Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister 2016 - Grattan Institute

Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister 2016

by John Daley

30.11.2016 report

Every year Grattan Institute releases a summer reading list for the Prime Minister. It recommends books and articles that the Prime Minister, or any Australian interested in public debate, will find both stimulating and cracking good reads. We are pleased to announce this year’s list:

The Phoenix Years: Art, resistance and the making of modern China – Madeleine O’Dea

Talking to my country – Stan Grant  

Time for a new consensus: fostering Australia’s comparative advantages – Tom Bentley & Jonathan West

When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism – Jonathan Haidt 

The Life Project: The Extraordinary Story of Our Ordinary Lives – Helen Pearson 

Autumn – Ali Smith

This year’s list explores big themes in Australian contemporary life and politics. Modern China matters to Australia, and we explore what it has been like to live through the economic, social and cultural changes of the last 40 years. We follow an indigenous Australian journalist searching for his identity as he both reports on wars overseas, and journeys to past conflicts in Australia. The list includes an essay on the direction of Australian public policy and economic reform, and another on how globalisation has changed the political landscape and provoked nationalist movements. There’s also a story about how ground-breaking studies from the UK, spanning decades, are transforming our lives today. Finally, the list includes a delightful fiction piece that playfully interweaves the big events of 2016 with the small pleasures, the mundane and the everyday.

Grattan Institute launched our annual Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister at the State Library of Victoria. ABC Presenter Sabra Lane joined Grattan Institute CEO John Daley in Melbourne to discuss how these titles illuminate some of Australia’s most important debates.

This year we were proud to publish our list in partnership with Readings – an Australian independent retailer. The books can be purchased at any of Readings seven shops in Melbourne, or via Readings online with free delivery on orders $19.95 and over anywhere in Australia.

Download the list