Tennis star Andre Agassi sets the record straight in a candid autobiography encompassing his public career and his private struggles. “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.” No would have believed Andre Agassi had he told them this. Yet it [...]
This short, shatteringly beautiful memoir gets five stars out of five from me; I read it in one sitting and was mesmerised. It may be short in terms of pages but it is masterful in the scale it encompasses. The story is very simple and is told very simply. Gaberielle Carey’s mother, Joan, aged 80, [...]
“Hell to my nerves. If I were dead, I should still fly an aeroplane”. Charles Kingsford-Smith This is the biography of famous Australian aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, also known as ‘Chilla’ and ‘Smithy’. The foreword is by Charles Kingsford-Smith Jnr. “If any one man typified the Australian character at its best, with all its great [...]
Published UQP, 2009 Print ISBN: 978 0 7022 3711 9 This is the remarkable story of Shia Muslim, Iraqi-born couple, Selma Masson and Mohammad al Jabiri (now Australian citizens), and the personal impact of Saddam Hussein’s regime on their lives and families. Australian Michelle McDonald was working with asylum seekers when she met Selma Masson [...]
Full Dark, No Stars ISBN 9781444712568 This pbk edition published by Hodder, 2011 What could possibly go wrong? Everything. If you’re looking for ‘nice’ stories and your sense of humour is not slightly warped, move right along. If you’d like a sweet night’s sleep, choose another book. These are terrible stories that take hold and [...]
3.5 stars (a good book within its genre as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system) Published by Fremantle Press, $32.95 tpb ISBN 9781921888472 Set against the excesses of the 1980s and populated with scandals, corrupt cops and corporate cowboys, Brothers is the saga of the notorious Perth Mint Swindle of 1982 in which more than half [...]
***** (five stars – exceptional as per Bookseller+Publisher ratings system) Published by A & U, $32.99 pb, ISBN 9781742375632 This collection of reports by Australia’s multi-award winning, foreign correspondent/author Paul McGeough is essential reading. It covers his observations of significant events in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Levant over a decade, opening with the September 11 [...]
In the late 1980s four tonnes of photographic material was rescued by the Historic Houses Trust (HHT) from a flooded Sydney warehouse. The 100,000 glass plate and acetate negatives — photos which had been taken between 1912 and 1960 officially owned by the NSW Police Service — became a closed archive of crime photos.
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