Orbital – Samantha Harvey

Luminous that’s the only word one can use to describe the 2024 Booker Prize Winner.  What a deserved winner it was too.

It’s hard to imagine how a novel so slim (at just over 100 pages) can be so vast.  Yet here it is. 

The mundane bit – Orbital tells the story of six astronauts on the International Space Station as they orbit the earth over one full day (which is actually 16 orbits for those on the craft). But nothing, simply nothing, is mundane about this book.  

I’m not sure how I can compress a review of the brilliance of Harvey’s creation into the small space I’ve allocated for each review.  So I don’t reckon I’ll even try.  Look, just read Orbital ok. In fact I’m not sure you actually read it, it’s more like you experience it.  So go and do that.   

Conclave – Robert Harris

As befits a former political journalist, Robert Harris writes a superb political thriller.  There are very few of his books I haven’t enjoyed – the Cicero books being both the standout novels on Ancient Rome and amongst the greatest political thrillers of all time.

And what’s more political (and some would say thrilling) then the election of a new Pope.  I learnt from my first political boss that at the heart of all political success was mathematics – if you don’t have the numbers you can’t achieve political and policy impact.  And if you haven’t got the numbers you can’t become Pope either.  

I’ve truly got no idea whether the mechanisms of the papal conclave work as Harris depicts them (although given he is a writer of great research I’ve no doubt the activities in the novel ring true to life) but what I do know for sure is that Harris weaves a masterpiece of suspense and political intrigue that has you hanging on to the very end. 

Ideally read this book before seeing the movie based off it.  But if you haven’t approached things in that correct order all I can say is, the movie was brilliant, the book is better. 

Half Truth – Nadia Mahjouri

I came across this stunning debut novel almost serendipitously.  My mate MJ invited me to a reading from one of his old high school friends and not at all knowing what to expect I trundled along.  Be glad I did fair reader, because it allows me to recommend a book to you that without a doubt I would not have discovered on my own.  

And what a book it is. 

Part fictionalised autobiography and part speculative historical fiction, Half Truth tells the story of Zahra a young biracial woman of Moroccan ancestry living in Tasmania.  Having never met her father Zahra takes a leap of faith and heads to Morocco, almost, but not quite, on a whim.  

The novel also alternately tells the life story of Zahra’s grandmother Khadija – married as soon as she reaches puberty and destined to give birth to the troubled young man who becomes Zahra’s father. 

The novel is almost worth reading for one scene alone.  The singularly brilliant scene in which Zahra, after a series of misadventures, arrives in the familial home in Marrakech to a party in full swing.  She assumes it is so she can meet her father.  Her family assumes she has brought her father with her.  And thus begins a mystery of sorts as no one has seen him in 20 years.

One of the hardest things in life is discovering one’s own real identity. Finding what’s really inside us all.  That’s the journey that lies at the heart of Mahjouri’s exhilarating debut for both Zahra and Khadija.  It’s a novel of family and of culture.  And a novel absolutely worth reading. 

Fast Times and Excellent Adventures: The Surprising History of the 80’s Teen Movie – James King

My youth summed up in a hundred movies (or thereabouts).  If you came of age in the 1980s you know.  James King certainly does, with this chronological account of the awesomeness of a certain type of movie genre that dominated the cinema through the decade of greed.  And in many respects it was the lifestyle mores of that greedy decade that teen movies both satirised and critiqued.

King has created a work of nostalgia illuminating the social history of a decade.  All the highlights of teen movies and what King calls “teen friendly” movies are here.  From Fast Times at Ridgemont High, through Risky Business, the Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller to Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, and Back to the Future and many many more. 

And if you didn’t come of age in the 1980s – boy does it suck to be you.  You might have seen the films but you didn’t experience them.  With this genuinely fun read you can get close though. 

“Time of your life, huh kid?”

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

In 2025 Huckleberry Finn remains problematic for all the obvious reasons. 

But those obvious reasons exist because Twain was a master of the American vernacular. His characters sound true to their life and times, because they were. And his keen appetite for satirical detail lifts the novel from a somewhat amusing picaresque into a sometimes sober reckoning with the scenarios it depicts.   

The novel tells the story of Huck Finn and the escaped slave Jim as they journey down the Mississippi River, finding both adventure and self-awareness.  There is a reason why the book is regarded as a great American Classic.  Despite its flaws Twain’s characters and landscapes remain some of the most vivid ever painted on the vast American canvas. 

Having said that, in 2025, Twain’s classic is almost certainly best read in conjunction with the next book on this list. 

James – Percival Everett

Pure genius. That’s what Percival Everett has achieved in turning Huckleberry Finn on its head. 

This book grabs you by the (insert whatever bodily appendage you want) from the first page and never lets you go. 

James is a reboot of Huck Finn narrated by the enslaved Jim. James follows the broad trajectory of Huck Finn, but, by inverting the perspective of the former novel’s main characters, Everett brings a deeper interiority than Twain allows for.

There is much laugh out loud comedy along with poignancy and sharp social commentary in James.  Everett too is a master of American speech and trenchant observer of the weaknesses of “American progress”.

James is both a  subversive tribute to Twain and a complex and multi-layered novel in its own right.  Even without having ever read a word of Twain or knowing its story, James would still stand as a superb read.  Percival Everett has created an instant addition to the Pantheon.   

Wirra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook and what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People – Darren Rix & Craig Cormick

A groundbreaking look at Australian history.  Rix and Cormick interrogate the oral histories of First Nations’ groups who saw and felt the arrival of Cook and his men. 

 Who were the people watching the Endeavour sail by? How did they understand their world and what sense did they make of this strange vision? And what was the impact of these first encounters with Europeans? The answers lie in tales passed down from 1770 and in truth-telling of the often more brutal engagements that followed.

 There’s a reason this work won a plethora of literary and fiction awards.  It must take its place on the shelf alongside the other great works of Australian history. 

The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell

One would logically think that it’s impossible for a novel to start with an explosive climax and then spend the rest of the novel building to that exact same climax.  It’s quite a feat to create an ever-mounting suspense for an ending that is foretold in the very first pages.  Maggie O’Farrell pulls off that feat of literary sleight of hand with aplomb. 

O’Farrell opens her book with an historical footnote  – Lucrezia de Medici was married at the age of sixteen to Alfonso II de Este, Duke of Ferrara and within a year was dead of ‘putrid fever’, although rumour  has it that the not so gallant Alfonso had a hand in her death. 

The novel proper opens with Lucrezia sitting down to dinner with her new husband in an isolated hunting lodge realising that without a shadow of a doubt her husband is in fact going to kill her. 

The novel then shifts back in time to Lucrezia’s childhood as we learn what societal expectations and power calculations lie beneath the reasons for this marriage of political convenience (this is after all Florence in the Middle Ages.  And she is in fact a Medici.  Certain things are to be expected). 

Told from Lucrezia’s first person narrative and growing fear for her own life, O’Farrell is almost subtle in the glimpses we get of the simmering rage lying at Alfonso’s core.  What is brilliantly not subtle however, is the ever growing sense of atmospheric oppressiveness that builds and builds throughout the novel as Lucrezia’s destined fate draws near. 

O’Farrell writes with a poetic cadence and a richly descriptive focus that vividly transports the reader back to the sixteenth century and ensures the story lingers long in the memory.   

Books That Made Us – Carl Reineke

A tour through Australian literary history which will have you adding more and more titles to the TBR pile by your beside.  Australian writing is much maligned by ignoramuses and this book does a lot to dispel the myths of the ignorant.  Reinecke examines the most important and best works throughout modern Australia’s short history and highlights how the unique Australian voice has morphed and shifted through time particularly as more diverse authors have come to play such an important lens on national character in recent years. 

Some Achieve Greatness: Lessons on leadership from Shakespeare and one of his greatest admirers – John Bell

Another year of book reviews and another book about Shakespeare makes it onto the list.  I have a rule that I must read at least one work by Shakespeare and one book about Shakespeare every year. 

This slim volume by Australia’s greatest Shakespearean actor John Bell (and one of the most important theatre impresarios as the founder of Bell Shakespeare) explores timeless leadership principles from Shakespeare’s plays (like Henry V, Macbeth).  Through his own extensive experience, Bell offers insights on character, power, and navigating flawed leaders for modern times.  Bell argues Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories reveal deep truths about human nature, essential for understanding contemporary leadership. I concur with that assessment. 

The Edge of the Sea – Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson is one of the most influential environmental figures of the mid 20^th century.  Rightly credited with being one of the pioneers of the modern environment movement.  She was absolutely prophetic in uncovering the deadly links between some of humanity’s biggest scientific advances and the devastation they were wreaking on the planet.   In The Edge of the Sea she explores the living world that exists on our oceans’ shores from the microscopic to the macro.  Written with a genuine love of the seashore and its creaturely inhabitants, and an open-hearted wonder at the brilliance of ocean life.  Take this with you when you head to the beach this summer. You’ll learn some things as you’re playing in the sand. 

Dusk – Robbie Arnott

Australia has a unique geographic landscape.  A beauty and a brutality that has played such an outsize role in shaping 60,000 years of Australian history and society.  The best Australian novels recognise this fact and make the Australian landscape an essential character influencing the shape and arc of their narratives.

Through four novels Robbie Arnott has imbued this lesson well and to great effect.  None greater than in Dusk where the Tasmanian wilderness is a living breathing accompaniment to a quest to hunt an escaped and dangerous puma.

The book centres on the brother and sister team of Floyd and Iris, outcasts from society who join the search for the feral killer big cat as their last chance to earn money to merely live. They meet with mistrust, mendacity and murder along the way, all the while maintaining a deeply felt humanity and care for each other.  Arnott develops his human characters as well as he does the natural environment and this makes for a rich pageant of a novel – full of complex emotions, motivations and an unwavering feel for the humanity of his characters.

If there were a genre that could sum up Dusk it may well be “gothic western”.  The story has the traditional western feel of a frontier search party whilst, much like the ever-present fog that pervades the story’s setting, clothing itself in an atmosphere of dread and mystery, and an ever lurking presence of the somewhat supernatural. 

Dusk is a beautiful and soulful read.

The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It – Tilar J Mazzeo

As Napoleon said, “”In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it”. Champagne is excellent – it can be drunk at breakfast, lunch or dinner and at any time in between.  It does not lead to a hangover.  And Madame Clicquot was one of Europe’s most successful businesswomen of all time.  All this and more makes Mazzeo’s book a fascinating portrait of a drink, a business and an immensely important time in world history (Napoleon himself makes more than one cameo in its pages).  It’s also a great read and the movie based off it is a great watch too. 

The Seville Communion – Arturo Perez-Reverte

Seville in the summer is one of the most magical places on earth and the perfect setting for a noir mystery set within both Spanish culture and the strictures of the Catholic church. 

A hacker gets into the Pope’s personal computer and the Vatican sends its special envoy to investigate a small failing church and its association with what may be murder or mere divine intervention.

One review called the protagonist of this fine thriller a clerical James Bond.  That’s not wholly inaccurate and gives a flavour of the fun that Perez-Reverte is having, even as he creates a first class thriller of a read.  The author brings Seville evocatively to life and along the way introduces us to a cast of characters that made me wanting more as I satisfyingly turned the last page.

Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic – Tom Holland

The other year when there was that weird shit about how often men think about the Roman Empire I could honestly say never (the French Revolution on the other hand was a different story).  But this year with a holiday in Rome on the offing I managed to bone up on my ancient Romans.

Rubicon is good popular history. It’s readable, entertaining and was a great aide memoire to the ancient history I’d learned way back in my own ancient history.  

The Roman Republic, which is the centrepiece of Holland’s account, was a triumph of civic governance – until of course it wasn’t. Holland skilfully traces the reasons for that fall bringing to life a cast of the greats and not-so-greats of history.  Rolling along at pace, Holland guides the reader through the greatest hits of ancient Rome from Romulus to Julius Caesar and starring Cicero, Spartacus, Brutus, Cleopatra, Virgil, Augustus, etc etc

Let’s face it, the Roman’s were a bloodthirsty rather fucked up bunch (although of course they got more fucked up as Empire descended into degeneracy) but golly they are a lot of fun to read about. 

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani

Many years after the Second World War has ended the narrator of this very fine novel reflects back on his youth at the time of creeping fascism and persecution of Jews in Italy. As a university student in the city of Ferrara he becomes enamoured of the aristocratic Finzi-Contini family  who’s lavish grounds become a safe haven for a small section of Ferrara’s Jewish community to escape the outside world. 

However, while the Holocaust all the while hovers in the background of the book, the fate of Europe’s Jews is only obliquely glimpsed and that makes the impact of the story all the more poignant and powerful. 

At its core this is a tale of unrequited love and enduring heartbreak as much as anything else (as are a number of my favourite novels – Gatsby and Great Expectations to name but two). It has a  authenticity of voice and emotion delivered in a haunting, elegiac style full of mood and melancholy.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis has been rated as one of the five best Italian novels we all should read.  Can’t say how many Italian novels I’ve read, but I do know this one is worth it.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

When you are suffering pneumonia and can’t really concentrate, what is there to read?  Well pick up a book that says DON’T PANIC in big friendly letters on the cover and away you go.  Comedic genius oozes through every page of “The Hitchhikers Guide”. 

When Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyper-space bypass Arthur Dent is rescued by his friend Ford Prefect (who comes from a planet near Betelguese rather than Guildfotd as Arthur thought.   As they adventure through space they stumble across the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.  

A trilogy in five parts (I read all five books) the sequels get less better as they go on, but Douglas Adams’ brilliant achievement with the first in the series well and truly stands the test of time. 

The Season – Helen Garner

Books about football (any code of football) generally don’t have either the lyricism or nostalgic heft of books about the summer sports, cricket and baseball.  Perhaps it’s the languid nature of those sports that lend them to poetic introspection. Most football books are mere recitations,  first this game happened and then this next game happened, so on and so forth. That or they are mere laundry lists of all the drugs taken and scandals avoided.  

Helen Garner, iconoclast that she is, has spurned that approach and written a football book that is more than just football (and by football in this context we are talking the Australian Rules variety).   

The Season chronicles Garner’s observations of watching a full season of her 16 year old grandson’s footy team.  She goes to training, she goes to games, she talks footy with her grandson Amby, and in-between she cheers on the Western Bulldogs.  She immerses herself in footy and through it sees a wider perspective even if she doesn’t really understand the rules (which is fine because all sideline critics and most umpires and players don’t either). 

Garner writes with both a laser focus and a warm exuberance which makes The Season an absolute pleasure to read.

Garner has called this book “nanna’s book about footy” – oh to be so self-deprecating.  She has created another observational masterwork on contemporary Australian society, what it means to be a young man today, the importance of team spirit, ritual and community.  And at the end of the day all of it means that the kids are alright.  And footy’s pretty great too.

If you’re a footy fan this might just get you through the long three months to the start of the season.      

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald  

2025 was the 100^th Anniversary of the publication of my favourite book.  Time for yet another re-read.  Still brilliant, still every word perfectly placed.  Status as “The Great American Novel” upheld.

What We Can Know – Ian McEwen

Another McEwen special.  Like all authors, some of McEwen’s novels are better than others. But he’s never written a bad book.  This would be upper middle in the McEwen oeuvre and makes a change of pace from some of his more recent novels. 

Set in the future after nuclear war and climate change have ravaged the planet, the novel tells the story of academic Tom Metcalf who is interested in the literature of the first part of the 21^st century.  In particular, his academic research delves into the provenance of a famous poem that was read aloud once and never heard of again.  Tom speculates on what happened to the famous poem and why, whilst also examining the intricate lives and loves of those present at the reading.  And then the novel takes a turn.

McEwen loves toying with his readers, and, as usual, there are more fascinating layers to a McEwen novel than first glance would lead you to believe.  Is the novel really heading where you think it is?  

On a deeper level McEwen has written a rather endearingly scathing indictment of our times – “The past was peopled by idiots. Big deal. The matter was dead.”

The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses and Speed Freaks Made F1 the World’s Fastest Growing Sport – Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg

Yes, without a doubt McLaren sabotaged their own driver to prevent Oscar Pisatri from winning this year’s world title.  It should be the greatest Anglo-Australian sporting outrage since Bodyline.  Albo should expel the English Ambassador.  This book is not about that at all.  Instead, it’s a fast paced, lightening quick, and enjoyable read on the history of Formula One.  Put it in the stocking for any gear head in your life.   

Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska – Warren Zanes

To this day I can still explicitly remember the first time I listened to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album.   Like many my age the first time Springsteen exploded into my consciousness was with Born in the USA.  I was instantly hooked.  This was my type of music – drums, guitars, songs about real people.  Like a hoover I quickly vacuumed up the back catalogue.  The big rock and roll albums, Born to Run, Darkness, The River – absolutely incredible.  And then I hit Nebraska.  What The Actual Fuck?  Go back and listen again.  Still WTAF, but.. But. But.  It sticks with you. Gets under your skin and into your brain. Hits you like an understated freight train.  Despair, anguish, solitude, starkness – soul.  Brilliance. 

Zanes’ takes that reaction that every single person listening to Nebraska for the first time has and shapes a compelling story.  A story of how and why Springsteen went from playing sold out arenas to recording on a tape recorder in a bedroom with only guitar and harmonica.  Zanes’ book is an instant rock bio classic for good reason.  With full support of Springsteen, Zanes gives a heartfelt understanding of the impact of depression on Springsteen but also a clear eyed analysis on why Nebraska was essential to Springsteen’s later mega-success.

Careless People: A story of where I used to work – Sarah Wynn-Williams

We surely didn’t need this book to tell us that tech bros (and tech chicks for that matter) are mostly douche bags.  But it’s great to have some real-life anecdotes to prove the point.  The writing is not great, but Wynn-Williams uses a somewhat breezy tone to illuminate the dark slide of Facebook from idealist website connecting community to the plaything of the worst people of our time.  Over and above the seat at the table narrative this should be a must read for anyone who’s ever worked in Government Relations or Corporate Affairs.  A fine example of what goes wrong when those of us who are government relations experts aren’t listened to, or even worse, when GR folk swallow the company mantras hook, line and sinker and lose all moral compass. 

Ghost Cities – Siang Lu

This year’s Miles Franklin Award Winner (that’s the award for best Australian novel for my foreign friends) unfolds in alternating chapters and time lines. 

Jumping from the present where a young Australian Chinese translator who can’t speak Mandarin (#BadChinese) is sucked into a ponzi scheme of extreme dubiousness led by a dictatorial film director; and back to a fable of a mythical ancient China rule by a dictatorial Emperor.  What’s the link between the two stories – that’s for you to work out dear reader.  But it may have something to do with power and the way power shapes reality – or maybe not. 

Scathingly, satirically funny in places, it also has a pathos and yearning for love and place that really hits home. 

A sumptuous read full of allegory and wit.  The book engages and then envelopes the reader.  Although it’s relatively short, its denseness requires absorption and solitude – it’s a book to be savoured in silence. 

The Good Fight: What Does Labor Stand For? – Sean Kelly

Every Labor Government needs a prick to the conscience from an outsider author to remind it that it should stand for more than just governing for governing’s sake.  The early 20^th century  Labor Governments had Vere Gordon Child’s How Labour Governs (referenced within by Kelly and still one of the greatest books ever written on Labor’s political purpose).  The Hawke and Keating years had a plethora of such critiques (including The Hawke, Keating Hijack – to give you a flavour of where such books were coming from).  

With Anthony Albanese aiming to make Labor the natural party of Government, and with the ALP four years into this project, Kelly’s Quarterly Essay arrives at an opportune time.  I have no doubt it will annoy many of my former colleagues and their bosses but if it does that it will have served a valuable purpose.  Like the corporate penchant for 360 reviews taking time out to think how reformist the current government wants to be is no bad thing.  As always Kelly writes with a deep thoughtfulness all too absent in most modern political commentary.

Orwell in Spain (including Homage to Catalonia) – George Orwell

Anna Funder’s Wifedom has caused a rethink of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia for many. And while Funder’s major criticism is accurate (Orwell does expunge details of the role that Eileen was playing in the International Brigades), as a first-hand account of the trials and tribulations of war Homage to Catalonia knows very few peers. The book  details his firsthand experience fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War with the anti-Stalinist POUM militia and provides a vivid and …  picture of life on the front lines.  More than just a memoir of war however, the book stands as a brutal critique of the factional struggles that tore apart the Republican side leaving Spain ripe for Fascist dominance. 

Surrounding that major work this edition contains all of Orwell’s letters and articles on the Spanish Civil War.  Many of which give greater contextual analysis to the factional infighting and the manipulations of the USSR to the detriment of a united leftist front. 

Homage to Catalonia remains a powerful exemplar of the power of Orwell’s non-fiction and a landmark work of politico-military history. 

Henry V – Dan Jones

I think one is compelled to use the word magisterial when writing about big biographies of big figures from the past.  So, in this magisterial biography of England’s “greatest warrior King” Jones sets out to sort the Shakespearean myth from the mud-soaked reality.  Surprisingly, or not, in Jones’ assessment he winds up closer to Shakespeare’s portrayal than to other modern day historians (whose job it seems to me is simply to poo poo any analysis that has gone before).  This is a vast window into a narrative shaping time in English history. 

Selected Poems – Federico Garcia Lorca

Most of us poetry is either something we are boringly forced to read to pass school English exams or pieces of half-witty and smutty doggerel with not much in-between.  Given I enjoyed the poets I read at school – Keats and Phillip Larkin being my favourites – I not quite sure why I haven’t read much poetry as an adult.  I tried to make an effort this year by starting the year off reading Henry Lawson’s In the Days When the World Was Wide and other verses an excellent collection of Australiana. 

But when in Spain do as the Spanish do, so I found this Garcia Lorca collection in the bookshop of the Reina Sofia and was instantly transported into a sublime world of awe.  Garcia Lorca is one of Spain’s most famous sons not just for his artistic achievement but through his brutal death at the hands of Franco’s forces in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.  His poetry is replete with both the deeply personal and richly symbolic creating a surrealistic world of metaphor that explores the universal themes of love, death, tragedy, and oppression.  And it reads beautifully in the original Spanish. 

This year I’m glad to say that I’ve re-discovered what a Cabinet Minister friend who reads poetry every day found out years ago, poetry is a meditative experience that for a brief time transports us well beyond the mundanity of everyday life. 

Highway 13 – Fiona McFarlane

Many decades ago I worked for a Minister for Roads.  One rather unfortunate fact was that at one point in time it turned out we had Australia’s most notorious serial killer Ivan Milat working in our department and, living in our electorate – oh what joy to be an elected representative. 

That story’s not apropos of nothing – because Fiona McFarlane’s latest is a collection of stories very loosely based off the real-life story of Milat the “backpacker murderer”.  But nowhere does the author ever concentrate on the serial killer or his actual crimes.  Instead, she has done something extraordinarily clever.  In a series of powerful and emotional vignettes she explores the lives of people not directly connected to the crimes but who’s lives are shadowed by its ongoing impact. 

It is, I think, important to note, that this is not a dark gruesome book, not at all.  McFarlane explores the ripple effects of story, and the human need to tell stories, the human need for connection to people, place and event with a lightness of touch and a tenderness of understanding.  

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again.  Crime fiction is far from my preferred genre, but every now and then a novel of this class reaches out smashes you in the face and demands you be read.  Highway 13 is just such a book.

Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life – Joseph Markulin

Undoubtedly one of my personal highlights of our Italian journey earlier this year was visiting the farmhouse outside Florence where Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince.  Having lunch in the vineyard restaurant attached was pretty special too.  In short, except for Marx, I consider Machiavelli to be the greatest political philosopher of all time.  He is both the most perceptive and also the most misunderstood as to how power actually works. 

But that’s an argument for another day, or many other days. 

Markulin has written a doorstopper of a fictionalised non-fiction novel.  It’s a blood soaked adventure story telling the life and times of the original macihiavel and the machinations  of 15^th century Renaissance Florence.  An intriguing and enjoyable tome for all my political friends out there.  Which let’s face it is most of you who get this list.