The recollections of Australia's leading public intellectual Robert Manne is one of Australia's most profound political analysts. His memoir traces his intellectual roots, revealing how his family background and early years informed the questions he would spend his life trying to answer. It also provides a fascinating portrait of key political controversies, including intellectual combat over Pol Pot, Wilfred Burchett, Quadrant, the Stolen Generations, Manning Clark, the Howard government, the Murdoch press and much more. During the Cold War and the culture wars, Manne clashed with some of the most influential thinkers, writers and polemicists – Noam Chomsky, Les Murray, Leonie Kramer, Tom Keneally, Isi Leibler, Helen "Demidenko" Darville, Peter Craven, Paddy McGuinness, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt. This memoir recounts with surprising and unknown detail what really happened and why. Often subverting conventional notions of left and right, Manne is an original thinker who has helped shape the nation's discourse for decades. This is the inside story of a life of engagement and reflection, and a book for anyone interested in the shape and meaning of the past nearly fifty years of politics.
Are we living on borrowed time? From climate change to the Murdoch empire, from refugees to WikiLeaks –Robert Manne applies his brilliant mind to the issues and people that shape our world. This provocative and informative book includes essays on Donald Trump’s links to Russia, Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, the ideas driving Islamic State, and Jonathan Franzen’s views on climate activism. In the title essay, Manne shares a life-altering personal story that is frank, moving and unforgettable. Robert Manne is emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. His books include The Petrov Affair, The Culture of Forgetting, Left, Right, Left, Making Trouble and The Mind of the Islamic State. He has written three Quarterly Essays and is a regular contributor to the Monthly and the Guardian.
The book is about an older gentleman who is kidnapped with his family by aliens. As it turns out, he is the descendant of the supreme warlord of the Intergalactic Federation of Planets! The new warlord has extreme powers, such as conveying his words mentally rather than orally. He can leave his body, thereby enabling him to move about in extraterrestrial form! He can enter someone's mind with his own and be able to remove and replace orders given to the subject.
In the third Quarterly Essay for 2011, Robert Manne investigates the forces that shape public debate in Australia. When it comes to key issues for the nation, who sets the media agenda and how do they do it?
Traces the evolution of the ISIS ideology, from its origins in the prison writings of the revolutionary jihadist Sayyid Qutb, through the thinking of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a book that is essential reading for anyone concerned about terrorist violence. --Publisher
This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. But what about in Australia, where he owns 70 per cent of the press? In Bad News, Robert Manne investigates Murdoch’s lead political voice here, the Australian newspaper, and how it shapes debate. Since 2002, under the editorship of Chris Mitchell, the Australian has come to see itself as judge, jury and would-be executioner of leaders and policies. Is this a dangerous case of power without responsibility? In a series of devastating case studies, Manne examines the paper’s campaigns against the Rudd government and more recently the Greens, its climate change coverage and its ruthless pursuit of its enemies and critics. Manne also considers the standards of the paper and its influence more generally. This brilliant essay is part deep analysis and part vivid portrait of what happens when a newspaper goes rogue. “The Australian sees itself not as a mere newspaper, but as a player in the game of national politics, calling upon the vast resources of the Murdoch empire and the millions of words it has available to it to try to make and unmake governments.” Robert Manne, Bad News ‘A devastating expose.’ —Crikey ‘The are many things to admire about Professor Robert Manne. He’s a prolific writer. He’s incredibly intelligent. And he’s brave.’ —Josh Rosner, The Canberra Times ‘Fairness and integrity are under the microscope in this scathing analysis of Murdoch’s flagship.’ —Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald ‘In our shrinking broadsheet market, it would be good if the healthiest specimen, and the only national one, recognised that we need more mutual respect in public debate if we are ever going to sort through the complex problems and opportunities that confront us.’ —Robert Phiddian, Australian Book Review
There are few original ideas in politics. In the creation of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange was responsible for one.' This essay reveals the making of Julian Assange - both his ideas and his world-changing actions. Robert Manne explores Assange's unruly childhood and then his involvement with the revolutionary cypherpunk underground, all the way through to the creation of WikiLeaks. Pulling together the threads of his development, Manne shows how Assange became one of the most influential Australians of our time.
A deep dive into how the ideologues behind Salafi jihadism shaped the global menace that we now know as Islamic State. If you want to understand how it all began, this is an essential read.' - Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent for theGuardian, winner of the 2015 Orwell Prize for journalism So often in history, it is ideas that kill . . . What are the ideas that drive the Islamic State? How did it develop its unique form of apocalyptic violence? In this gripping account, Robert Manne traces how the Islamic State's worldview evolved, from the 1960s prison writings of Sayyid Qutb all the way to its glossy online magazine of horror, Dabiq. He reveals the crucial role of texts such as The Management of Savagery, and figures such as al-Zarqawi, who set out to pit Sunni against Shia, thus tearing Iraq apart. Shortly after the fall of Mosul in June 2014, US General Michael Nagata commented on the struggle against the Islamic State- 'We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.' By examining the beliefs and strategies at the heart of the Islamic State, Manne shows the spiral into terror and brutality as a dark ideology came into being. 'In the years since the spectacular emergence of al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and of its step-child the Islamic State a dozen years later, a great deal of thought has been devoted to how to kill jihadists, much less to how to understand them. In The Mind of the Islamic StateRobert Manne has given us a crystal-clear guide to jihadist thought- why they do what they do and why they believe what they believe. Essential reading for anyone interested in terrorism and how it has evolved, this concise but thorough study takes one on a rich and fascinating journey of ideas, introducing a rogue's gallery of beguilingly dark characters. The Mind of the Islamic State is intellectual history at its most vital. The stakes could not be higher.' - Mark Danner, author of Spiral- Trapped in the Forever Warand Stripping Bare the Body
In Sending Them Home, Robert Manne tells the stories of individual asylum seekers and finds in their experience the seeds of a devastating critique. Balancing sorrow and pity with a controlled anger, Manne develops a sustained argument about what could, and should, be done for the nine thousand refugees who remain in limbo on temporary protection visas. Sending Them Home also contains a groundbreaking account of conditions in the offshore processing camps on Nauru, whose operations have until now been shrouded in secrecy, and a damning forensic investigation of the recent efforts to return - frequently against their will - many of those who sought our protection and whose countries remain in turmoil. Combining ethical reflection and acute political analysis, this essay initiates a new phase in the refugee debate. 'No one ought to pretend that the unanticipated arrival of the Iraqis, Afghans and Iranians did not pose real ... problems for Australia. However these problems arose not because these people were not genuine refugees. They arose, rather, precisely because the overwhelming majority of them were.' -Robert Manne, Sending Them Home This issue also contains correspondence discussing Quarterly Essay 10, Made in England, from Phillip Knightley, Morag Fraser, Larissa Behrendt, Alan Atkinson, James Curran, Sara Wills, and Gerard Windsor
This book explores the global financial crisis, its social implications and its potential outcomes for Australia. It examines neo-liberalism and economic rationalism, and discusses their consequences. After the GFC, how might we rethink the challenge of climate change, of care, of quality of life more generally? What is the proper role of the market? What parts of the social fabric need to be mended to create a more sustainable, fairer Australia? Contributors: Kevin Rudd, Robert Manne, Jean Curthoys, John Quiggin, Michael Pusey, Anne Manne, David McKnight, Ian Lowe, Guy Pearse.
As this eloquent and important book shows, no one in Australia makes a better argument than Robert Manne. In Making Trouble, Australia's leading public intellectual takes aim at the 'new Australian complacency'. This is a book that will enlighten and provoke. It covers much ground - from Howard to Gillard by way of Rudd, from Victoria's bushfires to the Apology, from Wilfred Burchett to Primo Levi. Making Trouble includes an essay on the new Australian complacency, as well an exchange of letters with Tony Abbott, an appreciation of W.E.H. Stanner, a reflection on ways of remembering the Holocaust and an incisive analysis of the asylum-seeker issue, among others.
In this national bestseller Robert Mane attacks the right-wing campaign against the Bringing them home report that revealed how thousands of Aborigines had been taken from their parents. What was the role of Paddy McGuinness as editor of Quadrant? How reliable was the evidence that led newspaper columnists from Piers Akerman in the Sydney Daily Telegraph to Andrew Bolt in the Melbourne Herald Sun to deny the gravity of the injustice done? In a powerful indictment of past government policies towards the Aborigines, Robert Manne has written a brilliant polemical essay which doubles as a succinct history of how Aborigines were mistreated and an exposure of the ignorance of those who want to deny that history. "In Denial is not a book of history. It is a political intervention. By holding an influential section of the Right to account-Manne was exercising the kind of responsibility often demanded of public intellectuals." —Raimond Gaita "In complex intellectual conflicts, there will always be argument about whether the antagonists are committed to finding the truth or to winning the battle. This essay tells us that Robert Manne is intent on finding the truth." —Morag Fraser "In Denial is a work of both the head and the heart. It is carefully researched and powerfully expressed. It needs to be widely read." —The Hon. P.J Keating 6 April 2001 "Robert Manne has made an important contribution to the continuing debate and in doing so has helped launch a new and important venture." —Henry Reynolds
Are we living on borrowed time? From climate change to the Murdoch empire, from refugees to WikiLeaks -Robert Manne applies his brilliant mind to the issues and people that shape our world. This provocative and informative book includes essays on Donald Trump's links to Russia, Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, the ideas driving Islamic State, and Jonathan Franzen's views on climate activism. In the title essay, Manne shares a life-altering personal story that is frank, moving and unforgettable. Robert Manne is emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. His books include The Petrov Affair, The Culture of Forgetting, Left, Right, Left, Making Trouble and The Mind of the Islamic State. He has written three Quarterly Essays and is a regular contributor to the Monthly and the Guardian.
This is not a book of documents, snippets or worthy speeches. Instead it presents the original essays and the moments of insight that told us what Australia is and could be. These are the essential statements - from historians, reporters, novelists, mavericks and visionaries - that take us from federation to the present - day, and tell a story of national self - discovery. There is the Frenchman who saw that Australia was a ''workingman's paradise'', and the historian who explained why. The two reporters who realised the true significance of Gallipoli and conveyed it to the nation. The Australian Legend, the Australian Ugliness, the Lucky Country and the Great Australian Silence. Real Matildas, Cultural Cringers, Future Eaters and Forgotten People - and much more. Memorably written and cohesive, this is the essential sourcebook for the words that made Australia.
This is not a book of documents, snippets or worthy speeches. Instead it presents the original essays and the moments of insight that told us what Australia is and could be. These are the essential statements - from historians, reporters, novelists, mavericks and visionaries - that take us from Federation to the present-day, and tell a story of national self-discovery. There is the Frenchman who saw that Australia was a 'workingman's paradise', and the historian who explained why. The two reporters who realised the true significance of Gallipoli and conveyed it to the nation. Russel Ward on the Australian Legend, Robin Boyd on the Australian Ugliness, Donald Horne on the Lucky Country, W.E.H. Stanner on the Great Australian Silence and Anne Summers on Manzone Country. Real Matildas, Cultural Cringers, Future Eaters and Forgotten People - and much more. Memorably written and cohesive, this is the essential sourcebook of the words that made Australia.
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