Cover Image: The Conversation Yearbook 2017

The Conversation Yearbook 2017

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Member Reviews

If you want to throw all your stereotypes out about Australians read "The Conversation Year Book". It gives a surprisingly relevant and unique look at some of the worlds most pressing problems. Particularly those articles regarding technology and China are very much worth the read. Australia has a unique and very important role in the global discourse on political and social trends as this book probes.

The Far East for most of the West is the Near North for Australia and this book has a very sobering message for those nations that are becoming ever more dependent on the good will of China. Australian views on Technology and social trends give a great sense of a society coming to grips with many of the problems faced all over the world. From an Australian point of you the reader will discover some surprising and hopeful ideas.

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A great collection of essays, fact checks and opinion pieces from The Conversation. The forward discusses what The Conversation’s aim as an organisation is – to create science backed, evidence-based material for the wider community to reference – and this collection shows the breadth and quality of their work.

The topics covered here are wide-ranging, as you would both hope and expect, covering everything from climate change, to space, to Australian politics and international affairs, historic and contemporary Indigenous topics, economics, to grammar.

Some stand out pieces for me were:

If defeat comes, what then for the Liberals’ succession? – Michelle Grattan

The state of the nation starts in your street – Hugh Mackay

Managing Australian foreign policy in a Chinese world – Stephen FitzGerald

The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid – Ian J. McNiven

Why bad moods are good for you: the surprising benefits of sadness – Joseph Paul Forga

For renters, making housing more affordable is just the start – Emma Power

Why do we still make girls wear skirts and dresses as school uniform? – Amanda Mergler

Hazelwood power station: from modernist icon to greenhouse pariah – Erik Eklund

While not all of the pieces in this collection grabbed me – a bit ask for any broad-ranging anthology – I think Watson did a good job selecting a good range of material. There should be something here that is of interest to everyone.

In some ways this yearbook is a snapshot of pertinent themes from 2017: the future trajectory of the Liberal party, the state of Australia’s housing market, climate change, increasing partisanship in Australian politics, the rise of China and Australia’s changing relationship with the US all get a look in.

I did find that the eight chapter categories for the pieces didn’t quite hold together thematically a lot of the time for me, and didn’t flow particularly well. It isn’t a big problem considering the quality of the pieces themselves, but it did prevent the collection from flowing as well as it could for me.

The pieces themselves are also quite short and merit reading in short gaps during the day rather than one big sitting, which is refreshing.

Worth a look for anyone looking for a good, Australian-focused collection of evidence-based articles on a range of topical contemporary issues.

An advance copy of this book was kindly provided by Melbourne University Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review..

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