Brazen thefts and some scrutiny of that Sydney Sweeney ad: 13 new books to read

It’s hard to believe that we’re about to head into the first month of winter. While the weather may be about to cool down, publishers aren’t. Here is a baker’s dozen of new titles for you to relish if you’re thinking of hunkering down any time soon.

AngertainmentEd CoperSummit, $36.99As Ed Coper, the man behind the success of online political movement GetUp!, says, “power lies with those who can best harness your attention”. In this examination of how angry noise on social media can kill sensible opinion-forming and become “the new political capital”, he scrutinises the MAGA movement, Russian propaganda, that Sydney Sweeney ad for jeans, the undermining of the Voice referendum and more. “Angry clowns” rule the court of public opinion, he concludes.

LandMaggie O’FarrellTinder Press, $34.99It’s been four years since her novel The Marriage Portrait, but Maggie O’Farrell has been a bit busy − what with the success of the screen adaptation of Hamnet. Land is her 10th novel and is based on her great-great-grandfather who made maps of Ireland for the British authorities in the 19th century around the time of the Irish famine. She has said in interviews leading up to publication that she wanted to tell the whole story of Ireland via the one plot of land.

The Rolling StonesBob SpitzMichael Joseph, $69.99Before we get Foreign Tongues, here’s a 700-page biography of the band that started up in 1962 and is still tottering along quite nicely, with Jagger and Richards now in their 80s. The account of recording Exile on Main St. is breathtaking: Bob Spitz has done stacks of research and interviews, but only a couple − years ago − with band members. It’s heavily weighted to the years before 2000, but as Keef says: “This is not something you retire from.”

DetentionRalph JackmanAllen & Unwin, $34.99What a first job for a teacher − the remand unit at a youth justice centre in Melbourne. As former broadcaster Ralph Jackman says, “danger would now be woven into my daily routine”. His disgust at the appalling treatment and conditions he saw, and his recognition of dire systemic failures led him to become a whistleblower. As he writes, “few groups of young people have been let down more by older generations than those in Australia’s youth detention facilities”.

Black LifeJack DavisUQP, $19.99In his introduction to this new edition, Kim Scott writes “the pride of survival is deep in the work of Jack Davis, as is the dance of a life and history”. The latest in UQP’s First Nations Classics, Davis’ poems are angry, passionate, sad and tender. In My Mother the Land he laments