Tag: Book Reviews

American Pentimento by Patricia Seed

One of the great frustrations of my life is trying to convince people the history of land use planning is a topic of great interest. I’m told I make it sound wilfully boring; that no one wants to hear about Robert Hooke’s regulatory reforms or the origins of the Plumbing Code. By contrast, it’s comparatively… Continue reading American Pentimento by Patricia Seed

W.E.H Stanner’s ‘The Yirrkala Land Case: A Dress Rehearsal’: Common Law, Terra Nullius and the Gove Land Rights Case

Born in 1905, William Stanner was an anthropologist who spent his career critiquing what he called “the great Australian silence” around Aboriginal culture and land rights. He’s worth reading as one of the first white people who saw the British presence in Australia as invasive rather than civilizing, and this anthology includes most of his… Continue reading W.E.H Stanner’s ‘The Yirrkala Land Case: A Dress Rehearsal’: Common Law, Terra Nullius and the Gove Land Rights Case

On the Subconscious City: Top Ten Books on City Regulation

In the last few decades, there’s been a real interest in urban design, yet its ugly cousin, regulation, remains largely unmentioned. To this end, Richard Florida’s Creative City is a best seller, yet the Building Code of Australia is now being given away for free. It’s odd what we value. This isn’t new; people remember… Continue reading On the Subconscious City: Top Ten Books on City Regulation

The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

The first book I read last year was Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset. From there, I went through the full Eagle of the Ninth and ended with the King Arthur Trilogy. I read a lot of great books last year, and books aimed for my own age group, but rediscovering Sutcliff’s historical fiction was a… Continue reading The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Last year my esteemed publisher, John Hunter, recommended Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. In return, I’ve so far failed to produce a second book and most of my writing is now absorbed into the thrills and spills of local government. Hadrian was, of course, one of the great emperors of Ancient Rome. Today’s he’s most… Continue reading Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt

I read Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem right before I stared working in the fast paced world of local government and her analysis of institutionalization was pretty terrifying. There’s a great interview with her here, opening with a particularly stupid question about whether it’s possible to be both a woman and a philosopher. In Between Past… Continue reading Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt

Under Another Sky by Charlotte Higgins

Just before I flew to London, I read Under Another Sky: Journeys Through Roman Britain, in which Charlotte Higgins documents her Grand Tour of Roman monuments in the UK. When I arrived, I enthusiastically followed in her footsteps, searching a car park for remnants of the Roman wall, visiting the amphitheatre’s ruins underneath the Guildhall,… Continue reading Under Another Sky by Charlotte Higgins

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

There’s a review by Laura Millar, published in The Guardian on February 11th 2015, that describes this book as “strenuously quirky”. Millar didn’t like it, writing: Eccentricities, as uncountable as the sands of the Sahara, drift and blow through this book, piling up in dunes that must be scaled by characters and readers alike. She… Continue reading The First Bad Man by Miranda July