Read more
The recollections of Australia's leading public intellectual
Robert Manne is one of Australia's most profound political analysts. His memoir traces his intellectual roots, revealing how his family background and early years informed the questions he would spend his life trying to answer. It also provides a fascinating portrait of key political controversies, including intellectual combat over Pol Pot, Wilfred Burchett, Quadrant, the Stolen Generations, Manning Clark, the Howard government, the Murdoch press and much more.
During the Cold War and the culture wars, Manne clashed with some of the most influential thinkers, writers and polemicists - Noam Chomsky, Les Murray, Leonie Kramer, Tom Keneally, Isi Leibler, Helen "Demidenko" Darville, Peter Craven, Paddy McGuinness, Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt. This memoir recounts with surprising and unknown detail what really happened and why.
Often subverting conventional notions of left and right, Manne is an original thinker who has helped shape the nation's discourse for decades. This is the inside story of a life of engagement and reflection, and a book for anyone interested in the shape and meaning of the past nearly fifty years of politics.
About the author
Robert Manne is an emeritus professor of politics and vice-chancellor's fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. From the late 1980s he wrote regular, often controversial, columns on current affairs for The Herald, The Age, The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald, and was a frequent commentator on ABC radio and television.Between 1990 and 1997 Manne was the editor of Quadrant. Appointed as a well-known opponent of communism, he resigned over right-wing opposition to his call for uncompromising recognition of the crimes committed against the Indigenous peoplesof Australia. Since 2005 he has written widely for The Monthly and The Guardian.Manne is the author or editor of somethirty books, including The Petrov Affair, Left, Right, Left, The Mind of the Islamic State, On Borrowed Time and three Quarterly Essays.In 2005 he was voted Australia's leading public intellectual.A fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Manne was appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2023.
