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**The ABR Podcast**

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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The red thread: Xi Jinping’s ideology of power

by Neil Thomas

This week on The ABR Podcast, Neil Thomas reviews On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd. Thomas explains that even China watchers find it hard to be clear on the thoughts and plans of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. They disagree, he tells us, on basic, critical questions, such as for how long Xi will rule. ‘Enter Kevin Rudd’, Thomas writes. ‘In his latest book, former prime minister Kevin Rudd adds a worthy new chapter to his life of public service, digesting thousands of pages of “Xi Jinping Thought” so that you do not have to’. Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington DC. Here is Neil Thomas with 'The red thread: Xi Jinping's ideology of power' by Neil Thomas, published in the December issue of ABR.

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‘We right to go?’

by Australian Book Review •

The ABR Podcast

This week on The ABR Podcast Johanna Leggatt reviews Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden. She quotes from the book: ‘There will be another pandemic. It might not happen for another century, or it might happen very soon.’ Johanna Leggatt is a Melbourne-based writer and journalist. Listen to Johanna Leggatt’s “‘We right to go?’ Heeding the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic”, published in the October issue of ABR.

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Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden

by Johanna Leggatt •

October 2024, no. 469

Johanna Leggatt reviews ‘Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race’ by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden

The Covid-19 pandemic has left its mark on all of us. How could it not? The shuttered small businesses; the warring states; the spectre of aged care residents, hands pressed against glass, unable to touch or receive relatives. The Centrelink queues, the taped-up playgrounds, the closed borders. The stranded cruise ships, the panic buying of toilet paper, the unrelenting and crushing boredom of our four walls. Personally, I can’t see a North Face jacket without a visceral flashback to our erstwhile Victorian premier and his trademark press conference opener: ‘We right to go?’ The desire to forget all of this, to move on from the pandemic, is what makes Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race such an important contribution to the literature of Covid-19 post-mortems.

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