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The end of the Cold War in 1991 sparked a great debate about the fate of the international order and, in particular, of the so-called Westphalian system in which nation-states were the main actors. Since the end of the bloody Wars of Religion in 1648, there has been, in short, a sort of understanding that the international system should concern itself with wars between states, not wars within states. The problem is, however, that many conflicts today belong in the second category. In its endeavours to keep the peace, the international community has to adjust to this reality. The question is how.

Here is what veteran war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett has to say about American political deliberation in the information age: ‘Government decisions are made by an inside group of Congress and the American public largely doesn’t give a damn. When they vote they don’t vote in terms of international policies; they vote in terms of local issues.’ New Zealand-born Arnett first worked in Vietnam for Associated Press, then in 1981 joined and subsequently became the voice and face of CNN. He has interviewed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. How does he explain the US myopia he diagnoses? By looking at the news sources most Americans use: ‘They get talkback radio, which is skewed to the right usually; they look at a bit of television and maybe some magazine shows, and that is it. They don’t give a shit.’ But does he blame them? No. The controversial journalist (CNN, under pressure from government, dismissed him when he fronted a programme that accused the US of using sarin gas on American defectors in Laos) blames his own profession, or at least that part of the profession with corporate clout. ‘All this is the media’s fault. It is the newspapers’ fault for not including a page or two of international news every day so that people, like it or not, are going to see it.’ Nor does Amell spare the television networks: ‘CNN should be doing more, even though it has limited viewership; it should be doing more than covering celebrity stuff now, which it does domestically. Fox is a joke. There is an ignorance that is growing in America and it is frightening.’

Any novelist prepared to name one of his characters ‘Fish Lamb’ and to have that character come back from the dead is obviously interested in Christianity on some level. It is also true that several of the big themes that run through Tim Winton ‘s fiction – guilt atonement, forgiveness – have a religious flavour. Nevertheless, Winton’s symbolism tends to have an open-ended quality. When his characters experience moments of spiritual awareness, moments that Winton has said are meant to be taken literally, these experiences are often depicted as a nonspecific form of mysticism or pantheism.

His handsome and expanded edition of John Carroll’s Humanism (1993) is given added weight by an epilogue about the meaning of September 11. It can now be read alongside his recent The Western Dreaming (2001), which tried to chart a way out of the spiritual atrophy of late modernity in which, as this book argues, the unfolding of humanism from the Renaissance on has left us – with its egoistic individualism, its rationalistic blindness to limits and its rancorous hostility to the sacred.

This is a big, bold book with an enormous scope: almost two centuries of sex, birth control and heterosexual relations. It is an ambitious project, but Hera Cook has produced an intriguing mix of broad survey and close, detailed analysis. The basic premise of The Long Sexual Revolution is that sex and reproduction were intertwined. ln many histories, sexuality and reproduction are discussed as if the two were unrelated, but Cook indicates the ways that contraception and control over reproduction were crucial to both sexual pleasure and sexual change.

For those of us drawn to tell the stories of the past, seventeenth-century England has a great deal to recommend it. It is distant enough to offer the frissons of historical exotica, yet so close that the minds of the time are recognisable to us. In addition, it is hard to think of a period in one country so packed with incident. Where else, in a single lifespan, can a novelist convincingly have his character experience wars – both foreign and domestic – fire, pestilence, regicide and Restoration?

This, of course, is literary Archibald Prize and, just like the art competition that annually sets Sydney’s cognoscenti abuzz, it will provide grist for plenty of arguments. Which of these profiles catches a passably good likeness of its subject? In which are the brush-strokes boldest and most compelling?

For more than twenty years, Bruce Ruxton was Victorian president of the RSL, and one of the best-known names in Australia. ‘Best-known’ does not necessarily mean ‘best-loved’; few public figures cut so clear a chasm between supporters and detractors. Knowing Ruxton well over many years, let me declare that on the day I meet another man who equals him for kindness of heart and dedication to the welfare of others, I’ll take my hat off to the second man, too.

Frederick Septimus Kelly – pianist, composer, Olympic oarsman, gallant officer and Australian – was killed at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre during the final battle of the Somme on 13 November 1916. Only a few weeks before, he had been enjoying ‘the most delightful still bright autumn weather’ and the unexpected loveliness of the French countryside, strangely removed from the booming guns of war. Kelly was then thirty-five. One of the last men to leave the Gallipoli peninsula in January 1916, his bravery in the front trenches before the evacuation had won him the Distinguished Service Cross. As a boy in Sydney, he had demonstrated a precocious musical talent, ‘playing Mozart and early Beethoven piano sonatas before he could stretch the octave’. At the time of his death, this gifted man was moving into what promised to be a new period of fertility and confidence as a composer and performer.