By Jason Steger
The Soul
Paul Ham, Penguin $49.99
Paul Ham is best known as a military historian. Witness Sandakan, Hiroshima Nagasaki, and Vietnam. Don’t be confused by the title of his latest, whopping book; here he is arguing his theory that history is powered by ideas. In his review of The Soul, Michael McGirr takes issue with that, suggesting rather that there are plenty of examples of when history has been the source of ideas rather than the other way around. Nevertheless, McGirr concludes that “it would be an arrogant person who read this book without gratitude for a feast of insight and learning”.
Anita Heiss has written a second historical novel.Credit: Dean Sewell
The Horse
Timothy C. Winegard, Text, $39.99
Timothy Winegard’s last book was The Mosquito, which might have been fascinating but is perhaps not as immediately appealing as his latest, The Horse. This is a detail-jammed account of the animal on which we have depended for so long − for transport (until the relatively recent arrival of the car, train and plane), for farming and for adventure. And, of course, in warfare (8 million horses died in World War I): Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s giant steed, is still remembered by name 2350 years after his death. Winegard tracks the many millennia of equine history and the still-crucial roles the horse has today.
Jodie Picoult’s new novel dramatises the question of who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays.
The Echoes
Evie Wyld, Vintage, $34.99
Evie Wyld won the Miles Franklin in 2014 for her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, and the Stella Prize three years ago for her third, The Bass Rock. Her life has been lived partly in Australia and partly in Britain. In her fourth novel the narrative is split between the dead Max, now some sort of ghost floating around the flat in London he shared with his former girlfriend and co-narrator, Hannah. She’s Australian, and revelations of her family and upbringing on the site of a school for Indigenous children (shades of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys?) could be the source of her ongoing trauma.
The Shortest History of Music
Andrew Ford, Black Inc., $27.99
Composer, ABC broadcaster and prolific author Andrew Ford states his problem early on in his thematic history of (hu)man-made music: “About Western art music we know a lot, and we have ready access to a vast amount of the music itself; with nearly all the other music in the world (prior to the advent of recording), we know a lot less, and have access to virtually none of it.” In the latest in the admirable Shortest History series he considers the impulse to make music, notated music, music as a commodity, modernism and music, and the consequences of recording. All that in about 250 pages. Mahler or Madison Beer, anyone?
The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop
Neil Mercer, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Neil Mercer is just the man to write the definitive account of the lives, times and many crimes of Sydney villains Neddy Smith and Roger Rogerson, one a robber, drug dealer and convicted murderer, the other a (very) corrupt cop. After all, Mercer reported on the fatal shooting by Rogerson of Warren Lanfranchi in Chippendale in June 1981, interviewed Rogerson for the first time the following year and Smith not long after. This account, finished since the death of Rogerson in jail, tells plenty of stories we haven’t heard before.
Young Hawke
David Day, HarperCollins, $49.99
Don’t politicians seem rather dull these days? It’s hard to think of anyone with the charisma, charm and colour of Bob Hawke, although not everyone would necessarily use those same adjectives. Historian David Day, whose previous books include lives of earlier Labor leaders John Curtin and Ben Chifley, delves into Hawke’s childhood and early life to discover his formative influences and experiences and explain why he was at ease in just about every circle in which he moved.
They don’t make them like Bob Hawke any more.Credit: Anthony Johnson
Dirrayawadha
Anita Heiss, Simon & Schuster, $32.99
The title of Anita Heiss’ second historical novel means Rise Up in her Wiradyuri language and is set in the lead up to the war that raged between the Wiradyuri people and white colonists around Bathurst 200 years ago. Miinaa works for white settlers, but her brother is the legendary Indigenous leader Windradyne. As tensions rise, she falls in love with an Irish convict, so allowing Heiss to draw a parallel between the Indigenous people losing their lands and the treatment of the dispossessed Irish, both losing out at the hands of the British.
One Hour of Fervour
Muriel Barbery, Gallic Books, $29.99
Remember Muriel Barbery’s megahit, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, that charming novel about a Parisian apartment building and the hesitant friendship between concierge Renee, 12-year-old Paloma, and a Japanese businessman who rents a room in the block? In One Hour of Fervour, Barbery’s sixth novel, Haru, a Japanese man, has an affair with a French woman, Maud, who gives birth to a daughter, Rose, but forbids Haru ever to see her. France and Japan – a big distance but can things ever change for father and daughter, and why does Maud insist that Haru stays out of their lives?
Buckham’s Bombers
Mark Baker, Allen & Unwin, $34.99
One in five of the Australian deaths in combat during World War II were airmen who flew with Bomber Command over Europe. Former Canberra Times editor Mark Baker tells the dramatic story of those who flew many daring raids over Germany under the captaincy of Bruce Buckham. What they became best known for, however, was the sinking in September 1944 of the Tirpitz, Hitler’s monster battleship that lurked in a Norwegian fjord and bedevilled Atlantic convoys. There are lighter moments, too, such as their brilliant, unauthorised flypast over the newly liberated Paris, an escapade that made even Winston Churchill chuckle.
There are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak, Viking, $34.99 (published August 13)
Elif Shafak references Nisaba, the Sumerian goddess of storytelling, early on, which seems somehow appropriate for an epic that starts in Mesopotamia in “ancient times” and moves between the banks of the Tigris and Thames rivers in the 19th century and beyond. This is a story driven like the three atoms in water by three characters – Arthur, a poor, brilliant Victorian London boy; Narin, a Yazidi girl in Turkey in the early 21st century, and Zaleekhah, living on a houseboat on the Thames. And it’s partly narrated by a raindrop!
Broken Heart
Shireen Morris, La Trobe University Press, $36.99 (published August 19)
Shireen Morris, law professor and colleague of Noel Pearson, follows up Radical Heart with a book that examines the “whole trajectory of the Voice” and unpacks its failure in the referendum. She takes exception at blame for stubborness being dumped at the door of Indigenous leaders and the Albanese government, while the uncompromising Coalition seems to have got off lightly. What are some of the lessons for the future? “Try harder, work smarter, learn from our missteps, persevere with new and superior strategies.”
By Any Other Name
Jodi Picoult, Allen & Unwin, $34.99 (published August 20)
The hugely popular American novelist loves a plot that plays on people’s conflicting beliefs. And here she’s gone for a particularly divisive one: the identity of the real author of Shakespeare’s plays? Picoult was inspired by the story of the real Emilia Bassano, the first woman to publish a book of poetry in England and who may have been the “dark” lady of the Sonnets. Picoult’s novel takes place in two time frames, one contemporary featuring a would-be female playwright, and one in the 16th century focusing on Emilia’s life and the question of authorship. It’s a novel, remember, so Picoult takes some liberties, but she’s passionate about her theories.
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