The annual collection celebrating the finest Australian science writing of the year. Why are Sydney’s golden orb weaver spiders getting fatter and fitter? Could sociology explain the recent upsurge in prostate cancer diagnoses? Why were Darwinites craving a good storm during ‘The Angry Summer’? Is it true that tuberculosis has become deadlier over time? And are jellyfish really taking over the world? Now in its fourth year, this popular and acclaimed anthology steps inside the nation’s laboratories and its finest scientific and literary minds. Featuring prominent authors such as Tim Flannery, Jo Chandler, Frank Bowden and Iain McCalman, as well as many new voices, it covers topics as diverse and wondrous as our ‘lumpy’ universe, the creation of dragons and the frontiers of climate science.
The annual collection celebrating the finest Australian science writing of the year. How does dust connect the cosmos with our bed sheets? Why do lobsters do the Mexican Wave backwards? And what makes us feel ‘wetness’ when there’s no such thing as ‘wet’ nerve receptors? Now in its fifth year, The Best Australian Science Writing 2015 draws on the knowledge and insight of Australia’s brightest thinkers in examining the world around us. From our obsession with Mars to the mating habits of fish, this lively collection covers a range of topics and delights in challenging our perceptions of the planet we think we know.
'The essay creates a place for slow thought on hectic subjects, and that is what the best of this year's crop manage to do.' GEORDIE WILLIAMSON In The Best Australian Essays 2016, Geordie Williamson curates the year's best non-fiction writing from Australia's finest writers. The result is a collection that reads as a wake-up call- from Jo Chandler on the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and Richard Flanagan on the Syrian exodus to Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani's inside account of life on Manus Island. There is also space for Bowie, TV box-sets and Aussie rules. Spanning politics, music, literature, art, ecology, linguistics and more, this anthology showcases the nation's most eloquent and insightful writing. Maggie Mackellar In Sympathy- A Fugue * Ashley Hay The Bus Stop * Rebecca Giggs Whale Fall * Anwen Crawford The Noise Made By People * Melinda Harvey She Thinks She Is The Boss * Mireille Juchau The Most Holy Object in the House * Fiona Wright A World of Bald White Days * Vicki Hastrich Things Seen * Helen Garner This Old Self * Tegan Bennett Daylight Vagina * Jennifer Mills Detroit, I Do Mind * Fiona McGregor The Experience Machine * Michelle de Kretser Like a Thief in the Night * Jo Chandler Grave Barrier Reef * Anna Spargo-Ryan How to Love Football * Peter Goldsworthy Review of Chorale at the Crossing by Peter Porter * Gregory Day Review of John Kinsella's 'Drowning in Wheat' * J.M. Coetzee Introduction to Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier * James Bradley David Bowie- Loving the Alien * Galarrwuy Yunupingu Rom Watangu * Richard Flanagan Notes on the Syrian Exodus * Adam Rivett 35,000 Pieces of Converted Culture * Michael Winkler The Great Red Whale * Behrouz Boochani Life on Manus- The Island of the Damned * Martin McKenzie-Murray On Mass Shootings * Guy Rundle On Modern Terrorism * Clive James Play All * Julian Burnside What Sort of Country Are We? * Kim Scott Both Hands Full
Could the dodo make a comeback? What does science tell us about the sex in Fifty Shades of Grey? Is giving up meat really the greenest option? Can you use tweets to spot a psychopath? Do birds make art? What do the Cold War and climate science have in common? And can a psychologist interpret your farts? The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 brings together great writing about life and the universe, including contributions from poets and psychologists, comedians and climate commentators, neuroscientists and novelists, star-gazers and science journalists. With a foreword by superstar comedian, musician and self-confessed science-nerd, Tim Minchin, this provocative collection is chock-full of intrigue, curiosity and controversy. Read this. Your brain will love you for it.
The annual collection – now in its tenth year – celebrating the finest voices in Australian science writing. Can fish feel pain? Does it matter if a dingo is different from a dog? Is there life in a glob of subterranean snot? Science tackles some unexpected questions. At a time when the world is buffeted by the effects of a pandemic, climate change and accelerating technology, the fruits of scientific labour and enquiry have never been more in demand. Who better to navigate us through these unprecedented days than Australia's best science writers? Now in its tenth year, this much-loved anthology selects the most riveting, poignant and entertaining science stories and essays from Australian writers, poets and scientists. In their expert hands such ordinary objects as milk and sticky tape become imbued with new meaning, while the furthest reaches of our universe are made more familiar and comprehensible. With a foreword from Nobel laureate and immunologist Peter C Doherty, this collection brings fresh perspective to the world you thought you knew.
A wide-ranging and thought-provoking exploration of the importance of long-term thinking. Humans are unique in our ability to understand time, able to comprehend the past and future like no other species. Yet modern-day technology and capitalism have supercharged our short-termist tendencies and trapped us in the present, at the mercy of reactive politics, quarterly business targets and 24-hour news cycles. It wasn't always so. In medieval times, craftsmen worked on cathedrals that would be unfinished in their lifetime. Indigenous leaders fostered intergenerational reciprocity. And in the early twentieth century, writers dreamed of worlds thousands of years hence. Now, as we face long-term challenges on an unprecedented scale, how do we recapture that far-sighted vision? Richard Fisher takes us from the boardrooms of Japan - home to some of the world's oldest businesses - to European laboratories where scientists work as custodians on centuries-long experiments. He examines the psychological biases that discourage the long view, and talks to the growing number of people from the worlds of philosophy, technology, science and the arts who are exploring smart ways to overcome them. How can we learn to widen our perception of time and honour our obligations to the lives of those not yet born?
A pioneering space archaeologist explores artifacts left behind in space and on Earth, from moon dust to Elon Musk's red sports car. Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist: she examines the artifacts of human encounters with space. These objects, left behind on Earth and in space, can be massive (dead satellites in eternal orbit) or tiny (discarded zip ties around a defunct space antenna). They can be bold (an American flag on the moon) or hopeful (messages from Earth sent into deep space). They raise interesting questions: Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman—affectionately known as “Dr Space Junk” —takes readers on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful. Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts. She shows us her own piece of space junk: a fragment of the fuel tank insulation from Skylab, the NASA spacecraft that crash-landed in Western Australia in 1979. She explains that the conventional view of the space race as “the triumph of the white, male American astronaut” seems inadequate; what really interests her, she says, is how everyday people engage with space. To an archaeologist, objects from the past are significant because they remind us of what we might want to hold on to in the future.
Robyn Williams, presenter of The Science Show on ABC Radio, reveals all in Turmoil, a searingly honest and often blackly funny reflection on his life, friends, the people he loves and loathes, and a multi-faceted career that includes over forty years on radio. Robyn writes frankly about everything, from performing with Monty Python, his impressions of fellow scientists Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, and his unique insights on climate change and the recent devaluing of science, to frugality and being treated for bowel cancer. 'An unblinking and highly readable biography by the greatest science broadcaster of our times.' — Tim Flannery
Through the richly intertwined narratives of two women from different generations, Ashley Hay, known for her “elegant prose, which draws warm and textured portraits as it celebrates the web of human stories” (New York Times Book Review) weaves an intricate, bighearted tale of the many small decisions—the invisible moments—that come to make a life. “Readers who loved the quiet introspection of Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge will enjoy the detailed emotional journeys of Hay’s characters. Their stories will linger long after the final page is turned” (Library Journal). When Elsie Gormley falls and is forced to leave her Brisbane home of sixty-two years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, eager to make the house their own. Still, Lucy can’t help but feel that she’s unwittingly stumbled into an entirely new life—new house, new city, new baby—and she struggles to navigate the journey from adventurous lover to young parent. In her nearby nursing facility, Elsie traces the years she spent in her beloved house, where she too transformed from a naïve newlywed into a wife and mother, and eventually, a widow. Gradually, the boundary between present and past becomes more porous for her, and for Lucy—because the house has secrets of its own, and its rooms seem to share with Lucy memories from Elsie’s life. Luminous and deeply affecting, A Hundred Small Lessons is a “lyrically written portrayal” (BookPage, Top Pick) of what it means to be human, and how a place can transform who we are. It’s about a house that becomes much more than a home, and the shifting identities of mother and daughter; father and son. Above all else, this is a story of the surprising and miraculous ways that our lives intersect with those who have come before us, and those who follow.
