A Matter of Principle by Conrad Black

 

My Review

A Matter of Principle by Conrad Black
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Reviews I had read prompted me to buy the book, but it did not live up to expectations.

He is somewhat a right wing character and dismissive of anyone with views not aligned to his. I am not sorry that he was unable to get control of the Australian newspaper group Black mentions he was trying to buy; we already have more than enough newspapers pushing right wing views.

So much of the book at least to the point where I stopped reading, which was just over 100 pages of the 590, dealt with tedious financial matters, lots of name dropping of people who has met and about the meetings. When Black discussed what went on in the writing and editing of papers things were somewhat more interesting. However I decoded to give it away as a quite uninteresting book as I felt it was a waste of my time and I would be better off reading something else.


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Book Publicity

In 1993, Conrad Black was the proprietor of London's Daily Telegraph and the head of one of the world's largest newspaper groups. He completed a memoir in 1992, A Life in Progress, and "great prospects beckoned." In 2004, he was fired as chairman of Hollinger International after he and his associates were accused of fraud. Here, for the first time, Black describes his indictment, four-month trial in Chicago, partial conviction, imprisonment, and largely successful appeal.

In this unflinchingly revealing and superbly written memoir, Black writes without reserve about the prosecutors who mounted a campaign to destroy him and the journalists who presumed he was guilty. Fascinating people fill these pages, from prime ministers and presidents to the social, legal, and media elite, among them: Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jean Chrétien, Rupert Murdoch, Izzy Asper, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Eddie Greenspan, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.

Woven throughout are Black's views on big themes: politics, corporate governance, and the U.S. justice system. He is candid about highly personal subjects, including his friendships - with those who have supported and those who have betrayed him - his Roman Catholic faith, and his marriage to Barbara Amiel. And he writes about his complex relations with Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, and in particular the blow he has suffered at the hands of that nation.

In this extraordinary book, Black maintains his innocence and recounts what he describes as "the fight of and for my life." A Matter of Principle is a riveting memoir and a scathing account of a flawed justice system.

The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo

Written by  John Garnaut

When news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai's wife reached Western attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story. Now, as the Party's 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, and installs the Bo family's long-time rival Xi Jinping as president, China's rulers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their poisonous internal divisions behind closed doors.

Bo Xilai's breathtaking fall from grace is an extraordinary tale of excess, murder, defection, political purges and ideological clashes going back to Mao himself, as the princeling sons of the revolutionary heroes ascend to control of the Party. China watcher John Garnaut examines how Bo's stellar rise through the ranks troubled his more reformist peers, as he revived anti-'capitalist roader' sentiment, even while his family and associates enjoyed the more open economy's opportunities. Amid fears his imminent elevation to the powerful Standing Committee was leading China towards another destructive Cultural Revolution, have his opponents seized their chance now to destroy Bo and what he stands for? The trigger was his wife Gu Kailai's apparently paranoid murder of an English family friend, which exposed the corruption and brutality of Bo's outwardly successful administration of the massive city of Chongqing. It also led to the one of the highest-level attempted defections in Communist China's history when Bo's right-hand man, police chief Wang Lijun, tried to escape the ruins of his sponsor's reputation.

Garnaut explains how this incredible glimpse into the very personal power struggles within the CCP exposes the myth of the unified one-party state. With China approaching superpower status, today's leadership shuffle may set the tone for international relations for decades. Here, Garnaut reveals a particularly Chinese spin on the old adage that the personal is political.

Review

It was amazing to learn of the corruption and appalling behaviour of so many of the Chinese leaders.  This book was primarily about one of them but it provided enough insight about others.  It was hard trying to remember who was who.
2/5

Available only as an eBook  $3.99

Frenchmans Cap

Written by Simon Kleinig

Frenchmans Cap tells the story of Australia’s most majestic mountain and 'one of the world's great wilderness walks' - a must for any modern day adventurer in Tasmania.
Named by convicts in Macquarie Harbour’s infamous prison in the 1820s, Frenchmans Cap has captured the public imagination as an icon of freedom, adventure, and terrifying danger.
From escapee convicts to bushrangers, from pioneer explorers to modern day rock-climbers, this book brings to life the record of many remarkable and life-risking efforts to reach the peak of this mountain.
Kleinig treats readers with mysteries such as the French female, known only as 'Nicole', who became history's first woman to climb the Cap, in 1935. Vivid descriptions of the treacherous beauty of this mountain will enthral any reader with a love of nature.
This book also records the struggle to protect the Frenchmans Cap region from industrial development, even after it became a national park in 1941. It is a joy to read that this jewel of Tasmania has survived degradation from men and bushfires, and is now protected for future generations to enjoy.

Review

I did like reading this book because it is a bushwalking destination that I have been to several times over the years.  It also brought back memories of people who I have known and also some who I had heard about.  There were also a few people mentioned in the book that I didn't even realise had an association with area.

Sometimes the contents in the book appeared to be out of sequence, but that didn't really detract from the enjoyment of the read.

Rating 3/5

Available as ebook at Amazon and iTunes for $9.99

Rich land, Wasteland

How coal is killing Australia

by Sharyn Munro

For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities in the coal-mining areas. She found a war zone. Here, ‘at the coalface’, towns and districts are dying — homeowners and farmers forced out by mining, broken in spirit and in health, or else under threat, in limbo and battling the might of the multinationals. Incidences of asthma, cancers and heart attacks show alarming spikes in communities close to coal mines and coal power stations, yet the government seems powerless (or unwilling) to act.

Once reliable rivers and aquifers are drying up or become polluted, once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. But the big mostly foreign-owned mining companies continue to push on with their coal rush and government continues to assist and protect them: ever more mining licences are granted, ever bigger mines are opened. In this life-changing book, Sharyn exposes the real story of coal: how people are hurting, and rebelling, as coal pushes into hitherto unthinkable areas; how the true costs outweigh any benefits; and how all of us will ultimately pay the price.

Review

This is the story of the terrible way the coal mining and coal seam gas industry tramples on the land and people.  It just seems shocking that this industry can have access to private land.  The book is written from the victims perspective.  When travelling through the Hunter region of NSW I was appalled at the coal mines size and felt that it is not right that such scars should be permitted, I had  read elsewhere of locals trying to stop these companies coming on their land, but didn't realise how terrible this industry is nor the extent of how Governments bend to the wishes of the miners at the expense  of the lives of citizens and the land.  It seems Governments are even worse in doing their job than I thought.

Rating 4/5

King Brown Country by Russell Skelton

The Betrayal of Papunya

Background
Walkley award-winning journalist Russell Skelton presents a devastatingly revealing portrait of Papunya, a Western Desert community that once showed such promise, now a community in severe crisis. Set with the backdrop of Papunya, a Northern Territory Aboriginal community whose history showed so much promise but whose dysfunction is now more prominent that its famous artwork, King Brown Country is a book that has to be published. It goes to the core of Indigenous issues today to expose unmitigated misery, shocking levels of domestic violence and sex abuse and extreme alcohol and substance dependency. But above all, it reveals how a powerful fiefdom was allowed to rule unchallenged and unchecked to the great detriment of a once secure community and explains why the intervention was necessary, and why it may not work. King Brown Country is a powerful and shaming portrait of a community in crisis. Papunya remains an emblem for the failure of all Australians to come to terms with the continent's oldest inhabitants.

Review

In the main this book deals with the failure of bureaucracy to check on the failings and use of government money by the indigenous community running Papunya.  It names and provides details of a number of individuals who used the money to their own advantage, and at the same time doing nothing concrete to help the communities they are supposedly looking after.  While this happening the government agencies charged with the oversight just turn a blind eye. The book made compelling reading was well written and I got through it in pretty quick time.
4/5

The Biggest Estate on Earth

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia

Synopsis

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, THE BIGGEST ESTATE ON EARTH rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.

My Review

This was an interesting book that demonstrated pretty convincing evidence that a lot of Australian bushland was quite open before white settlement.  A great number of references to the park like land that the early white people documented along with the numerous fires that the aborigines lit is in the book.  In fact this theme is a common thread through the book, partly because Bill Gammage wanted to  provide a strong case for his assessment what the land was like as some academics do not want to believe that aborigines were capable of sophisticated land management.

That aborigines had a close connection to the land is beyond dispute, but the evidence in this book was enough to convince me that they believed that looking after the land was of the utmost importance, and that they managed it by taking into account the type of country and the flora and other conditions present.

The Kings Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Book Details

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century – amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed ‘The Quack who saved a King’.
Logue wasn’t a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King.
Had Logue not saved Bertie (as the man who was to become King George VI was always known) from his debilitating stammer, and pathological nervousness in front of a crowd or microphone, then it is almost certain that the House of Windsor would have collapsed. The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI, written with Logue’s grandson and drawn from Logue’s unpublished personal diaries. They throw extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men – and the vital role the King’s wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband’s reputation and his career as King.
The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy is an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis, seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

My Review

After seeing the film I thought it would be interesting to read about Lionel Logue.  The book is not the story of the film, but a biography on his life, although of course it covers the episodes that are the film.  It is quite an easy book to read and I did not find it became tedious at all.  It is just about the right length for such a book.

Rating 3/5

Into the Unknown - The Tormented Life and Expeditions of Ludwig Leichhardt by John Bailey

This book gives a good insight into the character of Ludwig Leichhardt and his eventual explorations in Australia.  It is a well written and informative book and easy to read.

In his formative years Ludwig Leichhardt decided he would like to explore and find new areas, but he spent this time studying range of subjects, including medicine.   However he did not sit for exams and although very knowledgeable, never gained formal qualifications. 
When first coming to Australia Leichhardt wandered about the bush, marvelling at a land so different from Europe.  He would study the plants, animals and geology of areas and make copious notes.   It is from his notes and diaries that John Bailey has tapped into, to tell the story.

The expedition Leichhardt arranged to cross from Brisbane to Port Essington, on the Northern Territory coast not that far from the current Darwin, took an great deal longer than expected, partly due to mishaps and partly due to Leichhardt spending time investigating things.   Some of his descriptions and that of John Gilbert, who was one of the 10 members of the party) described in glowing terms the beauty of many of the spots they passed through or camped.   Gilbert in particular worried that this beauty would all change once white settlers reached these spots.

On return to Sydney Leichhardt began to set up a second expedition with the plan to follow the start of his previous one then turn west and south the cross the continent to the Swan River settlement  in Western Australia.   This was a total disaster with a large number of the expedition animals constantly wandering off at night, continuous rain and long periods of illness among the party; most likely caused by rotten meat.   There was very little harmony in the party and with the loss of so many animals and insufficient supplies Leichhardt had little choice to abandon the trip.   He very soon set up another expedition in an endeavour to  achieve his objective, but, once the party left the last outpost, was never heard of again.

 

Rating 4/5

A Day to Die For - 1996: Everest's Worst Disaster - The Untold True Story by Graham Ratcliffe

This is both a book about mountaineering and investigative writing.   In part it deals with Graham Ratcliffe's alpine climbing, but it generally does so to show how it related to the events of May 1996 when  a number of climbers died on Mount Everest.  He doesn't go into too much detail about his climbs which is good from my perspective.   Graham was high on the mountain when the tragedy arose and was left wondering what would have happened if his team new had been called upon to help with the rescue.     
Eventually, but after several years had elapsed, the event came to so haunt him that he spent many years of his life as he painstakingly tried to establish if weather predictions were known by the leaders of the mountaineering teams and, if so, why did they ignore these dire predictions.    Serious questions are also raised about the avoidance of these matters by people who wrote books about the tragedy, especially Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air) and David Breashears (High Exposure).

 

Rating  3/5

The Great Disruption : How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy by Paul Gilding

An interesting book that held my interest. Paul Gilding describes the problems of the finite resources that we are using at a rate that means they can not last based on the scientific and mathematical  evidence; facts that many people readily agree with.   His conclusion is that we won't change until the economic consequences of this starts to come into play.  He is confident that we will act and act very quickly when things become dire; virtually on a war footing.   I would have liked to have had more of his views as to how some of the problems, such as population and water shortages caused by global warming, might pan out.  A book well worth reading.

Rating 4/5

1835 : The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia James Boyce

In many ways this book is companion of James Boyce's book Van Diemens Land.  It deals with the absolute arrogance and greed for land by the invading first settlers of south east mainland Australia, in what is now Victoria.  The aboriginal people were duped and mislead into believing they would not be displaced from their land, but of course the opposite was exactly what happened and did so with the connivance of the governors of Van Diemens Land and New South Wales.   It is hard not to feel very grieved for the appalling treatment of the local aboriginal communities.

First Post

Only just decided to create this blog after seeing a poll in GoodReads