And So it Went

'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.