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A road novel of unremitting Australianness: the sheep in the tuckerbag, a lone woman watching for snakes, mutual misinterpretations of city and bush. Along the way, Jack and Maria are assaulted by stories of love and heartbreak told by strangers in every country town. ... Read more

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Snowdome is a tale of two histories.It is the present. Tinnitus is the spirit of the age. William comes home, flicks the radio on, turns it up. His head is full of noise.' William and his friends live in Sydney, a mumbling city. They think about the future, and thinking hurts.It is the future. Sydney has been emptied out by economic forces and re-opened as a museum. The museum guide's task is to describe the city's history to tourists. He can no longer tell is that history is true or if he has made it up. He hears the firmness in his voice on the cassette tapes and he keeps his doubts to himself.Snowdome is among the finest intelligent fiction this country has to offer. There has never been anything like it published in Australia. Bernard Cohen's deadpan style is spiked with humour and wit. This novel blends a hip sensibility with a more enduring seriousness, a kind of compact Perec. Cohen has managed to build a mirror ball of contemporary living. TOM FLOOD.Brilliant and importantly distinctive writing. BRENDA WALKER. ... Read more

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Foreign-policy making in democracies is frequently compared with that of more autocratic political systems, where public participation has not been allowed to shape national interests or policy formation. In Democracies and Foreign Policy, however, Bernard Cohen offers the first detailed comparison of two Western democraciesthe United States and the Netherlandsand their patterns of public participation in foreign policy. To assess the influence of citizens on the foreign policies of each nation, he examines the institutions that both shape and express public opinionnational legislative bodies, media of communication, organized interest groupsand searches for the roots of these institutions in the national political systems.Cohen's thought-provoking results demand a reassessment of aspects of foreign-policy making that have been taken for granted in each of these countries. Cohen finds, for example, that within the United States the media have significant power in setting agendas, while the political parties remain relatively mute on foreign-policy issues. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, the media have a lesser role, with the government instead sampling the opinion of the more outspoken political parties and party members. The Dutch Foreign Ministry, remaining walled off from the public, has a much freer hand in foreign policy. Cohen also finds that the U.S. State Department is much more sensitive to public opinion than its Dutch counterpart but, surprisingly, is less successful in understanding and coping with demands from its public.

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