Marilyn Lake

Marilyn Lake reviews ‘The Art of Power: My story as America’s first woman Speaker of the House’ by Nancy Pelosi

November 2024, no. 470 • 24 October 2024

As leading US historian Eric Foner wrote in his classic account, The Story of American Freedom (1999), it is the ‘story of freedom’ that conveys Americans’ favourite idea of itself. Of course, its meaning and uses change over time. It is a flexible value. We only need to look at candidates’ promises in the US election, with Kamala Harris declaring, ‘We choose freedom’ and Donald Trum ... (read more)

Marilyn Lake reviews ‘Nuked: The submarine fiasco that sank Australia’s sovereignty’ by Andrew Fowler

August 2024, no. 467 • 23 July 2024

Nuked – a compelling but depressing read – is a deeply researched and strangely suspenseful account of the AUKUS agreement struck between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and United States President Jo Biden and announced in September 2021; a deal that included supplying Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines at the staggering cost o ... (read more)

Marilyn Lake reviews ‘Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier violence and stolen Indigenous children in Australian history’ edited by A. Dirk Moses

May 2005, no. 271 • 01 May 2005

Is ‘genocide’ a useful concept for understanding colonialism and, in particular, the destruction of Aboriginal communities during the settlement of Australia? Dirk Moses, the editor of this stimulating collection of essays on Genocide and Settler Society, thinks so, but with qualifications. Many of his contributors agree, but tend to be more comfortable using the concept in its adjectival form ... (read more)

Marilyn Lake reviews 'Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the revolution', edited by Michelle Arrow

May 2023, no. 453 • 24 April 2023

When the Whitlam government was elected in 1972, women across Australia responded with elation. The Women’s Liberation Movement had helped bring Labor to power and was in turn galvanised by the programs, reforms, and appointments that began to be put in place. In Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the revolution, Michelle Arrow has assembled a splendid range of memoirs, reminiscences, and short essay ... (read more)

Marilyn Lake reviews 'Black, White and Exempt: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives under exemption' edited by Lucinda Aberdeen and Jennifer Jones

June 2021, no. 432 • 26 May 2021

In the process of British colonisation, Aboriginal people lost their country, kin, culture, and languages. They also lost their freedom. Governed after 1901 by different state and territory laws, Aboriginal peoples were subject to the direction of Chief Protectors and Protection Boards, and were told where they could live, travel, and seek employment, and whom they might marry. They were also subj ... (read more)

Marilyn Lake reviews 'Distant Sisters: Australasian women and the international struggle for the vote, 1880–1914' by James Keating

March 2021, no. 429 • 22 February 2021

In July 1894, a year after New Zealand women had gained the national right to vote (the first in the world to do so), their spokesperson Kate Sheppard prepared to address a suffrage rally in London, alongside Sir John Hall, the parliamentary sponsor of the New Zealand suffrage campaign. They took the stage in the vast Queen’s Hall at Westminster to report on their historic fourteen-year struggle ... (read more)