The first minister in Anthony Albanese’s government to have their biography written since the election is not the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Treasurer or the Senate leader but Environment Minister and former Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, who will have her life chronicled by Margaret Simons.
Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms (Black Inc) follows previous biographies on Albanese by Karen Middleton and on Penny Wong, also by Simons. Plibersek, who remains the frontrunner to succeed Albanese as Labor leader, co-operated with Simons and the book promises to reveal what drives her, what she values and what to expect next.
This forthcoming book is one of many must-read tomes in this 11th annual survey of leading publishers about notable politics, history, biography and nonfiction titles to be published next year.
Gladys Berejiklian, who resigned as NSW premier amid an Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into probity and ethical breaches, will have her downfall examined by Paul Farrell in Gladys (Monash). Chris Wallace looks at the history of prime ministers and their biographers, telling the story behind the story in Political Lives (NewSouth).
Few politicians garnered more respect than Tim Fischer, so it is fitting that his full life, from Jesuit boarding school to Vietnam, and to state and federal politics, and beyond, will be recounted by Peter Rees in I Am Tim (MUP). Andrew Blyth has collated John Howard’s newspaper columns from his wilderness years from the late 1980s on (Connor Court).
Former High Court chief justice Gerard Brennan, who wrote the lead judgment in the Mabo case, co-operated with a new biography by Jeff FitzGerald (The Federation Press). A biographical dictionary of Speakers, Order Order! by Stephen Wilks, is overdue (ANU Press).
Donald Horne had an enormous impact on how Australians see themselves and his biography by Ryan Cropp will be essential reading (Black Inc). Political satirist John Clarke, who died in 2017, is the subject of a family memoir by daughter Lorin Clarke (Text). And Ross McMullin has a second multi-biography about the lost World War I generation, Life So Full of Promise (Scribe).
This year’s federal election will get a good working over in Watershed? edited by Anika Gauja, Marian Sawer and Jill Sheppard. The Indi Way by the Voices of Indi group (Scribe) provides a behind-the-scenes account of how a rural community elected Cathy McGowan and Helen Haines, and inspired a movement. And David Stevens has corralled Howard, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, Nick Minchin, David Kemp, Richard Alston and others into examining The Future of Liberal Australia (Connor Court).
Stan Grant, in The Queen is Dead (HarperCollins), considers the legacy of colonialism and makes the case for a republic and voice to parliament to atone for the “humiliations of history”. David Marr writes about the frontier battles with Indigenous people and its reverberating legacy in A Family Business (Black Inc). In Statements from the Soul, Shireen Morris and Damien Freeman collate essays from religious leaders and thinkers who argue the moral case for the voice to parliament (La Trobe).
The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government will generate several books – including my own biography of Gough Whitlam (HarperCollins, 2025) – and one of the first is Michelle Arrow’s edited collection Women and Whitlam (NewSouth), which considers the policy changes that benefited Australian women.
Bernard Collaery provides an account of his prosecution in the wake of revelations that Australian spies bugged the East Timorese government during treaty negotiations in The Trial (MUP). In Revealing Secrets (NewSouth), John Blaxland and Clare Birgin provide an unofficial account of the history of Australia’s signals intelligence agency.
Sam Roggeveen’s The Echidna Strategy (La Trobe) considers Australia’s geopolitical future if we cannot rely on the US; and Edward Cavanough’s Divided Isles (Black Inc) scrutinises Solomon Islands’ relationship with China and the implications for Australia. Bruce Wolpe’s Trump’s Australia (Allen & Unwin) looks at the toxic influence of the former US president in Australia and the repercussions of a potential comeback.
Pandemedia, edited by Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang, examines how the pandemic changed how journalists approach their reporting (Monash). Sally Young writes about Australian newspapers from 1941 to 1980, their proprietors and journalists in Media Monsters (NewSouth), a sequel to Paper Emperors.
Among the policy books next year, the pick is by former chief scientist Alan Finkel, who shows how Australia and the world can usher in an “electric age” and save the planet if we remove the barriers to a clean energy future in Powering Up (Black Inc.)
As a returning judge of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for history and nonfiction, I read many terrific books this year. I recommend the shortlisted titles and winners announced on Tuesday. The best books on Australian politics this year were Niki Savva’s Bulldozed (Scribe) and Simon Benson and Geoff Chambers’ Plagued (Pantera Press) – both filled with revelations and devastating for Scott Morrison.
I also enjoyed Henry Kissinger’s Leadership (Penguin) – and interviewed him about it – and Clint Hill’s My Travels With Mrs Kennedy (Simon & Schuster). I liked Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation (Harper). I re-read David McCullough’s Truman (Simon & Schuster) and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Simon & Schuster) – both magnificent.
My summer reading includes Jon Meacham’s biography of Abraham Lincoln, And There was Light (Penguin), Stacy Schiff’s biography of Samuel Adams, The Revolutionary (Little, Brown), and Fred Kaplan’s biography of Thomas Jefferson as a writer, His Masterly Pen (HarperCollins). Next year I am looking forward to Richard Norton Smith’s biography of Gerald Ford, An Ordinary Man (HarperCollins). But for now I’m loving Harry Truman’s Mr Citizen (Bernard Geis).
As always, happy reading.
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