Education

I’ll never be able to separate the memories of childhood from that of books. They intertwine like colours in fabrics, in a jumble of real and fantastical, bitter and sweet, joy and guilt.

In A History of Young People in the West, Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt posit that, in the West, adolescence is first and foremost a social-cultural construction, and therefore a cultural product. They considered it at most subsidiarily as a stage in the physiological process of growing up.

There have always been people who relish a debate—though all too often, even when the subject hardly matters, the whole exercise amounts to little more than intellectual gymnastics in a thimble and scholarly squabbles over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

"School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to," conclude the authors of a guide to cultivating a passion for reading in children of all ages. It is clear that with good resources and role models, a child can become passionate about reading, but there are parents who wonder where they...

The child’s linguistic appetite must be stimulated from an early age, experts say, highlighting that the benefits the bilingual child reaps extend beyond the linguistic sphere.

Should my child’s photos be displayed on Facebook—even if I were to amp up my privacy settings? Before Elliott, my son, was born, I was adamant that all online footprints of him would be non-existent, or at most, kept to a minimum. I knew anything I posted on the internet featuring Elliott would stay there forever, and I didn’t want him living with...

The readers who immerse themselves in the maze of paper and ink, savouring every word, seem to be on the verge of extinction.

In my humble but literary-educated opinion, Tim Winton is Australia’s finest living novelist. Since winning publication of his first novel in a competition for young writers in 1981, he has had 10 more novels published, as well as collections of stories, plays, books for younger readers and a handful of non-fiction works. Winton has won Australia’s top literary prize—the Miles Franklin Award—on four...

"The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ" challenges both the atheist and the agnostic, as well as the convinced or full-of-questions Christian, to look at the person of Jesus of Nazareth in a new light.

In Europe, few people know Gwyneth Paltrow as anything other than an American actress. In the United States, however, her "modern lifestyle" wellness brand called goop is growing her reputation—in a negative way.

"A Time to Forgive" is the story of a pilgrimage through the void of pain and trauma. A father, devastated by the enormity of his loss, struggles to forgive his daughter's killer.

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

Interpreting Scripture is a book published by the Biblical Research Institute in the USA. It is aimed at people who want to understand the Bible better.

In 2016, I noticed advertising for a new quiz show called Hard Quiz coming to ABC TV in Australia.

"The Clifford Goldstein story" is addressed to those who, ever so often, feel the need to read something about experimentation, because it is not about theorising a rebellious young man's search for the path of life, but rather a true-life story.