About the Author

Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor, broadcaster, and Walkley Award-winning journalist. He is a columnist for The Guardian Australia, a former Breakfaster at Melbourne's 3RRR, and a past editor of Overland literary journal. His most recent books are Fascists Among Us: online hate and the Christchurch massacre; Trigger Warnings: political correctness and the rise of the right; and No Way But This: in search of Paul Robeson. He lectures at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne.

Reviews

"The common narrative that pits humanity against nature assumes that our "innate greed" implicates us all in climate change. The environmental movement, too, buys into this myth with its longing for pristine wilderness unspoiled by humankind, argues Jeff Sparrow. This urgent, incisive work resoundingly refutes this arbitrary divide by showing how industrialisation, in the hands of the wealthy and powerful, drove a wedge between ordinary people and the natural world. Hence, the simplistic "jobs versus environment" binary that stymies our current climate-change debate. The alternative, however, is right under our noses. "In pre-capitalist Australia, humans did not despoil the land." They worked in harmony with it, enhancing nature rather than plundering it. And it was a collective endeavour. It is in this understanding of human nature that Sparrow finds hope."
--Cameron Woodhead & Fiona Capp, The Sydney Morning Herald "Sparrow tells these stories with the lucidity and animation of a true crime podcast. He dissects the reactionary nature of placing mankind in opposition to nature: it not only erases millennia of Indigenous peoples' relative harmony with the natural world, but seeks to preserve nature for the select few destroying it for everyone else. He is fearless too in his criticism of progressives who write off their fellow citizens as uncaring and complicit in global warming. That corporations invested in such sophisticated public relations campaigns shows they "understand something about ordinary peoples that escapes many environmentalists" that ordinary people are not "innately greedy or selfish" ... Amid the doom and gloom of so much contemporary environmentalism, this is worthy of applause."
--Conrad Landin, The Saturday Paper "I find it difficult to read about climate change at the moment, because the problem feels overwhelming and ultimately fatal to all of us. But Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating promises hope."
--Jo Case, InDaily "[E]xquisitely argued"
--Thomas Klikauer, Marx & Philosophy "Sparrow is one of Australia's leading public intellectuals, and Crimes Against Nature is both provocative and deeply considered ... Get ready for a myth-shattering call to arms."
--SALife
Praise for Fascists Among Us: "Sparrow convincingly argues that the more we understand about the last terrorist, the better we can prevent the next one"
--Kirkus Reviews "This short but incisive book builds to a stirring and well-argued conclusion... What Sparrow does so eloquently... is overtly link fascism, historically and theoretically, with political violence."
--Kelsey Oldham, Books+Publishing, four stars Praise for Trigger Warnings: "In the age of fake news and the seeming triumph of political populism, Jeff Sparrow's Trigger Warnings is a vital book for our times. With the integrity of political thought and action under threat from social media sloganeering, with Donald Trump holding court in the White House and "political correctness" the catch-all suffocation of dissent, Jeff Sparrow challenges us to respond with intelligence and conviction."
--Tony Birch, author of Ghost River Praise for No Way But This: "Sparrow shows how this admittedly splendid actor, this marvelous singer, this charismatic speaker, had somehow evolved into something more: he had for many people become the embodiment of the global longing for a better world, a juster dispensation... Sparrow has made perfect and haunting sense of him."
--Simon Callow, New York Review of Books "In a chronologically methodical and delightfully insightful approach that might best be described as "bio-tourism", Australian author, journalist, and broadcaster Sparrow tells the story of preternaturally gifted Paul Robeson... [A]n excellent and perhaps timely reboot of Robeson's singularly incredible life, especially as its trajectory now intersects with contemporary racial issues."
--Library Journal