Known and loved by Australians as the editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly throughout the second half of the seventies, Ita Buttrose has also made lasting contributions to many other aspects of our lives and culture.

In A Passionate Life, she traces her working career – from fifteen-year-old cadet journalist, through editorships of Cleo, the Weekly and ITA magazines, to heading up the National Advisory Council on AIDS (NACAIDS), working with World Vision, Alzheimer’s Australia, the Macular Degeneration Foundation and Arthritis Australia, and accepting broad-ranging speaking engagements. Along the way, Ita gives us glimpses of the inner workings of the Australian media, politics, the arts – and the lives and personalities of many of the well-known people she has met and worked with, including Australian media giants Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch. With great courage and honesty, she also allows us into the more personal aspects of her life as a working mother during these years.

Ita shares the insights and philosophical views she has developed through her rich and diverse experience of life in Australia during the second half of the twentieth century. From her position as respected stateswoman, Ita Buttrose explores such varied subjects as the value of friendship, the changing nature of families, the ageing of our population, and Australia’s future directions in these early years of the twenty-first century.

Laced with optimism, humour and wisdom, Ita’s perspective is uniquely Australian – and always passionate.

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