In February 2016 Eva Holland was rock climbing in her native Canada, trying to overcome her fear of heights. During descent she froze and stayed put. What follows is a combination of the confessional and analytic – her own case history and scientific examination of what fear is, where it comes from and how it works, from phobias and trauma to the ephemeral such as terror of dying. Her drive to understand and conquer her fear was precipitated by the sudden death of her mother a year before the climbing incident and led her into varying ways of overcoming her dread, from parachuting from a plane to specialist treatment. It’s a weighty subject, but she has a light, sometimes ironic touch, that makes her exploration of the subject engaging, frank and instructive.

Musicians and Addiction
Ed., Paul Saintilan
Music Australia, $27.50

A combination of psychological report into the high incidence of drug and alcohol addiction among musicians – and a study of why this is the case – may not sound like lively reading, but it’s absorbing. Using case studies of famous and not so well-known musicians (popular and classical), interviews and a general rundown of causes long and short term, this compendium takes you back stage after the gig to encounter the often insecure reality behind the performance. It distinguishes between pre-existing factors – addictive genes, traumatic childhood – and factors specific to the life, such as performance anxiety. It could be a study of the artist in general, especially the myth of the Romantic artist that peddles the notion of the tormented soul suffering for art and revelling in a sub-cultural, outsider status. Very human tales.

Searching for the Spirit
Jill Roe
Wakefield Press, $39.95

First published in 1986 with the great title Beyond Belief, this revised edition traces the history of Theosophy – the alternative religious movement that drew on western thought and eastern religion – in Australia from the late 19th century to the beginning of World War Two. Jill Roe, who died in 2017, goes back to the formation of the movement by Madame Blavatsky in America in the 1870s and its peak here in the early 20th in what is a combination of cultural and religious history. And she has a larger-than-life cast of characters who were integral to the movement – including Blavatsky, English socialist and pioneering women’s rights activist Annie Besant, and Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, the movement at one point hailing him as a Christ-like figure. Not to mention Alfred Deakin. Authoritative, academic, but accessibly written.