Recollections Of A Bleeding Heart 10th Anniversary Edition

Everyone who sets out to write history must be free to decide how he will do it. It can't be any other way. I regret very few things more deeply than Paul Keating's belief that he was betrayed by this book, but if I had written it according to his lights, rather than mine, from his angle rather than mine, I would have betrayed myself; and, for want of a more clinical term, history - this bit of it at least - would have been betrayed as well.

From the Afterword by Don Watson

Focus Watson's sharp and seditious eye on the strange world of the Prime Minister's Office and the result is mesmeric, and not just to the strange breed, the politics watcher. It's a great yarn. Many of his descriptions of the Federal Parliament and the life lived in it are disturbing - and extremely funny. We should revisit Keating's world, not out of nostalgia (Watson's treatment doesn't allow it in any case), but to imagine - and see - that politics can be done differently.

From the Foreword by Carmen Lawrence

This book is like the black box recorder in a plane.

former PM Paul Keating

...a masterpiece...simply the best inside account of life, politics and combat inside the highest office of the land ever written.

Michael Gordon, The Age

one of the most intelligent and seductive books about Australian politics which has ever come my way.

Robert Manne, The Sydney Morning Herald

...the story of four tumultuous years told by an intelligent and curious insider, and no insider has ever done it better.

Les Carlyon, The Bulletin

...the finest insider's account yet published of Australian politics in action at the highest level.

Tony Baker, The Adelaide Advertiser

...a classic: an insider's account of the working of the political process, with its paranoia, its envies, its fevered inconsequentiality, its joys, crammed with wisdom and a lovely detachment.

Evan Williams, Spectrum, The Sydney Morning Herald

....a sheer delight to read...written by a man who would have difficulty putting together a dull sentence...Watson stiches a rich tapestry of national, international and personal context.

Diana Simmonds, The Sun-Herald