Book reviews

Combined book reviews of the following three books :<br/> "Seamus Heaney: creating Irelands of the mind" by Eugene O'Brien. ISBN: 1904148026 <br/> "Brian Friel: decoding the language of the tribe" by Tony Corbett. ISBN: 1904148034 <br/> "John Banville: exploring fictions" by Derek Hand. ISBN: 1904148042

Book reviews : David Palmer, Ross Shanahan, and Martin Shanahan, eds., Australian Labor history reconsidered

An objective of this collection is to bring the history of the Australian labor movement to international attention. The editors introduce the collection with a brief overview of Australian labor history, emphasizing differences between the Australian and American experiences. The introduction argues that a unique aspect of Australian labor history is “laborism,” which is defined as the central place of the labor movement in Australian culture, as compared with the more marginal position of the labor movement in America. In Australia, this centrality is reflected in the embedding of trade unions and labor in the state through wage-fixing tribunals, a social security system designed to support the families of male wage earners, and the Australian Labor Party's strong links to the trade union movement. The introduction is informative and especially benefits from the insights of David Palmer, an American historian teaching at Adelaide's Flinders University. However, the introduction was apparently written later at the suggestion of an American reader and has thus not been fully integrated into the structure of the book.

Need for speed

Like me you probably read a few magazines, including PC Update, and Google your way around the Web before launching into any complex endeavour involving PC or network updates. This is particularly the case when it comes to any serious expenditure. I'll be honest; sometimes I read the reviews after the fact, just as I sometimes read the instructions after an installation goes pear-shaped. This How-To is one of those experiences.