Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Society and Beliefs

The year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame...

In our busy and hurried lives, we are losing the ability to be inactive. Human existence becomes fully absorbed by activity - even leisure, treated as a respite from work, becomes part of the same logic. Intense life today means first of all more performance or more consumption. We have forgotten...

In his autobiography Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life, published in 2002 when he was eighty-five years old, the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) wrote that Latin America was the only region of the world outside Europe which he felt he knew well and where he felt entirely at home. He...

Raising awareness of what Islam is, as well as deepening understanding about the lived realities of Muslim people, this book explores the contemporary Muslim experience through first-hand interviews with over a hundred Muslims. Exploring key issues such as women and Islam, extremism and radicalis...

Australian politics is changing. The two-party system is disappearing. The balance of power is shifting, and while it feels fragile now, we may just be on the precipice of a transformative era for democracy in Australia. On 21 May 2022, Australia voted, not just for change in individual seats, bu...

This is the first book on the Wagner Group, the shadowy Russian paramilitary organisation that fought in Ukraine and staged a surprise uprising against Vladimir Putin on 23-24 June. It has been involved in conflicts in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Venezuela and Mali, committing war...

For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, my...

Why is education in Australia failing? Where did we go wrong, and how do we fix it? The Gonski Review appeared to represent a breakthrough. Commissioned by Prime Minster Julia Gillard and chaired by leading businessman David Gonski, the 2010 review made clear that school education policy wasn't w...

'This is my clarion call, as a liberal myself, for them to stop screaming, shaming and cancelling everyone they disagree with, and start being part of the solution to global disharmony and division – not the problem.' If, like me, you're sick and tired of being told how to think, speak, eat and b...