Phil Shannon

Flannery's climate 'Third Way' well intended, but dodges the problem

Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis By Tim Flannery Text Publishing, 2015 245 pages Australian scientist Tim Flannery became fascinated with proposals to extract excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and oceans when the billionaire aeronautics carbon-polluter Richard Branson, in response to Flannery's first book on climate change, The Weather Makers, invited Flannery to be a judge on Branson's £25 million Virgin Earth Challenge prize for methods of carbon withdrawal and storage.

The British royal knee-deep in fascist mud

Wallis Simpson, Edward of Windsor, Adolf Hitler (fourth, fifth and sixth from left). 17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis & The Cover-Up By Andrew Morton Michael O’Mara Books, 2015, 327 pages

Australian inequality skewered, but few solutions found in Labor

Battlers & Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia Andrew Leigh Black Inc. Books, 2013 210 pages, $19.99 (pb) In Australia, notes economist and Labor MP Andrew Leigh, the poorest 20% of the population own just 1% of total household wealth. The top 20%, however, hog a fat 62%.

Three books show how close nuclear catastrophe is

Command & Control Eric Schlosser Allen Lane, 2013 632 pages A Short History Of Nuclear Folly Rudolph Herzog Melville House, 2014 252 pages Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront The Nuclear Age Ferenc Szasz University of Nevada Press, 2013 179 pages Atomic bombs have only been used in warfare twice, but they have nearly been detonated, through accident or mistake, many more times, writes Eric Schlosser in his book on nuclear weapons mishaps, Command and Control.

Qatar's ugly World Cup exposed

Migrant workers are employed in slave-like conditions on construction of Qatar's World Cup facilities. The Ugly games: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup Heidi Blake & Jonathan Calvert Simon & Schuster, 2015 472 pages The only surprising thing about the FIFA corruption scandal is that anyone should be surprised, given the long history of credible allegations of bribery in world football’s governing body.

Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views

In The Company Of Cowards: Bush, Howard & Injustice at Guantanamo Michael Mori Viking, 2014 292 pages, $29.99 (pb) Murder At Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant’s Pursuit Of The Truth About Guantanamo Bay Joseph Hickman Simon & Schuster, 2015 245 pages, $29.99 (pb) Major Michael Mori was a Republican-leaning, US military lawyer who “embraced the values I had been taught in scouts, sports, high school, college, law school and the Marines” — above all the ideal of fair play.

Australia's leap into World War I

Hell-Bent: Australia’s Leap Into The Great War Douglas Newton Scribe, 2014 344 pages, $32.99 (pb) Behind all the froth, then and now, about the noble cause of World War I — defence of freedom against German aggression — lay a far less exalted reality, writes retired University of Western Sydney historian Douglas Newton. The war’s “grand plan” for Britain, candidly called “The Spoils” by the British Colonial Secretary, was to divvy the world up among the victors.

Sea Shepherd's whale wars get unwarranted hatchet job

Blood & Guts: Dispatches From The Whale Wars Sam Vincent Black Inc., 2014, 274 pages, $29.99 (pb) Industrial-scale whaling, writes Sam Vincent in Blood & Guts, had picked clean the world’s oceans until only the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary remained, protected by the icy remoteness of Antarctica and a worldwide ban on commercial whaling.

The secret history of Wonder Woman's conflicted feminism

The Secret History of Wonder Woman By Jill Lepore Knopf, 2014, 410 pages Wonder Woman cannot marry, according to Amazon law. She doesn’t want to, either. Especially if it would mean that she — the comic book superhero disguised as a secretary — would be stuck in the kitchen cooking dinner for her would-be domesticator, Captain Steve Trevor, the US pilot she fell in love with after rescuing him from his plane crash on her woman-only, feminist island utopia.

Zombie economics alive and well and destroying our future

Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Amongst Us John Quiggin Black Inc., 2012 265 pages, $26.95 (pb) “Being already dead,” says John Quiggin of zombie ideas in economics, “they can absorb all kinds of damage and keep lumbering on.” And so, despite severe reality checks such as the historical Great Depression and the more recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC), classical free market economics continues to lead its undead life in the neoliberal form Quiggin calls “market liberalism”.

Looking behind the 'Clivosaurus' show

Clivosaurus: The Politics Of Clive Palmer Guy Rundle Quarterly Essay November 2014 Black Inc., $19.99 Elected in 2013 by the curious, the disaffected and the dark arts of preference deals, billionaire Queensland coal baron Clive Palmer and his Senate threesome, were, at first, writes Guy Rundle in Clivosaurus, ignored or played for laughs by the establishment media.

Mark Latham's fantasies of a middle-class 'utopia'

The Political Bubble: Why Australians Don’t Trust Politics Mark Latham Macmillan, 2014 291 pages, $32.99 (pb) The only thing surprising about the 4% of Australians who a poll last year said “almost always” trusted the federal government is that the figure is that high. Further evidence of the many failures of Australian politics comes in The Political Bubble via an angry Mark Latham, the former leader of the federal Labor Party.