Book description
'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, Musharreff, 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, Bob Ellis took notes, attended funerals, went to the cricket,
wrote mordant midnight verse, walked his dogs and pondered on humanity's
most formative interim in quite a while. No better meditation on the
Iraq war's backwash and the propaganda weapons of the 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 read and savour.
