Highly Recommended: non-fiction titles to make you think

Highly Recommended: non-fiction titles to make you think

Everyone loves to read a book that takes them far, far away from everyday life, the deadlines, the chores, the endless to-do lists. Not only are books a great escape, they are a great way for us to challenge our brains and get thinking. We’ve compiled a list of books by some very special authors that will get the cogs in your noggin turning.

Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly:

Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

We are underpaid, overworked, thwarted and diminished. The assertive among us are labelled bitches, while the expressive among us are considered shrill. We are told to stand down when we have an opinion and to calm down when we are fired up. And when we somehow manage to put one high heel-battered foot in front of the other despite all of this, we’re asked if it would kill us to smile.

This is a pitch perfect, engaging, and accessible credo written by one of today’s most influential feminists. Analysing female anger as it relates to topics like self-worth, objectification, pain, care, fear, silence, and denial, Soraya illuminates how and why we repress our anger, revealing the harm that this causes, and helping us recognise the liberating power of owning our anger and marshalling it as a vital tool for positive change.

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales:

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?

In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she’s learned about coping with life’s unexpected blows.

En Garde by Sarah Hanson-Young:

When Sarah Hanson-Young called out the abuse she received from male parliamentarians as slut-shaming, she sparked a national conversation about the rampant sexism in politics.

Placing the responsibility on women to defend themselves is the same cheap trick as asking, why didn’t she just fight back? After witnessing verbal abuse levelled at female parliamentarians and public figures, Hanson-Young is convinced that now is the time to call it out and not retreat.

On Air by Mike Carlton:

Mike Carlton was born to controversy. His father Jimmy, a renowned Olympic athlete and later a Catholic priest, married his mother after a whirlwind wartime courtship. This scandal was hushed up at first, but eventually it made headlines. Six years later, Jimmy Carlton died in his wife’s arms, felled by asthma.

It was a tough beginning. Mike would have a Sydney suburban childhood where every penny counted. Unable to afford a university education, he left school at sixteen to begin a life in journalism that would propel him to the top, as one of Australia’s best-known media figures. In an often turbulent career of more than fifty years he has been a war correspondent, political reporter, a TV news and current affairs reporter, an award-winning radio presenter in both Sydney and London, an outspoken newspaper columnist and a biting satirist. In later life he realised a lifelong ambition — to write three bestselling books of Australian naval history.

On Air is his story, no holds barred. With characteristic humour and flair, Mike tells of the feuds and the friendships, the fun and the follies, writing candidly of the extraordinary parade of characters and events he has encountered in the unique life he has led.

Speaking Up by Gillian Triggs:

As president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs advocated for the disempowered, the disenfranchised, the marginalised. She withstood relentless political pressure and media scrutiny as she defended the defenceless for five tumultuous years.

How did this aspiring ballet dancer, dignified daughter of a tank commander and eminent law academic respond when appreciative passengers on a full airplane departing Canberra greeted her with a round of applause?

Speaking Up shares with readers the values that have guided Triggs’ convictions and the causes she has championed. She dares women to be a little vulgar and men to move beyond their comfort zones to achieve equity for all. And she will not rest until Australia has a Bill of Rights.

Triggs’ passionate memoir is an irresistible call to everyone who yearns for a fairer world.

 

 

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