Witness

Anne Summers – trailblazing feminist, journalist, commentator and author – on 50 years of Australian and American society and politics.In Witness, an illuminating first-ever collection of Summers’ reporting, essays, interviews, articles and speeches, we meet Cate Blanchett and Robert Caro, Germaine Greer and Monica Lewinsky, Faith Bandler and Rosie Batty. Summers revisits the vindictive politics of the Julia Gillard era and the way John Howard upended the agenda for women’s equality. She explores the Mexican patron saint of drug runners and the terrorist bombing of an Ariana Grande concert. And she reflects on the death of her mother, finally providing a headstone for a violent grandfather, sharing her name with a chain of sex shops and why she couldn’t throw out her swinging ’60s wedding dress.Summers tells the stories of the people, issues and moments that have shaped our past and are key to understanding today’s tumultuous world.‘Anne Summers’ abiding legacy will be her unwavering support for women’s rights. But this book reminds us she contributed so much more than that to the national conversation.’ – Barrie Cassidy‘This book is an utter joy and a landmark achievement. It is a work of both witness and activism from a writer at the epicenter of politics, journalism and feminism, a woman who makes things happen and who is rightly a national treasure. Witness is a lucid and enthralling window onto half a century of history and history making. Anne Summer’s vision and her writing have stood the test of time; her pieces seem even more astonishingly insightful, even prescient, viewed from now.’ – Anna Funder‘A staggeringly large canvas of wise and sharp observations of Australia and the world.’ – Laura Tingle‘Fifty years in the making, Witness is an astonishing compendium of courage, leadership, scholarship and wisdom. Witness not only gives a global movement for social change its modern history but also cements Anne Summers’ place in the canon of contemporary political torchbearers. Ferocious in her intellect, fearless in her reach, Summers’ reportage from the frontline of the internationally entrenched, gendered culture wars provides both a reckoning of our times and the inspiration to maintain the rage that has underpinned a lifetime of commitment to justice, equality and democracy. For better or worse, Summers’ words ring as relevant and true now, in anthology, as they did in real time on the journalistic page. Challenging, demanding, frank and utterly germane, this book will bear witness for years to come.’ – Clare Wright