It’s been a busy year for everyone in government and the public sector, so we hope you are able to take some time off over Christmas and New Year. Wherever you are, you’ll need something to read and the ANZSOG team has put together a reading list to help learn something new.
The biggest stories of the year have been the inexorable rise of AI and digital technology, and the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency. The list covers both, as well as history, geography, public administration, First Nations and some fiction that sheds light on our current society.
Non-fiction
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Parental anxiety about kids and their damn phones has led Australia to attempt a world first ban on social media accounts for people aged under 16. This book outlines the science that makes a strong case that the social shift from a ‘play-based’ childhood to a ‘phone-based’ one causing an epidemic of teenage mental illness across the globe, and offers a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.
Your Face Belongs To Us by Kashmir Hill
Can we preserve the right to privacy in a tech-based world? This disturbing book raises the possibility that technology may have already answered that question in the negative. Telling the story of a US start-up developed an app with the potential to identify anyone whose photo has appeared anywhere on the internet, its uptake by law enforcement and its likely long-term impact on how we live.
Co-intelligence: living and working with AI by Ethan Mollick
Technology can’t be all bad though. This wide-ranging book takes an optimistic look at the potential of Artificial Intelligence to augment human potential and creativity. It focuses on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world, urging us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach, and why it is imperative that we master that skill.
A Radically Different World: Preparing for Climate Change by Jonathan Boston
New Zealand author Jonathan Boston provides an urgent exploration of our future in the face of climate change. Focusing on the adaptation challenges, he assesses the impact on communities, the need for robust relocation policies and a fair and effective compensation scheme.
Black Lives, White Law – Russell Marks
A frontline account of the Indigenous incarceration epidemic in Australia which applies a sense of history to the operations of the institutions of criminal justice – the web of laws and courts and police and prisons – and how that system interacts with First Nations people and communities. Why have imprisonment rates increased in recent years? Is this situation fair? Almost everyone agrees that it’s not, and this book is a systematic attempt to address what could be done.
Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions – Clare Wright
In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born. Naku Dharuk tells an overlooked story of a seminal document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it, as well as a picture of the ancient and enduring culture of First Nations.
Atua Wāhine: The ancient wisdom of Māori goddesses – Hana Tapiata
Atua wāhine are the Māori goddesses who make up the world around us: earth, fire, water, the moon and more. This book explains how the ancient wisdom of these Māori goddesses can help you navigate the modern world. From the earth mother, Papatūānuku, who sustains and nurtures us to the goddess of peace, Hinepūtehue, who transformed pain into beauty, and the misunderstood goddess of the underworld, Hinenuitepō, who created purpose and enlightenment from betrayal – this book is a treasure of knowledge and insight.
Cue the Sun! –Emily Nussbaum
How did the cultural juggernaut of American television make its turn away from drama to reality TV? And what were the consequences for the rest of the world? This absorbing book traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor.
Pathways to Positive Public Administration: An International Perspective – Edited by Patrick Lucas, Tina Nabatchi , Janine O’Flynn, and Paul ’t Hart
Discussion of public administration is skewed towards failures, which can lead to underestimating the power of government to innovate and benefit society. This book, edited by ANZSOG-linked academics and available for free, covers the globe to look at how and why good public administration has been able to solve difficult problems the market couldn’t.
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China – Yuan Yang
Exploring China’s rapid social changes through the stories of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, this book looks at their live hopes and dreams and gives shape to stories that usually go untold. Through the experiences of these factory workers, pig farmers and activists, it unearths the identity and complexities of modern Chinese society.
The Forever War :America’s never-ending conflict with itself – Nick Bryant
America’s political polarisation and turmoil have captured the headlines this year. This book argues that the roots of Trumpism lie in its past, and that violence – from the American Civil War through to JFK and the inner-city race riots of the late ’60s, up to the more recent school shootings and the murder of George Floyd – should sadly not be seen as abnormalities, and that the compromises made to hold the union together post-Civil War have never been resolved.
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders – John Elledge
Why does land-locked Bolivia have a navy? Why do both Egypt and Sudan both refuse to claim Bir Tawil? This engaging book answers those questions and uses brief stories about borders – some rooted in geography and some arbitrary lines on maps – to explain how political identities are shaped and the deep and quirky aspects of history.
Fiction and Memoir
Juice – Tim Winton
The latest book from one of Australia’s most acclaimed authors looks forward to possible climate-change induced social breakdown, and a time where life is reduced to survival. Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work….
The Echoes – Evie Wyld
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. Miles Franklin Award winning author Evie Wyld tells a story spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them
Fragile Creatures – Khin Myint
Khin’s sister Theda has a strange illness, and a euthanasia drug locked in a box under her bed. Her doctor thinks her problem is purely physical, and so does she, but Khin is not so sure. He knows what they both went through growing up in Perth – it wasn’t welcoming back then for a Burmese-Australian family. This unique memoir explores racism, mental illness, masculinity, and the challenge of balancing our responsibility for others with what we owe ourselves
Lioness – Emily Perkins
This New Zealand novel looks at the state of modern post-feminist womanhood. From humble beginnings, Therese has let herself grow used to a life of luxury after marrying into an empire-building family. But when rumours of corruption gather around her husband’s latest development, she begins to look at her privileged and insular world with new eyes. Meanwhile her neighbour Claire believes she’s discovered the secret to living with freedom and authenticity, freeing herself from the mundanity of domesticity.
All Fours – Miranda July
Middle-age is the new youth, and this highly-acclaimed novel tells the story of a 45-year-old semi-famous artist who announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. Exploring her reinvention, sexual and romantic reawakening and quest for freedom, this novel has struck a chord in the US.