Don Watson has been an academic historian, a speechwriter and a satirist. What has linked all these different stages of his working life has been his astonishing ability as a writer. Watsonia is a compilation of Watson’s writing that racks up an impressive 500 pages. The book covers Watson’s writing on politics, sport, nature and […]
‘If Then: How One Data Company Invented the Future’ review: the origins of Big Data
We now live in a world where corporations have a massive amount of data on anyone who has used a phone and searched the internet or even shopped at a supermarket. A new book by Jill Lepore looks at one of the precursors of data giants like Amazon and political analysis firms such as Cambridge […]
Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody (Swift: London, 2020) United States President Donald Trump will chant back “Fake news” to any journalist who asks a question that does not align with his conception of the world. The left ridicules the President’s absurd protests as […]
J. R. Jordan, Robert Wise: The Motion Pictures, Revised Edition. (Florida: Bear Manor, 2020)
No ghost picture scared people more than The Haunting, with its doomed house where doors seem to buckle and bulge unnaturally from the inside. The opening of Sound of Music, as a helicopter sweeps down on Julie Andrews, in the Swiss Alps is a visual and musical triumph. Both landmark scenes were the work of […]
Is Jesus History? A review
John Dickson has an impressive CV. He was the Founding Director of theCentre for Public Christianity. He has a degree in theology and a Ph.D. inancient history. An ordained Anglican minister, he was a Research Fellow of the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, and became a Visiting Academic in the Faculty of Classics […]
The Brothers Mankiewicz review: a groundbreaking dual biography
Sydney Ladensohn Stern, The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope. Heartbreak and Hollywood Classics (USA: University Press of Mississippi, 2019) The writing talent alone of the Mankiewicz Brothers – Herman and Joseph – is overwhelming. Younger brother Joseph won academy awards for writing and directing, particularly for the verbal fireworks of All About Eve, and Herman laid the basis […]
No more Grapes of Wrath – really?
Jill Lepore’s magisterial These Truths is a fantastic book. It is highly ambitious and delivers a strong narrative history of the United States. Professor Lepore has taken the United States Constitution as a starting point for a highly impressive single volume survey of the history of the USA. Impressive as it is, it is not […]
What place does history have in a post-truth world?
The Knowledge Solution: Australian History Anna Clark, Melbourne University Press, 2019 Book Review When the subtitle of a book reads: “What place does history have in apost-truth world?”, you would think that the book might actually touch upon the topic. Anna Clark has edited this book on Australian historical writing. AssociateProfessor Clark is an Australian […]
The Screen is Red – book review
Brianton, Kevin Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2018, Vol.48(2), pp.64-67 Bernard F. Dick, The Screen Is Red: Hollywood, Communism, and the Cold War, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. 282 pp., illus. Hardcover: $65. During the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities – or HUAC – investigations of Hollywood in 1947, chairman […]
Philip Taffs’s Reviews > Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist
Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist by Kevin Brianton Philip Taffs‘s review Oct 10, 2018 really liked it John Ford once famously introduced himself: “I’m John Ford. I make Westerns.” To which Australian author, Kevin Brianton, might now rightfully respond: “I’m Kevin Brianton. I write […]