Great Books To Captivate Minds

by Stephen Loosley - Sunday Telegraph

History quotes Archimedes as saying: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world."

We have all been moved profoundly over the past few days as the scale of the tragedy wrought by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami unfolds.

The immediacy of the horror, and its colossal scale, have been brought home to us courtesy of a global media accepted as part of our lives.

It's fitting that Paul Starr, in his landmark study The Creation Of The Media: Political Origins Of Modern Communications, quotes Archimedes with approval on the potential impact of the media.

His book traces the rise of modern communications in Western societies, particularly the US, in the forms of print, film, radio and, to a lesser degree, television.

Starr, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, links the evolution of modern communications to changes in law, political and military requirements, the development of postal systems, emerging markets and constituencies.

Precisely the same comment might be made about Right Nation: Conservative Power In America, by authors John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge.

This is the best book on political culture published in 2004. It's a superb analysis of the political communities that returned George W. Bush to power for another four years.

The current Republican majority in the United States – with both administration and the Congress in the hands of the Grand Old Party (GOP) – didn't arise overnight.

The Right Nation's authors distil the origins of Karl Rove's successful campaign strategy of 2004, to the quixotic (and ultimately, doomed) presidential effort of Senator Barry Goldwater forty years ago which strove to articulate an exceptional American conservatism, clearly present at the founding of the Republic.

Closer to home, the most original political offering was Ross McMullin's outstanding So Monstrous A Tragedy: Chris Watson And The World's First Labor Government.

Federal Labor celebrated the centenary of Chris Watson's ground-breaking administration during 2004.

McMullin's enlightening book makes it abundantly clear Watson's pioneering government was a social democratic model – deliberate in approach, moderate in character, progressive in outlook and always conscious of prevailing realities.

Without Watson, it is doubtful if Federal Labor's national success would have been possible.

Speaking for Australia, edited by Rod Kemp and Marion Stanton, is a finely-balanced and engaging collection of parliamentary contributions which reflect our national character.

Peter Fitzsimon's lively Kokoda, added to Australia's publishing history of provocative, military analysis. As did John Hamilton's Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You, which recalls the terrible slaughter of the Australian Light Horse charge on Gallipoli in August, 1915.

And easily the most disturbing sketch of Australian culture to come out of 2004 was provided by Helen Garner in Joe Cinque's Consolation.

This is a tale of the flaws and potential for manipulation of our criminal justice system which makes riveting, if infuriating, reading.

None of the books above will disappoint this summer.


loosleys@sundaytelegraph.com.au