And
So It Went: Night Thoughts In A Year Of Change
BOB ELLIS
'Ellis
gives us the inner illumination, as well as the outward stumbling comedy of politics
as it is truly lived' Mike Rann
'One of the better books on our time
and the fools we have lately survived. Like War and Peace and the Iliad, it is
abundant, instructive, exhilarating and cathartic.' Bob Carr
From
the suicide bombing of Glasgow Airport and the flooding of England to the horse
flu and the Chinese earthquake and the Bhutto assassination, from the rise of
Turnbull and Rudd to the slow disintegration of Howard, Ruddock, Olmert, Blair,
Mushareff, Mugabe, Costello, Nelson, Buswell and Bush, from the campaign insults
of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin to the great economic
meltdown and the night of Obama's audacious victory, Ellis took notes, attended
funerals, went to the cricket, wrote mordant midnight verse, walked his dogs and
pondered humanity's most hectic interim in quite a while.
No
better meditation on the Iraq war's backwash and the propaganda weapons of the
Murdoch Right has been thus far attempted, no wittier essay on human mortality,
the planet's fate, and the melancholy harvest of Australia's most rancorous political
years. 'And So it Went' is a book to re-read, and savour.
Bob
Ellis is the author of eighteen books. He is a screenwriter, speechwriter, mob
orator and political essayist. He has also directed film, written songs and poetry,
acted in Stoppard and Beckett and writes regular film criticism and political
commentary. His most recent book, 'Night Thoughts in Time of War' was published
in 2004.
'And So it Went' is available now (RRP $35).
