In The Best Australian Essays 2016, Geordie Williamson curates the year's best non-fiction writing from Australia's finest writers. The result is a collection that reads as a wake-up call- from Jo Chandler on the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and Richard Flanagan on the Syrian exodus to Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani's inside account of life on Manus Island. There is also space for Bowie, TV box-sets and Aussie rules. Spanning politics, music, literature, art, ecology, linguistics and more, this anthology showcases the nation's most eloquent and insightful writing. Maggie Mackellar In Sympathy- A Fugue * Ashley Hay The Bus Stop * Rebecca Giggs Whale Fall * Anwen Crawford The Noise Made By People * Melinda Harvey She Thinks She Is The Boss * Mireille Juchau The Most Holy Object in the House * Fiona Wright A World of Bald White Days * Vicki Hastrich Things Seen * Helen Garner This Old Self * Tegan Bennett Daylight Vagina * Jennifer Mills Detroit, I Do Mind * Fiona McGregor The Experience Machine * Michelle de Kretser Like a Thief in the Night * Jo Chandler Grave Barrier Reef * Anna Spargo-Ryan How to Love Football * Peter Goldsworthy Review of Chorale at the Crossing by Peter Porter * Gregory Day Review of John Kinsella's 'Drowning in Wheat' * J.M. Coetzee Introduction to Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier * James Bradley David Bowie- Loving the Alien * Galarrwuy Yunupingu Rom Watangu * Richard Flanagan Notes on the Syrian Exodus * Adam Rivett 35,000 Pieces of Converted Culture * Michael Winkler The Great Red Whale * Behrouz Boochani Life on Manus- The Island of the Damned * Martin McKenzie-Murray On Mass Shootings * Guy Rundle On Modern Terrorism * Clive James Play All * Julian Burnside What Sort of Country Are We? * Kim Scott Both Hands Full

In The Best Australian Essays 2015, Geordie Williamson compiles the year's outstanding short non-fiction. Read Helen Garner on condescension, DBC Pierre on travel, Ceridwen Dovey on autobiography, Tim Winton on injury, Anna Krien on first love, and Nicolas Rothwell on the northern coast. With bracing essays on politics, music, literature, history, art, sport and more, this impressive anthology will entrance, stimulate and entertain. Sebastian Smee Confronting the Unthinkable in Goya's Art Anwen Crawford The World Needs Female Rock Critics Maria Tumarkin No Dogs, No Fruit, No Firearms, No Professors Tim Flannery How You Consist of Trillions of Tiny Machines Nadia Wheatley Belsen James Bradley Strange Weather Tim Winton Havoc Gerard Elson Bibliomancer Rebecca Giggs Open Ground Alison Croggon Trigger Warning Mungo MacCallum Malcolm Fraser Sophie Cunningham Staying With the Trouble Jeff Sparrow Re-reading the Famous Five and Biggles Nicolas Rothwell The Northern Wilds Karen Hitchcock Too Many Pills Tegan Bennett Daylight Fully Present, Utterly Connected Drusilla Modjeska The Informed Imagination Noel Pearson Remote Control Delia Falconer Seven Poor Men of Sydney Kirsten Tranter Go, Little Book Stephen Romei An Uneasy Masterpiece Helen Garner The Insults of Age Anna Krien My Granny's Last Wish Guy Rundle L'etat, C'est Charlie Ceridwen Dovey The Pencil and the Damage Done Matthew Lamb The Meeting that Never Was Ashley Hay Mirror Rim Christian Ryan The Thirty-ninth Summer of DK Lillee David Walsh Skin in the Game Mark Mordue The Library of Shadows Felicity Plunkett Sound Bridges DBC Pierre Leaving Ourselves at Home 'Wonky, idiosyncratic, fragmentary, paradoxical, drunk on words, the essay has ...a uniquely human thumbprint. ' Geordie Williamson