America, America

Shalom Auslander describes himself as having "been raised like a veal". He is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin’s Lament and the novels Hope: A Tragedy and Mother For Dinner. He is the creator of Showtime’s Happyish. 

The Hon Bob Carr holds the record for longest continuously serving Premier in the history of New South Wales and he also served as Australia’s Foreign Minister for 18 months. Since leaving politics, Carr has led a distinguished career as a defacto diplomat, author and academic. He is the author of My Reading Life, Thoughtlines, Diary of a Foreign Minister and political memoir Run for Your Life. 

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Cold War, Hot Culture

James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University. A former analyst with the Office of National Assessments, he has authored a number of books, including The Power of Speech, Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War and David Campese: The Last of the Dream Sellers.  

Born in South Australia, John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the WZB (Berlin). He is renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy, and is the author of many books including Tom Paine: A Political Life, The Life and Death of Democracy, Power and Humility and The New Despotism. He has contributed to the New York Times, Al Jazeera, the Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Hindustan Times and the South China Morning Post. The ABC speaks of him as "one of Australia’s great intellectual exports". He was nominated for the 2021 Balzan Prize (Italy) and the Holberg Prize (Norway) for outstanding global contributions to the human sciences. His latest book is The Shortest History of Democracy, which is forthcoming in a dozen languages.  

Fintan O'Toole is an Irish Times columnist and writer. His books include We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, he is a winner of the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize. He is also professor of Irish letters at Princeton University.