New Books

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart
 My Father My Father
   
The Philosopher's Dog 2000 Idiomatic Expressions in Yiddish

RECOLLECTIONS OF A BLEEDING HEART:
A PORTRAIT OF PAUL KEATING PM
by Don Watson
Published by Random House


In January 1992, less than a month after Paul Keating became Prime Minister, Don Watson was employed as his speechwriter.

Though trained in history rather than economics and generally regarded as a 'bleeding heart liberal' he became a close advisor and friend.

 

Based on notes Watson kept through the four turbulent and exhausting years he spent with Keating, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart is a frank, revealing and engrossing portrait of this brilliant and perplexing man, and a unique reflection on modern politics, government and Australia itself.

If he had never become Prime Minister Paul Keating's place in Australian history would still have been assured.

He was the Treasurer who deregulated the economy; the weaver of Labor's modern story; its heavy weapon in the parliament.

He was also the great enigma - a self-educated boy from Sydney's working class and a defining element of the head-kicking Labor right who loved Paris, Mahler and Second Empire clocks.

Paul Keating did become Prime Minister. In December 1991 he wrested it from Bob Hawke and the bruises from that struggle were part of the baggage he brought to the job: the other parts included the worst recession in 60 years and an electorate determined to make him pay for it.

Keating defied the odds and won the 1993 election, and in his four years as Prime Minister set Australia on a new course - towards engagement with Asia, a republic, reconciliation, a social democracy built on a modern export-based economy and sophisticated public systems of education and training, health and social security.

Widely regarded as a quintessential economic rationalist, Keating's record clearly shows that his vision was infinitely broader and more complex.

 

BLEEDING HEARTS, an ultraconservative view of the ultraliberals, as those whose "hearts have bled for the poor", who are "suckers" for every "sob story", and who place tax burdens on all in a mistaken effort to cure social ills. 'The liberal who is so labelled considers the one who calls him a "bleeding heart" to be reactionary.'
WILLIAM SAFIRE, Safire's New Political Dictionary

'We are the entrepreneurs of political life and are the people who dream the big dreams and do the big things. There are no bigger dreamers than in our office. It's a mixture of econocrats and bleeding hearts.'
PM PAUL KEATING, MARCH 1993


 
MY FATHER, MY FATHER
by Bernard Marin
Published by Scribe Publications

Click here to read about the book

 
 

 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S DOG
by Raimond Gaita
Published by Text Publishing

Click here to read about the book

 
2000 IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS
IN YIDDISH
by Yosef Guri
Published by Magnes Press
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Read about the book

Click here to read about Magnes Press


 

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