With much of the world’s attention focused on the US political scene during 2024, a book that offers some useful context is The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself (published by Bloomsbury, RRP $37) by Neil Bryant, the BBC’s New York correspondent. He accepts that the country’s political polarisation has reached an apex – or perhaps nadir – but he notes that division and belligerence have been a part of American political culture for a long time, going back to the constitutional debates and encompassing the Civil War. There are, however, the new elements of social media, lawfare, and a hyper-partisan press. He makes the point that a new President who is denied legitimacy by nearly half the country and by important institutions will have difficulty getting anything done, so there is a cycle of failure, recrimination, and payback. Will Donald Trump’s landslide victory break the pattern? Wait and see.

An issue that was the subject of much debate in the run-up to the American election is the freedom to speak one’s mind. Jonathan Turley, a respected academic specialising in constitutional law, dissects the issue in The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (Simon & Schuster, $58). He sees free speech as the right that underpins all the others but believes that in the past decade the emphasis has shifted from what is said to the emotional impact it might have on someone or other. The result is that censorship has lost its stigma, and is even applauded in some quarters. But Turley’s book is no hyperbolic call to arms. Its tone is sober, its conclusions are measured. As such, it is an important book, a judicious response to the noise and static, not just in the US but in democracies everywhere.

Another sort of danger to the ideals and practice of democracy is identified by Liz Truss, who holds the dubious distinction of having been the prime minister of Britain for 49 days in 2022. In Ten Years to Save the West (Regnery, $45), she recounts her long battle to reach the top. As a minister, she felt that the bureaucracy, the media and an army of self-appointed ‘experts’ were constantly undermining and frustrating her. She had thought that when she finally sat down in the big chair she would be able to achieve her goals, but what she found was more and tougher obstacles, all working in defence of the status quo. She readily admits that she made her share of mistakes but also argues that a reformist leader must act soon after an election, while they have a stock of political capital. They must select their most important priorities and follow every decision through to implementation or they will be buried by the administrative state. President-elect Trump, take note.

On the general question of getting things done, an interesting contribution comes from Paul Tilley, a former public servant who has jumped into academia. In Mixed Fortunes: A History of Tax Reform in Australia (Melbourne University Press, $37), he looks at the many attempts to address the problems of the tax system at both Commonwealth and state levels. A few have been successful but others have foundered on the rocks of entrenched interests and bureaucratic inertia. The nature of the subject requires a certain amount of technical discussion although Tilley manages to largely avoid jargon and keep the narrative moving.

A study that examines policy-making from a different angle is Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How We Crushed the Curve But Lost the Race (UNSW Press, $45) Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden are academic economists who delve deeply into the issues of the Covid-19 crisis and bring a great deal of research material to bear. They see the economic policy actions in the early part of the pandemic as mainly correct, a remarkable feat given that life-and-death decisions had to be made with information that was known to be incomplete, contradictory and outdated. Unfortunately, this was not matched by the public health responses as the pandemic ground on, with a notable lack of foresight and an increase in confused bickering.

The result was that lives were lost unnecessarily and lockdowns persisted for longer than they should have. There are important lessons here on both sides of the ledger, which hopefully will be recognised in future planning.

Allan Behm takes a look across the Pacific in The Odd Couple: the Australia-America Relationship (Upswell Publishing, $30). The two countries share many basic values but have important cultural differences, and Behm explores how they have shaped the relationship over time. He believes that both countries have a deep sense of insecurity about their place in the world, which is the key reason why Australia has often supported American adventurism.

The relationship has become shallow in recent times, and Behm argues that some recalibration is needed, with an emphasis on common interests. In some places the book leans decidedly to the left, which is understandable given that Behm worked as a senior staffer on the Labor side. Nevertheless, he has some interesting suggestions about the way forward.

A crucial area where America and Australia agree is the danger of an expansionist China. Kevin Rudd’s latest outing, Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World (Oxford University Press, $55), is a comprehensive examination of the issue. Xi blends China’s imperial history with Marxist ideas of the inevitable victory of socialism, and he makes no secret of his goal to make China the dominant player in the region and highly influential in the rest of the world. There is a Middle-Kingdom racism that underpins this thinking but these ideas are central to Xi’s worldview. It is a bits-and-pieces ideology but Xi believes that the elements fit together without contradiction. He is likely to stay in office for another ten years and his eventual successor will probably follow in his footsteps. Rudd argues that opposing, or at least containing, China should be a central objective of the democracies, although he thinks it can be done without major military confrontation. Mercifully, the book is free of Rudd’s tendency for self-aggrandisement, and hopefully it will find readers in the corridors of power.

A flashpoint in the area is Taiwan, so it is useful to gain some understanding of how its fits into the regional picture. Rebel Island: the Incredible History of Taiwan (Scribe, $50) by Jonathan Clements fills many of the blanks. Imperial China had long been ambivalent about the island – one emperor dismissed it as ‘a ball of mud’ – and Beijing was happy enough to cede it to the Japanese after losing a war. The fifty-year occupation by Japan, which ended in 1945, was brutal. When the Nationalists moved to the island after defeat by Mao’s communists in 1949 they ruled with an iron fist, although the eventual transition to democracy brought an economic boom. The legal status of the island is still grey, although Clemens says it is effectively an independent country to everyone but its giant neighbour. It is a remarkable story, and one which anyone interested in Asian-Pacific geopolitics should know.

Alexis Wright has won every major literary prize in Australia for her novel Praiseworthy (Giramondo Publishing, $40), including the Miles Franklin and Stella awards. Set in a northern indigenous town (called Praiseworthy) covered by a strange haze, it is populated with oddball characters, including one who believes that donkeys are the answer to climate change and another who chases butterflies along Aboriginal songlines. There is enough casual cruelty, racism and hypocrisy to go around but the overall tone of the book is dark, allegorical comedy with a wide streak of absurdity. The story is told from a variety of perspectives and at several levels, and at over 730 pages it is not an easy read. Also, Wright sometimes beats the ideological drum a bit too hard. But those willing to accept the challenge will find Praiseworthy worth the effort.

Gideon Haigh is mainly known as a sports writer but in this book he shows another side of himself. My Brother Jaz (Melbourne University Publishing, $25) is a meditation on the death of his brother in 1987, an event that has stayed with Haigh throughout his life. Jaz, or Jasper, was only seventeen when he died in a car accident, although for several years before his death he had led a life of increasing recklessness. There were suggestions that his death might have been suicide. Haigh was only able to write about the tragedy recently, tracing his brother’s life as well as his own journey through grief, guilt and, ultimately, acceptance. My Brother Jaz is a short book but it is heartfelt, poignant and, in its own way, inspiring.

This reviewer’s prize for the most unnecessary book of the year, the Trees Are Dying For This Award, always attracts a strong field. One of the contenders for 2024 is A Little History of the Australian Labor Party (UNSW Press, $27.99) by Frank Bongiorno and Nick Dyrenfurth. This book is certainly redundant, as the shelves already groan with the weight of tomes about the ALP, as well as its various leaders, victories and fights. Why another one is needed – whether ‘pocket-sized’ or not – is a mystery. The party and its acolytes might be fascinated by all this but that obsession is not shared by anyone else. Bongiorno and Dyrenfurth reiterate the old myths, and as this is an updated version of a previous book they add the obligatory section about the current incarnation of Labor. All it shows, however, is that Albo and his compatriots are not very interesting, aside from their habit of regularly shooting themselves in the foot.

Another unnecessary book is 12 Rules for Strife (Scribe, $30) by über-left-wing academic Jeff Sparrow and illustrator Sam Wallman. It is done as a comic but the message is the same one that Sparrow has been pushing for as long as anyone can remember. Not even the clever pictures can cover up the dated nature of what Sparrow has to say. It is the mixture as before: socialism, the revolutionary struggle, solidarity, yada yada yada. 12 Rules receives an Honourable Mention but Jeff and Sam will have to try again next year for the guernsey.

The clear winner for the TADFTA is Unredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy (HarperCollins, $57) by Christopher Steele. You might remember Steele as the author of a 2016 ‘dossier’ which purported to show that Donald Trump was a Russian puppet. Eventually, after a year of investigation and millions of dollars, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the whole thing was a fraud. The project was, as it turned out, commissioned and financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Undeterred, Steele repeats all his allegations here and throws in some new ones. He dismisses the debunking by Mueller and even several left-leaning newspapers as evidence that simply shows how deep the conspiracy against him goes. Honestly, you could not make this stuff up. The main question posed by Unredacted is how a respectable publisher could touch it with a bargepole. In any case, Steele takes the TADFTA. The prize is, suitably, an entirely fake certificate.