Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Arguably, by Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Books London, 2011.

Ives, Rosslyn Review(s) of: Bigger or better: Australia's population debate, by Ian Lowe, University of Queensland Press, 2012, $34.95.

Ives, Rosslyn On February 12, Humanists and many others around the world will celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday. We do this because his most significant contribution to human knowledge, as set out in On Origin of the Species, is the evidence and arguments for evolution by natural selection. By taking a scientific approach, Darwin along with many others changed the way humans understand their origins and place in the biosphere. We are not the product of special creation, but rather naturally evolved (...) beings, fully interdependent with the rest of the natural world. (shrink)

Ives, Rosslyn For thousands of years religions have been the main source of answers to life's 'big questions': Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? How shall we live?

Ives, Rosslyn The emergence of freethought in Western Europe and its colonies seems to be an almost inevitable outcome of the many changes that had occurred during the preceding centuries - changes that expanded knowledge and understanding about the place of humans in the scheme of things.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Forgotten war, by Henry Reynolds, NewSouth, 2013. $29.99.

Ives, Rosslyn When over two hundred people gathered in Amsterdam in 1952 and formed the International Humanist and Ethical Union, they had available to them a range of words to describe their non-religious worldview; among them atheist, ethicist, freethinker, humanist, rationalist and secularist. Why then, did those at the inaugural congress chose 'Humanism' over all the other available options?

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Labor's historic mission, by Brian Ellis, Pamphleteer series No. 1, Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Murphy's law and the pursuit of happiness: A history of the civil celebrant movement, by Dally Messenger III, Spectrum Publications, Melbourne 2012. $35 p and p.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: Reclaiming Epicurus, by Luke Slattery, Penguin Specials, 2012. $9.99.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The age of genius: The seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury 2016, $34.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The god argument: The case against religion and for humanism, by A. C. Grayling, Bloomsbury, London 2013. $30.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically, by Peter Singer, Text Publishing Melbourne 2015.

Ives, Rosslyn Review of: The swerve: How the renaissance began, by Stephen Greenblatt, Publisher The Bodley Head, London 2011.