What We've Been Reading This Summer

Of course we've been reading our own wonderful Black Inc. books over the break, from David Marr's must-read collection Panic to Mungo MacCallum's entertaining and educational guide to Australia's prime ministers The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely. We've also been busily reading manuscripts and advance copies of our forthcoming books (you can see some of them in our January - June catalogue.)

But we're bookish people by nature and we like reading other publishers' books too. So here's what else we've been reading over the summer:

Q&A with Mungo MacCallum

We interview Mungo MacCallum about his new book The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers, which tells the tale of the many men and one woman who’ve had a crack at running the country.

What are three of the most surprising facts or anecdotes you discovered while researching this book?

I like the story about Ben Chifley taking his own onions to a Gundagai café; he knew that otherwise, with rationing, he would be lucky to get them with his favourite steak. But I was intrigued by two others who were ahead of their times. Jim Scullin, beset on all sides as he battled his way through the Great Depression, still found time to set aside land in the Northern Territory to be reserved for Aboriginal Australians. And George Reid, frequently dismissed as a buffoon, turned out to be a lone voice against the harsh laws passed against the Chinese.