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Seumas Spark

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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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Neil Thomas

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.

 

Recent episodes:

'I Wonder': The life and work of Ken Inglis edited by Peter Browne and Seumas Spark

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May 2020, no. 421
Nicholas Brown reviews ‘I Wonder’: The life and work of Ken Inglis' edited by Peter Browne and Seumas Spark

I am ashamed to recall that when our high-school history class in the late 1970s was set K.S. Inglis’s The Australian Colonists (1974), I – and I don’t think I was alone – didn’t quite know what to do with a text that focused on ‘ceremonies, monuments and rhetoric’, one that began as a study on 26 January 1788 but worked back as an historical enquiry from 25 April 1915.

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Dunera Lives: Volume 1: A visual history by Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark, and Jay Winter with Carol Bunyan

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September 2018, no. 404
Astrid Edwards reviews 'Dunera Lives: Volume 1: A visual history' by Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark, and Jay Winter with Carol Bunyan

Dunera Lives: A visual history is a compelling examination of the experiences of Britain’s enemy aliens within Australia’s detention centres in World War II. This evocative visual narrative of primary sources, compiled by the late Ken Inglis with Seumas Spark and Jay Winter, assisted by Carol Bunyan ...

... (read more)

Australia’s Northern Shield?: Papua New Guinea and the defence of Australia since 1880 by Bruce Hunt

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Online Exclusives
Seumas Spark reviews 'Australia’s Northern Shield? Papua New Guinea and the defence of Australia since 1880' by Bruce Hunt

The subtitle of this book is Papua New Guinea and the Defence of Australia since 1880. Michael Somare, first prime minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG), is at the centre of the cover photograph, and the cover design uses red, yellow, and black, the colours of the PNG flag. Yet for much of this book PNG is at the periphery of ...

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The Shadow Men: The leaders who shaped the Australian Army from the Veldt to Vietnam edited by Craig Stockings and John Connor

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September 2017, no. 394
Seumas Spark reviews 'The Shadow Men: The leaders who shaped the Australian Army from the Veldt to Vietnam' edited by Craig Stockings and John Connor

First, a quibble. In the first paragraph of his introduction, John Connor writes that few Australians could ‘name a significant figure of the Australian Army’, John Monash and Simpson (and his donkey) aside. I am less sure. A generation after his death, Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop remains a familiar name. Two of the past three governors-general, including the incu ...

Anzac Day Then and Now edited by Tom Frame

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June–July 2016, no. 382
Seumas Spark reviews 'Anzac Day Then and Now' edited by Tom Frame

I hazard a guess that more books are published on Anzac – the day, the legend, the myth – than on any other subject in Australian history. The least of these ...

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A Little America in Western Australia: The US Naval Communication Station at North West Cape and the Founding of Exmouth by Anthony J. Barker and Michael L. Ondaatje

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March 2016, no. 379
Seumas Spark reviews 'A Little America in Western Australia' by Anthony J. Barker and Michael L. Ondaatje

Visiting Australia in November 2011, President Obama announced plans for the deployment of United States marines to a Darwin base. The decision to establish a permanent American military presence in northern Australia, taken with the support of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Australian government, was part of the 'pivot' to Asia in US defence policy. The idea ...

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