Non-fiction review: Diary of a Young Naturalist and three others

PICK OF THE WEEK
Diary of a Young Naturalist
Dara McAnulty
Text, $29.99

One of Dara McAnulty’s teachers in Northern Ireland, where his family lives, once told his mother that her son would never be able to string a sentence together let alone a paragraph. Well, the young naturalist has written a book – and it’s captivating. He’s autistic and so is his family – apart from his father. But, he tells us, ‘‘we’re as close as otters’’. It’s an apt image, for it is in nature that McAnulty has found deliverance. It engrosses and soothes him, bringing aesthetics and meaning into his life – and he’s got a Lawrentian eye for the natural world; goshawks, robins and osprey spring from the page. Likewise his vivid rendering of an ancient stone circle – the stones looking ‘‘as if they’ve just risen, full of life, filled with the blood of shifting soil’’. Divided into the four seasons, his diary covers everyday events under the panoply of the eternal natural world. All things considered – he’s 16 – a brilliant achievement.

Radio Girl
David Dufty
Allen & Unwin, $29.99

Who these days has heard of the Women’s Emergency Signalling Corps or Violet McKenzie (Mrs Mac), the woman who founded it in 1939? But it was a pivotal moment in Australian military history. McKenzie, who grew up in rural NSW, always had an aptitude for the wireless and Morse code – and the training school she established became instrumental in women joining all arms of the defence forces in signals, code-breaking and instruction. There was initial resistance to ‘‘Mrs Mac’s’’ students until the Australian and US forces realised how well she’d trained them. David Dufty’s engaging study is not only a portrait of McKenzie but the times, taking us into the intriguing world of the Morse code signaller. One of history’s footnotes, Mrs Mac now has a book to herself.

Becoming John Curtin and James Scullin
Liam Byrne
Melbourne University Press, $34.99

While history has hailed John Curtin as Australia’s great war-time leader, it has been less kind to fellow Laborite James Scullin, whose prime ministership coincided with the Depression. Their fates are known, less so their journeys. This twin portrait of their early years – both working-class, both determined to create a more equal world; Scullin conservative in his approach, Curtin more radical – is also a portrait of the Labor Party’s formative years. They were both from rural Victoria, both worked in the timber industry and became life-long friends despite their differences. Although there can be a bit too much detail about party conferences and conflicts, this is a valuable documentation of the political evolution of two prime ministers and the party that made them.

The Arab Winter: A Tragedy
Noah Feldman
Princeton University Press, $46.99

It’s a common view that the protest period known as the Arab Spring in 2010/11, which promised so much in opposing dictatorship and demanding self-government, was a failure that, if anything, made things worse. Noah Feldman has a different view, arguing that for the first time Arab protesters across a range of countries took to the streets not in protest about external, imperial powers, but for internal political change. ‘‘People whose political lives had been determined and shaped from the outside,’’ he argues, ‘‘tried politics for themselves, and for a time succeeded.’’ His case study countries are largely Egypt, Syria (and the rise of IS), and Tunisia. The Arab winter, he says, may last a generation, but, in a sentiment that suggests the movement is a work in progress, speculates that spring will follow. An erudite but specialist text.