Fish and computer chips

Flinders University researchers have taken a revealing look inside the head of one of the first animals to crawl from the water to live on land more than 380 million years ago.

D Day

66 million years ago a 10 km asteroid slammed into the bay of Mexico precipitating the extinction of the dinosaurs and about half Earth’s other species. What would it have been like to experience such a gargantuan impact?

The curious case of Christopher Marlowe

A new biography traces the meteoric rise and tragic early death of one of Britain’s greatest literary talents, the enigmatic Christopher Marlowe.

Raven mother

In a powerful work of memoir, history and biography, Jane Messer retraces the tragic and hopeful steps of her Jewish German grandmother, Bella, from pre-war Berlin to Tel Aviv and finally Melbourne. Messer follows Bella’s journey to understand her choices, including why she abandoned her son Michael in England before the war.

The day women got the vote

April 25 1896 was a significant date in the history of women’s legal rights in Australia, as women voted for the first time and were allowed to sit in Parliament.

Women in black

The first ANZAC Day services were dominated by women dressed in black mourning the death of husbands, brothers and sons on the battlefields of World War One.

Know when to go

It’s a truism that all political careers end in failure as leaders always meet eventual disaster or cling to power too long, but the unique example of Roman emperor Diocletian suggests a graceful retreat is possible.

Laughter is the best medicine

We live in troubled times but the sense the world is heading to hell in a handbasket is as old as human civilisation and, inevitably, the Greeks (and Romans) had several words about it.

History’s made by great men

Phillips O’Brien’s “The Strategists” looks at World War 2 in Europe through the eyes of its five major players and traces how their actions were shaped by their earlier experiences in both war and peacetime.

‘I saw the horrors’

Understanding how the Australian press covered the Holocaust illuminates the role of journalism in the past and its contemporary importance today in a new era of anti-Jewish hatred and violence.

Writing in the ancient world

The art of writing may be about to wither now anyone can autogenerate empty AI slop at the touch of a button, but it flourished in the ancient world despite the primitive technology of its production.

Party like it’s 1999 BC

Australia’s summer party season is over, but however much fun you had over the holidays, it probably wasn’t a patch on the ancient Greeks.