Baz Luhrmann’s 3D screen adaptation (rated M) of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is reviewed by Symeon Thompson, who dedicates his piece to the memory of Christopher Pearson, who died on June 9. I first heard of Baz Luhrmann’s 3D version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby while at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. It was hard not to.…

INTO THE SILENCE: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (London: Bodley Head) Paperback: 672 pages ISBN: 9781847921857 RRP: AUD$34.95   Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel   On June 8, 1924, a large crowd of people assembled on the summit of the Great Gable, a famous mountain in the heart of England’s Lake District, to dedicate a monument…

KARL MARX: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber (New York: Liveright) Hardcover: 672 pages ISBN: 9780871404671 RRP: AUD$69.95   Reviewed by Bill James   Someone once commented that the 19th-century Bible scholars who claimed to have discovered the “Historical Jesus” looked at Christ down a deep well, and saw their own faces reflected at the bottom. Even today, liberal theologians in Australia seem…