This week on The ABR Podcast, Timothy J. Lynch reviews Reagan: His life and legend, by Max Boot. While there have Reagan biographies before, Lynch describes Max Boot’s as ‘the most readable’. Lynch writes: ‘The weight of the book, its ten-year writing span, its extensive interviews, its adulation from legacy media, all suggest the defining biography of the most important president of my lifetime. And yet, I ended my summer break in Boot’s company unconvinced.’ Timothy J. Lynch is Professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne and his latest book is In the Shadow of the Cold War: American foreign policy from George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump. Here is Timothy J Lynch with ‘Reagan’s nemesis? The most readable biography of Ronald Reagan’, published in the March issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature a short story from the ABR Archive. The story, ‘A Body of Water’ by Else Fitzgerald, was commended in the 2011 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize. It opens in the desolate, quiet space of a former steel town on the Franklin River. Fitzgerald writes: ‘The town hunkers on the southernmost tip of a cruel spit of land stretching down into the Bite, surrounded by the cold ocean.’ Listen to Else Fitzgerald with ‘A Body of Water’, first published in ABR in 2012 and now part of ABR’s extensive digital archive going back to 1978 – all available to subscribers.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Christopher Allen reviews James Fairfax: Portrait of a collector in eleven objects by Alexander Edward Gilly. James Fairfax, who was born in 1933 and died in 2017, was born into the ‘greatest press dynasty Australia had yet seen’. Christopher Allen is the national art critic for The Australian. Listen to Christopher Allen’s ‘“Subject to his birth”: The biography of a prince’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature a short story from the ABR archive. The story, ‘Joan Mercer’s Fertile Head’ by S.J. Finn, was commended in the 2018 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize. (The 2025 ABR Jolley Short Story Prize is now open!) S.J. Finn is an Australian writer based in Melbourne. Listen to ‘Joan Mercer’s Fertile Head’, first published in ABR in 2018 and now part of ABR’s extensive digital archive going back to 1978.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Matthew Lamb reviews Character Limit: How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter, as told by award-winning investigative journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. Noting Musk’s tendency to favour ‘the virtual over the physical world’, the book gives a ‘blow-by-blow’ account of Musk’s shortcomings while leading X. Matthew Lamb is a writer and the author of Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths. Listen to Matthew Lamb’s ‘Let That Sink In!: Fantasy without consequence at Twitter’ published in the January-February issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, historian Mark Finnane asks: ‘who gets the right to speak on matters of research within a tradition of empirical scholarship?’ Mark Finnane is a Professor of History at Griffith University and has published widely on Australian and Irish history. Listen to Mark Finnane’s ‘Citational Justice: A revolution in research practice?’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Georgina Arnott discusses the dilemmas of writing an entry on Judith Wright for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Georgina Arnott is the author of The Unknown Judith Wright, editor of Judith Wright: Selected Writings, and Assistant Editor at ABR. Listen to Georgina Arnott’s ‘“Shimmering multiple and multitude”: Keeping up with Judith Wright’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we feature the 2025 Peter Porter Prize shortlisted poems, as read by the five poets. Now in its twenty-first year, the Porter Prize is one of Australia’s most lucrative and respected poetry awards. It honours the life and work of the great Australian poet Peter Porter, a contributor to ABR for many years. All poets writing in English are eligible to enter.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Toby Davidson marks the centenary of Francis Webb with an essay on the poet. Toby Davidson is the editor of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems and a senior lecturer at Macquarie University. Listen to Toby Davidson with ‘The gold standard: The centenary of Francis Webb’, published in the January-February issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast James Ley reviews Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. For Ley, it is her most ambitious novel to date. James Ley is an essayist and literary critic. Listen to James Ley with ‘“Futile rage at nothing”: Sally Rooney’s most ambitious work to date’, published in the December issue of ABR.