From renowned journalist Guy Rundle, Red, White and Blown is a piercing and provocative investigation into the United States' resolute failure to reckon with its own divisions and blind spots. Interrogating the political events of the 2022 midterm elections as well as their cultural and historical backdrop, this latest book from the Crikey Reads series asks us to frankly consider the US for what it may have ultimately become: a cult. From the Orange People in Oregon to the Moonies with their stadium weddings, the US is a country where cults have easily taken a foothold since the 1970s. But do those crazed origins stem much further back? Could the US perhaps itself be likened to a cult – one that has acquired immense power and imposed its vision on millions, but has now found its impossible fantasy collapsing from within, prompting it to do what cults always do: believe in magic and look for enemies? With this necessary and fresh perspective, Rundle allows us to slot the inexplicable nature of the US into place. Red, White and Blown gives the Australian reader a tour through the embattled republic and poses a question: why are we slavishly attaching ourselves to a potential cult, when we have so far successfully avoided the very things that have made the US so?  From Crikey and Hardie Grant Books, The Crikey Read is a series that brings an unflinching and truly independent eye to the issues of the day in Australia and the world.

Who is Clive Palmer, and what does his ascent say about Australia's creaking political system? In Clivosaurus, Guy Rundle observes Palmer close up, examining his rise to prominence, his beliefs, his deals and his politics - not to mention his poetry. Rundle shows that neither the government nor the media have been able to take Palmer's measure. Convinced they face a self-interested clown, they have failed to recognise both his tactical flexibility and the consistency of his centre-right politics. This is a story about the Gold Coast, money in politics, Canberra's detached political caste and the meaning of Palmer's motley crew. Above all, it is a brilliantly entertaining portrait of 'the man at the centre of a perfect storm for Australian democracy, a captain steering his vessel artfully in the whirlpool.' 'In the first half of the year we saw Tony Abbott treated with deference to his values and beliefs, as his chaotic and lying government slid from one side of the ring to the other, while Clive Palmer, ploughing a steady course on a range of key issues, was treated as the inconstant one. No wonder no one could tell what he was going to do next - they weren't even bothering to look at where he had come from.' Guy Rundle, Clivosaurus

In the third Quarterly Essay, Guy Rundle comes to grips with John Howard, the prime minister who, on the eve of an election, seems to have turned round his political fortunes by spurning refugees and writing blank cheques for America's War on Terror. This is a brilliant account of John Howard's dominant ideas, his concerted 'dreaming' with its emphasis on unity and national identity that reveals him to be the most reactionary PM we have ever had, the only political leader who would allow ideas like those of One Nation to dominate the mainstream of Australian politics in order to improve his political chances. Rundle puts Howard in the context of the economic liberalism he shares with his colleagues and opponents and the conservative social ideology that sets him apart. It is a complex portrait in a radical mirror which relates John Howard to everything from Menzies's 'forgotten people' to the inadvertent glamour of the government's antidrug advertising. It is also a plea for right-thinking people of every political persuasion to resist the call to prejudice and reaction. 'A portrait of a political opportunist who is also ...a sincere reactionary- putting back the clock because he believes in it, but also fanning the whirlwind of unreason in order to save his political skin. ' - Peter Craven, Introduction 'The coincident occurrence of the asylum seeker confrontation and the attack on the U.S. has made visible the most dangerous and damaging thing he has done to the Australian polity...and that is to deepen contempt for such protection as we did have from unbridled executive power, mass hysteria, the rush to surrender our freedoms and offer them up on the alter of crisis.' - Guy Rundle, The Opportunist