NONFICTION
The Age
Saturday September 26, 2009
Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed Matt Peacock ABC $35 THE Hardie case is probably the most notorious in Australian corporate history, and this damning investigation by ABC journalist Peacock pulls no punches €” as the title indicates. This is highly researched investigative journalism that involves, among other things, a vast number of interviews with former Hardie workers and key players in the whole sorry saga. The emblematic figure running through it all is Bernie Banton, who worked for Hardie in the '60s and '70s and became a national figure when he contracted cancer and sought compensation. Peacock writes ". . . the highest echelons in James Hardie knew of mesothelioma and the dangers of asbestos two years before Banton began to work for the company." During this time asbestos dust could be up to four inches deep on the factory floor and sometimes used for "snow fights". This is a dramatic tale, the writing clear, precise, yet moving.Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia Ross Fitzgerald and Trevor L. Jordon ABC $32.99 IT MAY surprise many Australians to learn that we're actually not the pack of boozers we might think we are. And the same may be said of the popular caricatures of us as a country divided between boozers and wowsers. Most Australians, says the authors, fall moderately in between. This is a very readable, dare I say sober (it's the kind of book that invites bad puns) history of the country that focuses on the role of drinking, from our very boozy beginnings in Botany Bay to such pivotal events as the introduction of 6 o'clock closing in 1915-16 €” and the 6 o'clock swill €” to its repeal in the 1960s. It also looks at the distinctions between types of alcohol €” and the image of wine as civilised and civilising. But it's not just the past, the authors are also mindful of the community cost of alcohol, binge drinking, alcopops and government attempts to curb it.Crunch Time Tony Kevin Scribe $32.95 FOR years the ideas of revolutionary British economist John Maynard Keynes were consigned to the wheelie-bin of history. Then came the financial crisis, the crash. The myth of the self-regulating market place crashed too, governments started spending to save economies and suddenly, to paraphrase Mr Rudd, everybody was a Keynesian. At one point in this examination of what it means to be Keynesian these days author Tony Kevin, a former ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, poses the question; What would Keynes say to today's leaders if we could transport him into our world in a Doctor Who tardis? Keynes would not, Kevin argues, be shunting the critical question of global warming to the sidelines. Today's leaders should be drawing on Keynes to redefine economic policy, especially environmentally unsustainable notions of economic growth. Also contains an excellent potted introduction to Keynes' ideas.PICK OF THE WEEKThe Thirty Six Siegmund Siegreich Vintage $34.95 THE 36 of the title refers to the 36 righteous people who, according to the kabbalah, sustain the world and also appear and help "in times of extreme need". Siegreich escaped German execution with the help of an old man beside him who his mother was convinced was one of the 36. From a well-to-do Polish Jewish family, he was 15 when the Germans invaded. Suddenly they were refugees, in constant danger. This is, among other things, a compelling documentation of the sheer brutality of the German invasion and the random nature of events, on the street one minute, facing a firing squad the next. He lived through the ghetto, joined the partisans, finished in a labour camp sabotaging production of German bullets and survived it all with the help of the young woman who became his wife. Harrowing, deeply sad, but triumphant, Siegreich means "victorious".
© 2009 The Age
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