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Mungo MacCallum (1941–2020)

Författare till The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers

20+ verk 338 medlemmar 8 recensioner

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The Best Australian Essays 2002 (2002) — Bidragsgivare — 22 exemplar
The Best Australian Essays 2001 (2001) — Bidragsgivare — 20 exemplar

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A short book with a chapter for each of the Prime Ministers of Australia. Less space is devoted to the earlier prime ministers than to the latter - where the author goes into a bit too much detail.
 
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robeik | 1 annan recension | May 28, 2023 |
Mungo MacCallum has been writing on Australian politics with his sharp wit for generations now so I am thankful that he has taken the time to write precises on each of what was then the twenty-seven Prime Ministers of Australia (the 2012 publication means we only get 1/2 of the stories of Rudd and Gillard and, thankfully for some readers no doubt, none of Abbott).

MacCullum doesn't dish too much dirt on the PMs and in the end there's not much I didn't already know, but he writes in such an entertaining way that I breezed through "The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely" in a couple of sittings. And while MacCullum has his personal favorites amongst the 27, it's only with John Howard that his personal dislike of the subject comes through.

If, for whatever reason, you want to become more au fait with the characters that at one stage or another held Australia's top job, this is as good a start as any.
… (mer)
 
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MiaCulpa | 1 annan recension | Aug 3, 2015 |
Described as "A memoir of Politics, Pig-outs and Pickles", this book is written by Mungo MacCallum, an Australian political journalist with a reputation for wit and controversial comment. The book is a food-related series of remembrances of things past, which includes quite a lot of recipes and very little politics. For that reason I was disappointed as I'd hoped for a few more expose type anecdotes about political pigouts. Also I didn't particularly like the consistently ultra blokey (and occasionally sexist) tone in which it was written and the constant instructions to "grab" this, or "hurl" that or "chuck" some of something else became a bit tedious after a while.
Very light reading ..
… (mer)
 
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Anne_Green | Apr 7, 2014 |
http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/mungo-on-kevin/

This essay is mainly interested in the nature of Kevin Rudd's appeal to voters. It discusses policy, of course. It also quotes poetry, mainly bush verse, including a savage parody of 'Clancy of the Overflow':

He was poisoning the water when he chanced upon a slaughter
So he joined in patriotically to massacre and rape
And he sees the vision splendid of the native problem ended
and a land made safe for cattle from Tasmania to the Cape.

It takes the odd potshot at contrarian rightwing columnists. It produces some fabulous quotes, including for example a definition of a modern progressive as 'a fella that stumbles forward every time somebody shoves him'. (Sadly there are no footnotes, so we often don't know what wits are being quoted – I'm guessing Mungo himself did the Paterson parody.)

That is to say, there's a lot to enjoy. There's also substance – of an airy sort. It discusses Rudd's policies, and his largely successful response of the Great Recession (as Robert Manne calls it later in the book), but mainly it argues that he taps into some deeply held myths about what it means to be Australian – egalitarianism, fairness, the larrikin–dutiful citizen dichotomy, that reluctant progressiveness, 'fervent, if understated, nationalism'. 'For all his nerdiness and prolixity,' MacCallum concludes,

there is something very Australian about him, and the voters recognise it. In a totally unexpected way, Rudd has given them back their Lucky Country – and this time not in a spirit of irony, but one of self-belief.

Hmmm ... But I enjoyed the ride.

This issue also includes the 2009 Quarterly Essay Lecture, 'Is Neo-Liberalism finished?' a search for the meaning of the Great Recession by Robert Manne. The lecture isn't as much fun as the title essay, covers some of the same ground, occasionally manages to be incomprehensible when explaining how the Great Recession came about. Where MacCallum takes cheerfully bitter potshots, Manne eviscerates in earnest.

And then there's correspondence about Noel Pearson's Radical Hope which over all confirms that Pearson's conversation is mainly with conservative white leaders, but also shows him as eager to do more than simply pontificate as a lone voice.
… (mer)
½
 
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shawjonathan | Dec 4, 2009 |

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Statistik

Verk
20
Även av
2
Medlemmar
338
Popularitet
#70,454
Betyg
3.8
Recensioner
8
ISBN
43

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