Quarterly essay issue 57

Quarterly Essay is an Australian periodical that straddles the border between magazines and non-fiction books. Printed in a book-like page size and using a single-column format, each issue features a single extended essay of at least 20,000 words, with an introduction by the editor, and correspondence relating to essays in previous issues.

Founding editor Peter Craven was sacked by the magazine's owner, property developer Morry Schwartz, in early 2004 over a dispute about the joint authorship of one essay, and, more widely, the magazine's future direction.

His most recent book is Australia’s Second Chance and he is also author of Faultlines, The Longest Decade and a previous best-selling Quarterly Essay, Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era. Australia has a justified reputation for avoiding the super-shocks of the twenty-first century.