Historian, essayist, speechwriter, humourist, anti-cant crusader; Don Watson has a gift for luring us to the nub of a matter, or at least to a new view of it, there to grin or grind our teeth at the spectacle. Over the years Don Watson has written on politics and politicians in Australia and the USA, sport, nature, history, culture, crimes against speech, and military commemorations. Sometimes he writes in celebration of a moment or a creature of beauty; at other times, because something or someone gets on his goat - or up it, as young folk say these days. At the heart of all of his work is the belief that, more than just about anything else - more even than free markets or lifestyle choices - in a civilized society words matter.

Don Watson is the author of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, which won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award, and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year; Death Sentence, which won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year; Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words; and American Journeys, which won The Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Book of the Year, the inaugural Indie Award for Non-Fiction, and the Walkley Non-Fiction Award. In 2010 Don was awarded the Phillip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Australian Literature. Since 2003 his website weaselwords.com.au has been documenting the viral spread of management-speak and the decline of public language. His critically acclaimed 2014 book The Bush recently won the Indie Book of the Year and the NSW Premier's Literary Award.