David Marr is the rarest of breeds: one of Australia’s most unflinching, forensic reporters of political controversy, and one of its most subtle and eloquent biographers. In Marr’s hands, those things we call reportage and commentary are elevated to artful and illuminating chronicles of our time. My Country collects his powerful reflections on religion, sex, censorship and the law; striking accounts of leaders, moralists and scandalmongers; elegant ruminations on the arts and the lives of artists. And some memorable new pieces. ‘My country is the subject that interests me most and I have spent my career trying to untangle it’s mysteries.’ –David Marr.
A gripping reckoning with the bloody history of Australia's frontier wars David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result – a soul-searching Australian history. This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today's Australia. ‘This book is more than a personal reckoning with Marr's forebears and their crimes. It is an account of an Australian war fought here in our own country, with names, dates, crimes, body counts and the ghastly, remorseless views of the 'settlers'. Thank you, David.’ —Marcia Langton ‘[Marr is] one of the country's most accomplished non-fiction writers. I was sometimes reminded of Robert Hughes' study of convict transportation, The Fatal Shore (1987), in the epic quality of this book ... Killing For Country is a timely exercise in truth-telling amid a disturbing resurgence of denialism.’ —Frank Bongiorno, The Age ‘Killing for Country ... stands out for its unflinching eye, its dogged research, and the quality and power of its writing.’ —Mark McKenna, Australian Book Review ‘It's a timely, vital story.’ —Jason Steger, The Age ‘The timing of this book is painfully exquisite and it demonstrates perfectly how little race politics have changed in Australia.’ —Lucy Clark, The Guardian ’This is a story about Marr's family darkness, yes. But it is also a book concerned with our collective shame. No one who reads his important and necessary account with an open mind could consider more decades of voicelessness an acceptable outcome for this nation's First Peoples.’ —Geordie Williamson, The Saturday Paper ‘Killing for Country ... shines a light into the dark shameful corners of our collective national experience. What we will find when we look and listen won't be pretty, but it is necessary to confront – not to be captives of history, but to learn from it and transcend it.’ —Julianne Schultz, The Conversation ’The family truth telling ... reminds us once again of the terrible cost of the colonisation of Australia’ —Henry Reynolds, Pearls and Irritations
David Marr’s explosive bestseller, now expanded and fully updated. Cardinal George Pell is behind bars. In August 2019, his appeal failed. Australia’s most senior Catholic, the man once in charge of the Vatican’s finances, remains in prison for sexually assaulting children. In The Prince, David Marr investigates Pell’s career and his ultimate fall. Marr reveals a cleric at ease with power and aggressive in asserting the prerogatives of the Vatican. He charts Pell’s response – as a man, a priest, an archbishop and a prince of the church – to the scandal that has engulfed the Catholic world: the sexual abuse of children. This is the story of a cleric torn by the contest between his church and its victims, and slow to realise that the Catholic Church cannot, in the end, escape secular scrutiny. Behind it all was Pell’s own terrible secret, which was uncovered and judged in a trial that convulsed the nation. The Prince is a portrait of hypocrisy and ambition, set against a backdrop of terrible suffering and an ancient institution in turmoil. ‘An indictment of Pell for blind, evasive, flint-hearted reactions...Has a more devastating portrait of a ''respectable'', living, non-politician, Australian public figure ever been published?’ —Gerard Windsor, Sydney Morning Herald ‘An incisive discussion of the character and personality of Pell’ —Jack Waterford, The Canberra Times
Available again, an influential book that offers a framework for understanding visual perception and considers fundamental questions about the brain and its functions. David Marr's posthumously published Vision (1982) influenced a generation of brain and cognitive scientists, inspiring many to enter the field. In Vision, Marr describes a general framework for understanding visual perception and touches on broader questions about how the brain and its functions can be studied and understood. Researchers from a range of brain and cognitive sciences have long valued Marr's creativity, intellectual power, and ability to integrate insights and data from neuroscience, psychology, and computation. This MIT Press edition makes Marr's influential work available to a new generation of students and scientists. In Marr's framework, the process of vision constructs a set of representations, starting from a description of the input image and culminating with a description of three-dimensional objects in the surrounding environment. A central theme, and one that has had far-reaching influence in both neuroscience and cognitive science, is the notion of different levels of analysis—in Marr's framework, the computational level, the algorithmic level, and the hardware implementation level. Now, thirty years later, the main problems that occupied Marr remain fundamental open problems in the study of perception. Vision provides inspiration for the continuing efforts to integrate knowledge from cognition and computation to understand vision and the brain.
David Marr’s explosive bestseller, now expanded and updated. The leading Catholic in the nation and spiritual adviser to Tony Abbott, Cardinal George Pell has played a key role in the greatest challenge to face his church for centuries: the scandal of child sex abuse by priests. In The Prince, David Marr investigates the man and his career: how did he rise through the ranks? What does he stand for? How does he wield his authority? How much has he shaped his church and Australia? How has he handled the scandal? Marr reveals a cleric at ease with power and aggressive in asserting the prerogatives of the Vatican. His account of Pell’s career focuses on his response as a man, a priest, an archbishop and prince of the church to the scandal that has engulfed the Catholic world in the last thirty years. This is the story of a cleric slow to see what was happening around him; torn by the contest between his church and its victims; and slow to realise that the Catholic Church cannot, in the end, escape secular scrutiny. The Prince is an arresting portrait of faith, loyalty and ambition, set against a backdrop of terrible suffering and an ancient institution in turmoil. Longlisted, 2014 Walkley Book Award ‘An indictment of Pell for blind, evasive, flint-hearted reactions...Has a more devastating portrait of a “respectable”, living, non-politician, Australian public figure ever been published?’ —Gerard Windsor, Sydney Morning Herald ‘An incisive discussion of the character and personality of Pell’ —Jack Waterford, Canberra Times ‘Descriptively superb. This is where David Marr rivals Lytton Strachey’ —Peter Craven, Weekend Australian ‘Marr makes good use of his skills as an investigative reporter as he looks at Pell's role in the scandals and analyses the Church's struggle to save its reputation ... This is outstanding long-form journalism.’ —Walkley Magazine, Best Non-Fiction Book of 2014 David Marr has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Monthly, been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners, presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch and now writes for the Guardian. His books include Patrick White: A Life, The High Price of Heaven, Dark Victory (with Marian Wilkinson) and five Quarterly Essays: His Master’s Voice, Power Trip, Political Animal, The Prince and Faction Man.
This powerful biography brings to life Australia's most powerful and controversial Chief Justice. An Australian classic, it is David Marr's first book.
1945: the most significant year in the modern history of Vietnam. One thousand years of dynastic politics and monarchist ideology came to an end. Eight decades of French rule lay shattered. Five years of Japanese military occupation ceased. Allied leaders determined that Chinese troops in the north of Indochina and British troops in the South would receive the Japanese surrender. Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with himself as president. Drawing on extensive archival research, interviews, and an examination of published memoirs and documents, David G. Marr has written a richly detailed and descriptive analysis of this crucial moment in Vietnamese history. He shows how Vietnam became a vortex of intense international and domestic competition for power, and how actions in Washington and Paris, as well as Saigon, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh's mountain headquarters, interacted and clashed, often with surprising results. Marr's book probes the ways in which war and revolution sustain each other, tracing a process that will interest political scientists and sociologists as well as historians and Southeast Asia specialists.
Marr's previous book, Vietnam 1945, ends on 2 September when big crowds gathered in Hanoi and Saigon to celebrate Vietnamese independence. This book focuses on the next sixteen months, when Vietnam's future course was determined. It recreates in vivid detail what it was like to be there in these dramatic postcolonial moments as the Japanese, British and Americans faded from view, the DRV began to function and establish an army, the French maneuvered to restore colonialism, but the beginnings of the Cold War swept Vietnam into its orbit with the Chinese Red Army victories and Chinese arms on the border. As with his other books Marr pioneers the history of war from the Vietnamese perspective"--Provided by publisher.
Forced to retire from the D. C. police, newly minted P.I. Frank Marr is recovering from rock bottom when a friend asks for help -- and now, he must revisit the dark, drug-fueled world he left behind. Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with catastrophe. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, he's barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney -- who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. Frank passes the time -- and tests himself -- by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But when an old friend from his police days needs Frank's help to prove he didn't shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago. Never one to play by the rules, Frank recruits a young man he nearly executed years before. Together -- a good man trying not to go bad and a bad man trying to do good -- detective and criminal charge headfirst into the D.C. drug wars. Neither may make it out.
Emergent Teaching inspires teachers to teach with more spontaneity and creativity within an educational environment that is highly constrained. It demonstrates, through descriptive stories, creative strategies and provides an intellectual foundation for emergent teaching. The authors show how teachers can relate subject matter to students’ lives and experience. They illustrate rituals and processes that help establish a caring learning community. Finally, the book applies the theories of complexity and chaos while reaffirming the natural wisdom that teachers possess within themselves. The authors have chosen a narrative format that “models” rather than “tells,” and encourages readers to connect to their own stories and experiences. The book is consistent with the theoretical understandings and research in the complexity sciences but takes a narrative approach, giving examples and illustrations of ideas through stories, myths, and parables that act as metaphors and illustrations. Key topics and practices embedded in these stories include teaching the whole person strategies for creative teaching new understandings of process meaning-centered learning building community in the classroom strengthening the student/teacher relationship project-based learning using art and nature in teaching embodied learning incorporating story and narrative in teaching rites of passage embracing the unpredictable, uncharted spaces in teaching
The top job is within Bill Shorten’s grasp. But who is he? How did he rise to become Labor leader? And does he have what it takes to lead the country? In this dramatic essay, David Marr traces the hidden career of a Labor warrior. He shows how a brilliant recruiter and formidable campaigner mastered first the unions and then the party. Marr presents a man willing to deal with his enemies and shift his allegiances, whose ambition to lead has been fixed since childhood. But does he stand for anything? Is Shorten a defender of Labor values in today’s Australia or a shape-shifter, driven entirely by politics? How does the union world he comes from shape the prime minister he might be? Marr reveals a man we hardly know: a virtuoso with numbers and a strategist of skill who Labor hopes will return the party to power. “Australians distrust Shorten almost as much as they distrust Abbott. That’s why this election will be fought on trust. It’s going to be dirty. At the heart of the contest will be Shorten’s character. All the way to polling day, Australians will be invited to rake over every detail of his short life and hidden career.” —David Marr, Faction Man
John Howard has the loudest voice in Australia. He has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced NGOs, censored the arts, prosecuted leakers, criminalised protest and curtailed parliamentary scrutiny. Though touted as a contest of values, this has been a party - political assault on Australia's liberal culture. In the name of ''''''''balance'''''''', the Liberal Party has muscled its way into the intellectual life of the country. And this has happened because we let it happen. Once again, Howard has shown his superb grasp of Australia as it really is. In His Master's Voice, David Marr investigates both a decade of suppression and the strange willingness of Australians to watch, with such little angst, their liberties drift away. ''''''''More than any law, any failure of the Opposition or individual act of bastardry over the last decade, what's done most to gag democracy in this country is the sense that debating John Howard gets us nowhere.'''''''' - David Marr, His Master's Voice.
Winner, 2013 John Button Prize Tony Abbott is the most successful Opposition leader of the last forty years, but he has never been popular. Now Australians want to know: what kind of man is he, and how would he perform as prime minister? In this dramatic portrait, David Marr shows that as a young Catholic warrior at university, Abbott was already a brutally effective politician. He later led the way in defeating the republic and, as the self-proclaimed “political love child” of John Howard, rose rapidly in the Liberal Party. His reputation as a head-kicker and hard-liner made him an unlikely leader, but when the time came, his opposition to the emissions trading scheme proved decisive. Marr shows that Abbott thrives on chaos and conflict. Part fighter and part charmer, he is deeply religious and deeply political. What happens, then, when his values clash with his need to win? This is the great puzzle of his career, but the closer he is to taking power, the more guarded he has become. ‘Since witnessing the Hewson catastrophe at first hand, Abbott has worn a mask. He has grown and changed. Life and politics have taught him a great deal. But how this has shaped the fundamental Abbott is carefully obscured. What has been abandoned? What is merely hidden on the road to power? What makes people so uneasy about Abbott is the sense that he is biding his time, that there is a very hard operator somewhere behind that mask, waiting for power.’ —David Marr, Political Animal ‘This is no character assassination. Marr is not afraid to praise Abbott in places and respects his political skills and intelligence.’ —Michael McGuire, the Advertiser ‘David Marr is as brilliant a biographer and journalist as this country has produced.’ —Peter Craven, Australian Spectator ‘If you want to hit a man where it hurts, hit him in the groin. David Marr doesn’t miss in his Quarterly Essay profile.’ —Chris Wallace, Canberra Times David Marr is the multi-award-winning author of Patrick White: A Life, Panic and The High Price of Heaven, and co-author with Marian Wilkinson of Dark Victory. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Monthly, been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch. He is also the author of five bestselling biographical Quarterly Essays.
Despite the historical importance of the Vietnam War, we know very little about what the Vietnamese people thought and felt prior to the conflict. Americans have tended to treat Vietnam as an extension of their own hopes and fears, successes and failures, rather than addressing the Vietnamese record. In this volume, David Marr offers the first serious intellectual history of Vietnam, focusing on the period just prior to full-scale revolutionary upheaval and protracted military conflict. He argues that changes in political and social consciousness between 1920 and 1945 were a necessary precondition to the mass mobilization and people's war strategies employed subsequently against the French and the Americans. Thus he rejects the prevailing notion that Vietnamese success was primarily due to communist techniques of organization. However, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial goes beyond simply accounting for anyone's victory or defeat to an informed description of intellectual currents in general. Replying for his information on a previously ignored corpus of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and leaflets, the author isolates eight issues of central concern to twentieth-century Vietnamese. The new intelligentsia—indubitably the product of a peculiar French colonial milieu, yet never divorced from the Vietnamese past and always looking to a brilliant Vietnamese future—spearheaded every debate beginning ini 1925. After 1945, Vietnamese intellectuals either placed themselves under ruthless battlefield discipline or withdrew to private meditation. David Marr suggests that the new problems facing Vietnamese today make both of these approaches anachronistic. Whether the Vietnam Communist Party will allow citizens to subject received wisdom to critical debate, to formulate new explanations of reality, to test those explanations in practice, is the essential question lingering at the end of this study.
From the time when he was a little boy, Patrick White wrote letters - brilliant, gossipy, funny, angry, heartfelt letters. When he died in 1990 at the age of 78, between 2, 500 and 3, 000 of them survived, scattered - and often treasured - all over the world. In the course of producing his much-admired biography of White, David Marr tracked down most of them. Now, with sensitivity and skill, he has assembled a rich selection from the letters to present a fascinating portrait of White in his unihibited words - as a writer, as a friend (or enemy), as a man deeply and painfully engaged with his world.
In Faction Man, David Marr traces the career of a Labor warrior. In dazzling style, he shows how this brilliant recruiter and formidable campaigner mastered first the unions and then the party in pursuit of an ambition he set himself in childhood: to be Prime Minister of Australia. Bill Shorten is now a contender. But where do his loyalties lie? Is he a defender of Labor values in today’s Australia, or is he a shape-shifter, driven entirely by politics? And does this product of the old world of union intrigue have what it takes to defeat Malcolm Turnbull and lead the country? Marr reveals a man we hardly know: the Napoleon of the factions, a virtuoso with numbers and a strategist of skill who Labor has backed to return the party to power. ‘David Marr is as brilliant a biographer and journalist as this country has produced’ —Peter Craven, Spectator David Marr is the author of Patrick White: A Life, Panic, The High Price of Heaven and Dark Victory (with Marian Wilkinson), as well as five bestselling Quarterly Essays. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Saturday Paper, the Guardian and the Monthly, and been editor of the National Times, a reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch.
The Australian Prime Minister called them 'absolutely revolting'. Their removal from a Sydney art gallery was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as a 'Victory for Decency'. Cate Blanchett and members of the arts community claimed charges laid over them would affect Australia's cultural reputation. Only now do we have the opportunity to hear the full story behind the Bill Henson photographs, which grabbed national attention in May 2008 when 20 images were removed from an exhibition and the photographer was investigated for child pornography. David Marr, author of Dark Victory and the award-winning biography Patrick White: A Life, examines the pornography/art debate with exclusive interviews with Bill Henson, members of the NSW police force, child abuse campaigners and important figures in the Australian arts scene.
A collection of perceptive and witty essays on the continuing, and frequently malign, influence of the church on modern Australian society and politics.
The essential work on Tony Abbott is now an expanded, updated short book – and a crucial election-year companion. Australians want to know: what kind of man is Tony Abbott, and how would he perform as prime minister? In this dramatic portrait, David Marr shows that as a young Catholic warrior at university, Abbott was already a brutally effective politician. He later led the way in defeating the republic and, as the self-proclaimed 'political love child' of John Howard, rose rapidly in the Liberal Party. Marr shows that Abbott thrives on chaos and conflict. Part fighter and part charmer, he is deeply religious and deeply political. What happens, then, when his values clash with his need to win? This is the great puzzle of his career, but the closer he is to taking power, the more guarded he has become. Political Animal's release as a Quarterly Essay in 2012, with its revelations of ‘the punch,’ triggered intense scrutiny of Abbott's character, which culminated in Gillard's memorable speech accusing him of misogyny and, soon after, Abbott's worst ever public approval rating. This significantly expanded and updated short book gives the clearest picture yet of the man Abbott is and the prime minister he would be. 'Since witnessing the Hewson catastrophe at first hand, Abbott has worn a mask. He has grown and changed. Life and politics have taught him a great deal. But how this has shaped the fundamental Abbott is carefully obscured. What has been abandoned? What is merely hidden on the road to power? What makes people so uneasy about Abbott is the sense that he is biding his time, that there is a very hard operator somewhere behind that mask, waiting for power.' —David Marr, Political Animal “It's a more fair-minded and more generous assessment than many people, perhaps myself included, had expected. We have very different perspectives on the world but, to his credit, to some extent David Marr was able to step outside the standard leftist critique and appreciate that here was a more nuanced and complex character than perhaps many of the standard left-leaning critics would concede. Having said all of that, I certainly don't think all of his judgments were fair and I don't think all of his interpretations were correct.” —Tony Abbott Winner, 2013 John Button Prize
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.
The leading Catholic in the nation and spiritual adviser to Tony Abbott, Cardinal George Pell has played a key role in the greatest challenge to face his church for centuries: the scandal of child sex abuse by priests. In The Prince, David Marr investigates the man and his career: how did he rise through the ranks? What does he stand for? How does he wield his authority? How much has he shaped his church and Australia? How has he handled the scandal? Marr reveals a cleric at ease with power and aggressive in asserting the prerogatives of the Vatican. His account of Pell’s career focuses on his response as a man, a priest, an archbishop and prince of the church to the scandal that has engulfed the Catholic world in the last thirty years. This is the story of a cleric slow to see what was happening around him; torn by the contest between his church and its victims; and slow to realise that the Catholic Church cannot, in the end, escape secular scrutiny. The Prince is an arresting portrait of faith, loyalty and ambition, set against a backdrop of terrible suffering and an ancient institution in turmoil. “He knows children have been wrecked. He apologises again and again. He even sees that the hostility of the press he so deplores has helped the church face the scandal. What he doesn’t get is the hostility to the church. Whatever else he believes in, Pell has profound faith in the Catholic Church. He guards it with his life. Nations come and go but the church remains.” David Marr, The Prince
Works from Australia's leading photographers Oculi Photography Group 'As a collective, we made a real point of documenting our homeland - its sensitivities, its great brutalist elements, the light that has scorched and battered this land for millennia.' - Dean Sewell. This stunning anthology of 250 photographs marks ten years since the formation of the acclaimed Oculi photographic collective. From apocalyptic representations of drought and fire-ravaged landscapes to intimate yet haunting portraits of young parenthood, Oculi's ten multi-award winning photographers vividly explore the intersection of the human condition and the urban and rural environment in Australia and beyond. This superbly produced book features works from Australia's leading photographers including Donna Bailey, Tamara Dean, Jesse Marlow, Dean Sewell, Nick Moir, Steven Siewert, Andrew Quilty, James Brickwood, Tamara Voninski and Jeremy Piper. Oculi is a powerful photographic study of our time. Oculi' is a survey that charters the first ten years of the Australian documentary photographic collective Oculi - an examination of the geo-political and social landscape of Australia and our regional neighbours throughout the first decade of the 21st Century. It addresses the social implications of the new globalised economy of which we are part as well as the environmental consequences exerted by climate change, as well as Australian youth cultures, subcultures, social rituals and the human condition. 'Oculi' explores the broadest gamet of photographic documentary genres including street photography, photojournalism, press photography, portraiture, social/environmental documentary, still life and embraces contemporary and fine art practice.
Most Australians despise what Pauline Hanson stands for, yet politics in this country is now orbiting around One Nation. In this timely Quarterly Essay, David Marr looks at Australia’s politics of fear, resentment and race. Who votes One Nation, and why? How much of this is due to inequality? How much to racism? How should the major parties respond to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim voices? What damage do Australia’s new entrepreneurs of hate inflict on the nation? Written with drama and wit, this is a ground-breaking look at politics and prejudice by one of Australia’s best writers. “This woman went to prison, danced the cha-cha on national television for a couple of years, and failed so often at the ballot box she became a running joke. But the truth is she never left us. She was always knocking on the door. Most of those defeats at the polls were close-run things. For twenty years political leaders appeased Hanson’s followers while working to keep her out of office. The first strategy tainted Australian politics. The second eventually failed. So she’s with us again – the Kabuki make-up, that mop of red hair and the voice telling us what we already know: ‘I’m fed up.’” —David Marr, The White Queen
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.