In a book that must span a federal election, Brexit, and Donald Trump, the overtly political is surprisingly subdued, though not absent. Jo Chandler writes with restrained fierceness about coral bleaching along the Great Barrier Reef. Richard Flanagan provides an eyewitness account of trauma in Syria, while Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani describes with chilling bluntness his imprisonment on Manus Island. Julian Burnside reprises a superb lecture on Australian refugee policy.

Among the few overtly political essays is the contribution by Galarrwuy Yunupingu. He begins with song cycles in the life of the Yolngu. These cycles, laid out on ceremonial grounds, give meaning to a person’s life, linking them to the past, providing obligations for the present and future. When lived as sung, they make sense of the Yunupingu name, translated here as ‘the rock that stands against time’. This identity must stand in many worlds, as Yunupingu surveys Territory and national politics, the damage to community from battles over land rights and mining, the successive disappointments as prime ministers fail to deliver their promises to the Yolngu.

There are essays which point to policy consequences. In her beautiful evocation of a Brisbane storm, Ashley Hay reminds us of the wild weather in prospect as the climate changes. Rebecca Giggs touches on the degradation of nature as she watches a beached humpback whale slowly die on a Western Australian beach.

Geordie WilliamsonReportage too carries political messages: Jennifer Mills on the economic and social forces that leave Detroit a ruin, Martin McKenzie-Murray on endless shootings in America. Guy Rundle asks when violence is a political act, and thus terrorism; too expansive a definition, he argues, threatens our civil rights.

Many essays focus on literature and art, often offering a personal response to the work of others. Melinda Harvey has read deeply the novelist Elena Ferrante. Fiona McGregor reflects on performance art as practitioner and audience, drawn to – but still unsure about – the work of Marina Abramović. Michelle de Kretser writes on Randolph Stow, Peter Goldsworthy on Peter Porter, Gregory Day on John Kinsella. J.M. Coetzee contributes his preface to a new edition of The Good Soldier, perceptive and well-crafted but an awkward fit in the flow of the collection. James Bradley proves personal context for his moving tribute to David Bowie, while Michael Winkler, in his 2016 Calibre Prize-winning essay ‘The Great Red Whale’, pursues an improbable set of connections between Moby-Dick and Uluru, finding in the white whale and the red rock a profundity of silence. Clive James might spend days writing about Browning, but finds much to enjoy binge-watching The West Wing. James is an assured writer and worthy dedicatee of the book, but his essay sits uncomfortably in this context.

Essays are often intensely personal, the hard work of finding words for fleeting insights. In a striking opening for the volume, Maggie Mackellar offers a fugue on her father’s death. Anwen Crawford also links music and loss, while Mireille Juchau wonders about her grandmother fleeing Nazi Germany, and the life that followed. Fiona Wright writes about teenage depression and bulimia, and the consequences of treatment. Apparent fragments from Helen Garner achieve a coherence that belies the small moments described. Adam Rivett evokes the methodical silence of Berlin libraries, in a city marked by music and film.

Michael Winkler's Calibre Essay Prize-winning essay 'The Great Red Whale' was featured in the June-July 2016 issue of Australian Book Review.The Best Australian Essays 2016 concludes with ‘Both Hands Full’, an essay from Kim Scott. This reprises – and integrates – many different approaches in this collection. Scott begins with death and grieving, moves to personal experience as he interrogates the role of literature, and reflects on Nyoongar ancestral lands and the politics of Indigenous experience. He closes by listening carefully for language, voices from the past singing of our present, making sense of possible futures.

It is an inspired close. In a survey collection that is more than parts, the essays must talk to each other. Here is the conversation of our moment – voices we know, new arrivals who startle, personal and shared political concerns addressed in many different ways. With quiet skill, Geordie Williamson has edited a single volume that contains the multitudes who are us.