Book cover of John Monash: A Biography

Book description

A major Australian university and a great Victorian freeway are named after Sir John Monash, but many people - especially younger generations - know little about him. The son of Jewish immigrants from Prussia, Monash graduated from the University of Melbourne in three faculties - Arts, Law and Engineering. He…

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Why read it?

1 author picked John Monash as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Geoffrey Serle was an outstanding Australian historian who wrote a number of fine books, and one of the best was his award-winning biography of the most renowned AIF commander, John Monash.

Various other authors have compiled books on Monash, but none are as good as Serle’s. This is a magisterial whole-of-life volume, with plenty on Monash’s life before WWI and during the 1920s. It was a marvellous precedent for me to keep prominently in mind after I embarked on my whole-of-life, warts-and-all biography of Monash’s contemporary, Pompey Elliott.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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