Books

Reviews

5000 Years of Civilisation Laid Bare

Review: Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapses, Luke Kemp, Penguin In his book of collapsology, Luke Kemp turns much received wisdom about barbarism and civilisation on its head. It’s the product of an enormous amount of research and contemplation, and it’s a goliath of a book, partly because he tends to repeat […]

Nick Mattiske · 28 April 2026

Reviews

Questioning Christianity Today

Review: Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever, Lamorna Ash, Bloomsbury We hear much about simultaneous decline and revival in Western Christianity but there isn’t another book on contemporary Christianity quite like Lamorna Ash’s. The writer of a previous book on the Cornish fishing industry, in this new book she likewise takes a very personal approach, immersing […]

Nick Mattiske · 22 April 2026

Reviews

The Distraction of the AI Induced Apocalypse

Reviews: This is for Everyone, Tim Berners-Lee, Macmillan | The AI Con, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, Bodley Head It may be hyperbolic to compare Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, to God, but I’m not the first to do so, and hear me out: Berners-Lee created a whole world that was […]

Nick Mattiske · 7 April 2026

Reviews

Anxiety and the Human Condition

Review: Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide, Samir Chopra, Princeton University Press Just like how each generation, as they mature, thinks the youth of today have no respect, it seems that every generation thinks it is a particularly anxious one, though there may be good reason to think that in the current age anxiety is on the […]

Nick Mattiske · 31 March 2026

Reviews

Are We Really Free to Choose?

Review: The Age of Choice, Sophia Rosenfeld, Princeton Five hundred years ago most people didn’t get to choose their education, church, work, where they lived, who they were ruled by, and how many children they had. Choices in food were limited (usually by the seasons), as was the information about the rest of the world. […]

Nick Mattiske · 26 March 2026

Reviews

Taking Stock of the Wreckage Rock Stars Leave in Their Wake

Review: Mixtapes and MTV: Triumphs and Tragedies of 1980s Music, Tony Wellington, Monash University Press In his book about music in the 1970s, Tony Wellington wrote about how the music we listen to in our youth becomes the comparison point for all subsequent music we hear. So, this book on the 1980s is primarily for […]

Nick Mattiske · 18 March 2026

Reviews

Is America a ‘failed experiment’?

Reviews: The Shortest History of the United States, Don Watson, Black Inc. | Greyhound, Joanna Pocock, Fitzcarraldo With the USA descending into fascism and international aggression, and Trump violently suppressing dissent and enriching his own coffers, one of the questions is whether this current iteration is a unique aberration or whether Trump is, as Don […]

Nick Mattiske · 10 March 2026

Reviews

Can Shame Be a Good Thing?

Review: A Philosophy of Shame, Frederic Gros, Verso Frederic Gros suggests that shame is the ‘major emotion of our time’, which may seem odd since contemporary society seems filled with ‘shameless’ individuals, as Barack Obama has just pointed out in relation to Trump’s unapologetic racism. But there is also a push in the opposite direction […]

Nick Mattiske · 2 March 2026

Reviews

A Simple Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Book Review: The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins There’s something refreshing about a self-help concept that doesn’t ask you to overhaul your entire life, wake up at 5am, or manifest your way into emotional stability. Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory offers something far simpler and arguably far more powerful: the idea that peace […]

Aditee Vora · 17 February 2026

Reviews

The Pioneer of Probability Theory

Review: Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World, Graham Tomlin, Hodder Seventeenth-century polymath Blaise Pascal is now most famous for his thought experiment dubbed ‘the Wager’, whereby he argues that it’s a good bet to have faith in God and potentially avoid eternity in Hell, rather than bet on there being no afterlife. […]

Nick Mattiske · 13 February 2026

Reviews

A Stroll Through Sydney’s Layers

Review: Walking Sydney: Fifteen Walks with a City’s Writers, Belinda Castles, Newsouth When we lived in Balmain years ago, my wife and I would walk from Gladstone Park on Darling St, over the hill and along past the container port, winding through streets of terraces and the occasional, larger colonial mansion, up old steps only […]

Nick Mattiske · 5 February 2026

Reviews

Holding Pride and Truth Together

Review: The Shortest History of Australia, Mark McKenna, Black Inc and Australia: A History, Tony Abbott, HarperCollins If you are thinking of reading Tony Abbott’s history of Australia, allow me to humbly suggest an alternative. Abbott says in the introduction to his book that it is one that ‘should never have been needed’. It isn’t […]

Nick Mattiske · 22 January 2026

Reviews

Power-ful Art

Review: J W Power: An Australian avant-gardist, Ann Stephen and A D S Donaldson, National Library of Australia J W Power is – or at least was – one of our most neglected artists, yet one of the most important, because of the innovative quality of his art, his influence on European artists through his […]

Nick Mattiske · 21 January 2026

Reviews

Dreams of Mars

Review: The Martians, David Baron, Liveright Publishing Had you been an American living at the turn of the twentieth century, you may have believed, incredibly, that there was intelligent life on Mars, confirmed by astronomers who observed geometric canals on the planet’s surface and popularised by the newspapers, and that efforts were being made to […]

Nick Mattiske · 13 January 2026

Reviews

The Uneasy Faith of England

Reviews: The English Soul: Faith of a Nation, Peter Ackroyd, Reaktion In Peter Ackroyd’s history of the English and Christianity, he emphasises a kind of pragmatic and reserved Christianity, exemplified by the Elizabethan attempt at a ‘middle way’ and the quiet country parishes of George Herbert or Ronald Blythe. As comfortable as this may seem, […]

Nick Mattiske · 8 January 2026

Reviews

“I’m not that kind of Christian”: Rebuilding our Faith after ‘deconstruction’

A New Testament scholar’s new book to be released in February tackles the subject of how to rebuild faith after ‘deconstruction.’ Dr James McGrath is a New Testament scholar based at Butler University in Indianna. He told Insights his new book was about how to realign your Christian faith after your worldview changes. “The term […]

Jonathan Foye · 7 January 2026