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      • The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them
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      • Ausralian Quarterly Essays >
        • Quarterly Essay 59: Faction Man: Bill Shorten's path to power by David Marr
        • Quarterly Essay 58: Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State by David Kilcullen
        • Quarterly Essay 57: Dear Life: On Caring for the Elderly by Karen Hitchcock
        • Quarterly Essay 56: Clivosaurus: The Politics of Clive Palmer
        • Quarterly Essay 55: A Rightful Place: Race, recognition and a more complete Commonwealth
        • Quarterly Essay 54: Dragon's Tail: The Lucky Country after the China Boom
        • Quarterly Essay 53: That Sinking Feeling: Asylum seekers and the search for the Indonesian solution
        • Quarterly Essay 52 Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World
        • Quarterly Essay 51 The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell
        • Quarterly Essay 50 Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny
        • Quarterly Essay 49 Not Dead Yet
        • Quarterly Essay 48 After the Future: Australia's New Extinction Crisis
        • Quarterly Essay 47: Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott
        • Quarterly Essay 46 Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation
        • Quarterly Essay 37 What's Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia
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Oxford University Press has published hundreds of 'very short introductions' to a very wide range of topics, ranging from great thinkers, intellectual movements, academic topics to popular culture. These are written by leaders in each field and provide accessible and quality background for writers.

The Kirkreview has no commercial association with OUP, other than buying many of their titles. Reviews will be posted in reverse order of publication date. Some of the VSI topics, while subject to revisionist thinking, do not date. For example, the first book on the classics was first published as a VSI in 2000 and remains a sound introduction. Books on other topics, Islam, archaeology, the European Union, terrorism, globalisation and global warming, have had new editions published and it is the latest edition which will be reviewed.
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Networks: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short
Introductions) by
Guido Caldarelli

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Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short
Introductions) by Elleke Boehme

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Fossils: A Very Short Introduction by
Keith Stewart Thomson

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The Animal Kingdom: A Very Short Introduction by Peter W H Holland

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Cancer: A Very Short
Introduction by Nick James

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Magnetism: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Blundell

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