Luke Slattery – författare

Epicureanism has been diluted into a byword for gourmet dining, but does the original ancient Greek ''philosophy of the Garden'' contain insight that could save the world? Luke Slattery argues that reading Epicurus could help us rethink our materialist ways and challenge the inevitability of man-made climate change. Rather than appealing to altruism, or calling for revolution in the global economy, the Epicurean philosophy turns the developed world''s credo of ''greed is good'' on its head, counselling that genuine happiness comes from the quieting of desire; from less, not more. And that might just be the mindset we need to rein in unsustainable development.In this thoughtful Penguin Special, Slattery traces the radicalism of classical Epicurean thought, and its popularity despite political suppression. Along the way, he tours the archaeological sites of the ancient village of Oinoanda in Turkey and the Villa of the Papyri, buried along with Pompeii, with its ancient library of petrified scrolls. Might some of this treasure''s fragments, painstakingly restored, reveal answers to the big questions faced in the twenty-first century?

While violent revolution and social upheaval rocked Europe, far away in New South Wales, Governor Lachlan Macquarie was sowing the seeds for the Australian idea of the ''fair go''. Macquarie was a reformer and an emancipator. He believed that a person''s worth – be they gentry, infantry or convict – lay in what they were capable of doing, not what they had done in the past. He freed the brilliant, mercurial convict Francis Greenway and appointed him government architect for the buildings that would shape a new nation. But to the Tory British government of 1820, Macquarie and Greenway''s unconventional alliance threatened NSW''s very legitimacy as a penal colony. Here Luke Slattery breathes dramatic life into Australia''s first political dismissal and, along the way, maps Macquarie and Greenway''s bold collaborations and extraordinary architectural – and cultural – legacy. ''Short and snappy . . . It is exciting to see a writer of Slattery''s quality take on the the extraordinary history of colonial Australia with such zest and conviction and present it, properly, as a story with universal human meaning . . . [a] fierce little book.'' Sydney Morning Herald''A riveting read.'' Courier-Mail