The Solly Trilogy is a tale of three generations, from a boy’s enlistment as cabin boy on a Yankee packet ship, the Delaware Belle, plying between Plymouth and New York in the early nineteenth century, through the drought, conflict and financial strife of the 1890’s in Australia to the impact on ordinary folk of the great war and its aftermath. The story is based around the lives of ordinary people of three generations surviving a world that was changing faster than at any time before. It was an era in which the world was shrinking and the affairs of men of diverse nations began to break down centuries-old barriers of class and inherited wealth. We denizens of the 21st century can easily forget that the accomplishments of every generation are built upon those of generations that came before them. Similarly, the values we hold dear were first learned at the knees of our parents. The Solly Trilogy is about a time not just before aircraft, the computer and the internet, but before labour-saving devices we take for granted today had been invented. How did people live in times such as these? These were resourceful people, adaptable people in times that required a surfeit of both of these admirable qualities. Solly’s Trilogy is designed to be read in any order, but it is suggested that you begin with ‘Solly’s Way’, the story of Solly’s arrival at Wallangulla as an old man and his impact on a struggling Australian outback family. ‘Solly’s Legacy’ tells of the legacy of caring, respect and ingenuity the old man left for the next generation. Finally, ‘Solly’s Journey’ completes the loop by telling the story of a cabin boy whose travels under sail, as he grows to manhood, lead him to cross great oceans of the world. After travelling the American west, a shipwreck brings him to a land down under where he finds a wide brown land worth exploring. The Solly Trilogy is set in a period when events in a more remote Europe changed life in Australia. Today, events before the Great War seem like some far-off good old days when life in the Australian outback was simple and wholesome. I’m grateful to my grandfather and his mates who loved a yarn about the old days and could no doubt spin a few tall ones to a gullible lad. They helped me gain many valuable insights into how it really was back then and became the inspiration behind the Solly Trilogy.

A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Haunted Laughter addresses whether it is appropriate to use comedy as a literary form to depict Adolf Hitler, The Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Guided by existing theories of comedy and memory and through a comprehensive examination of comedic film and television productions, from the United States, Israel, and Europe, Jonathan Friedman proposes a model and a set of criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of comedy as a means of representation. These criteria include depth of purpose, relevance to the times, and originality of form and content. Friedman concludes that comedies can be effective if they provide relevant information about life and death in the past, present, or future; break new ground; and serve a purpose or multiple purposes—capturing the dynamic of the Nazi system of oppression, empowering or healing victims, serving as a warning for the future, or keeping those who can never grasp the real horror of genocide from losing perspective.

Larry David, the man behind two of the most successful and critically acclaimed sitcoms in television history, is the focus of this biography. This unofficial guide follows the career that has accorded him status as a comic genius and garnered a fanatical following—from his early exploits as a stand-up comic to his role as producer and cocreator of Seinfeld and HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. It explores the back-story of the conception and development of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a mostly improvised sitcom in which the actor stars as a fictionalized version of himself. The comic’s on- and off-screen relationships with colleagues and friends such as Richard Lewis, Ted Danson, Wanda Sykes, Mary Steenburgen, and the cast members of Seinfeld are discussed, and a detailed episode guide to every season of Curb Your Enthusiasm completes this informative and entertaining glimpse into the life and creative process of a great comic talent.