Jon Ronson’s new book on the masculinity crisis was sparked by his son’s strange journey to a castle in upstate New York and a series of late-night text messages.
- Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
Bret Easton Ellis’ books seem perfect for the screen, but there’s an art to translating books like The Shards and American Psycho. Which adaptations worked – or didn’t?
Fierceland, the energetic, adventurous winner of this year’s Miles Franklin, asks what it means to inherit a world already being dismantled.
These Miles Franklin shortlisted novels offer six very different answers to the question: what can Australian fiction be – and do?
Jon Ronson’s Them was published just months before the world changed on September 11 2001. Its portrait of conspiracy theorists and extremists was eerily prescient.
The concept of ‘Cultural Marxism’, which can be traced back to the 1930s, has become a staple of contemporary right-wing discourse.
May’s streaming highlights span Watergate-era journalism, an Aussie kids’ heist caper and new works from Timothée Chalamet and Richard Gadd.
Olga Tokarczuk’s 2009 novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead has now been adapted for the stage.
All The President’s Men is a masterpiece of political cinema. Watching it 50 years on, it feels less historically distant than it does disturbingly prescient.
Left-wing radicalism dominated the 1970s – until the 1979 Iranian Revolution became a catalyst for ‘a new and different energy’.
The ‘vile’ side of humanity William Golding saw in World War II haunts his famous novel. He later came to dislike the book, dismissing it as ‘boring’ and ‘crude’.
Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver turns 50 this month. It is widely regarded as one of the most important American films. It is also one of the most troubling.
This month, our experts are loving shows and films from Australia, Canada, the United States and Korea.
A century on, Battleship Potemkin’s vision of oppression, courage and collective resistance still crackles with an energy that reminds us why cinema matters.
In the 1930s, many foreign correspondents refused to cover Germany. Instead, George Ward Price got close to Hitler – and was rebuked by Churchill.
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book, 1929, takes us inside the Wall Street crash that led to the Depression. It asks: does history repeat itself? And what can we learn from it?
We found out the favourite 2025 books of 35 expert readers – and the Books & Ideas team shares our own picks, too.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom has been described by film critics as ‘essential to have seen but impossible to watch’.
With Shadow Ticket, Pynchon reminds us the line between chaos and order, corruption and truth, remains as thin, porous and perilous as ever.
Vineland is set in Reagan’s America: an era of conservative backlash and retreat from progressive ideals. Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation reflects similar trends now.
The winners of this year’s awards include celebrated novelist Michelle de Kretser, journalist Rick Morton on Robodebt and poet David Brooks.
The Sovereign Individual celebrates the instincts of the impossibly wealthy to accumulate, hoard and insulate themselves from the messier demands of mass democracy.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate their least favourite mothers.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate the most troublesome fathers.
A new biography shows how Gertrude Stein has been celebrated, sidelined and criticised over the decades – as a revolutionary genius, charlatan and Nazi collaborator.
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