star” who received “an intense level of attention” as…
Continue Reading →Social Justice Fallacies
(By Thomas Sowell, 2023) Described by economic historian Niall Ferguson as a tour de force, Social Justice Fallacies arrives, like Spiderman, just in time, the imminent end of Peak Woke (aka Peak Stupid). Wikipedia defines Social Justice thus (footnote omitted): “Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals’ rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social…
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