Showing results by narrator "Marie Walker" in All Categories

In the third Quarterly Essay of 2004, Margaret Simons takes a long hard look at Mark Latham, the self-proclaimed "club buster" and the man who would be prime minister. Few doubt Latham's intelligence and ambition, but what will this amount to in government? Simons argues that if Labor is elected, it will not be "business as usual". Rather we can expect a reformist government in the spirit - if not the letter - of Latham's political tutor, Gough Whitlam. It is also likely to be a government that has little time for the totemic issues of the Labor elites.

In the second Quarterly Essay of 2005, Gail Bell investigates Australia's depression epidemic. Why, she wonders, do well over a million Australians now take anti-depressant drugs? This is a fresh, frank and independent look at the depression culture and the move to medicalise sadness. Bell examines how the prescription culture operates, scrutinising the role of big drug companies and GPs and talking to those who take - and don't take - the new anti-depressants, from anxious students to lonely retirees.

This compilation comprises more stories of slave auctions and training compounds; abduction and forced submission; of a life of sexual servitude - where you must serve your Master well...or else suffer the punishing consequences.

Where were you when America elected Barack Obama? Kate Jennings was in New York, eyes wide open, completing her take on an amazing time: "the run-up to the election... a time when every day felt like a year and we became slightly crazed from worry but also mesmerised, unable to switch off the cable news stations, obsessively tracking the DOW, VIX, LIBOR spreads, polls in red states. So much at stake. American Revolution is a dazzling and perceptive look at the United States between hope and despair.

In Love & Money, Anne Manne looks at the religion of work - its high priests and sacrificial lambs. As family life and motherhood feel the pressure of the market, she asks whether the chief beneficiaries are self-interested employers and child-care corporations. Manne argues that devaluing motherhood - still central to so many women's lives - has done feminism few favours. For women on the frontline of the work-centred society, it has made for hard choices. Manne eloquently tells what happened when feminism adapted itself to the free market.

Maddy Tyler, a sophisticated art gallery owner, is driven, overworked and cynical about love. When a sudden crisis makes her re-evaluate her life, she impulsively buys a retreat in the country. Fraser O'Neill, her rural neighbour, is an easy-going widower of simple tastes and definitely not Maddy's 'type'. Still, a comfortable weekend affair is another story...and Maddy of course will be in control. But nothing is ever that simple, and Maddy is forced to face the demons of her past and make a heartbreaking choice.

Heli doesn't trust her Doctor, or the promise to "fix" her. She's fighting to hold on to the parts of herself she's come to love, even as the lines between truth and reality blur. And in a place where nothing is as it seems, who wants to be normal anyway?

Marnie, Tina and Lee are in their 20s when they share a house in Bondi. Each is running away from something: Marnie, wild, privileged and impetuous, is escaping from the stifling conservatism of Melbourne - and a father who will mark her relationship with men forever. Tina, driven to leave Brisbane and her migrant background, promises herself she'll own a home on the harbour by the time she's 30. But what if the price of success is too high? Lee dreams of showbiz fame to save her from suffocating life in the suburbs of Newcastle.