The 100 Best Australian History and Politics Books
Aboriginal Artwork in Namadgi National Park by Martyman (CC BY 3.0)
The 100 Best Australian History and Politics Books list begins with general histories and then follows a loose chronological order.
1. A Concise History of Australia
By Stuart Macintyre
Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 225 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed ... More »
2. A History of Australia
By Mark Peel; Christina Twomey
This vivid, multi-dimensional history considers the key cultural, social, political and economic events of Australia's history. Deftly weaving these issues into the wider global context, Mark Peel and Christina Twomey provide an engaging overview of the countrys past, from its first Indigenous people, to the great migrations of ... More »
3. The Europeans in Australia: Volume One - The Beginning
By Alan Atkinson
It is the duty of historians to be, wherever they can, accurate, precise, humane, imaginative - using moral imagination above all - and even-handed. The first of three volumes of the landmark, award-winning series The Europeans in Australia gives an account of early settlement by Britain. It tells ... More »
4. The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 5: The Middle Way 1942-1995
By Geoffrey Bolton
The Middle Way covers the sweep of Australian history from the Fall of Singapore to the Keating Years. For this edition Geoffrey Bolton has added a chapter examining the key political, economic and cultural events since the Bicentenary that ended the first edition. More »
5. Creating A Nation: 1788-2007
By Ann Mcgrath; Marilyn Lake; Marian Quartly; Patricia Grimshaw
"This is not just another feminist challenge to yesterday's orthodoxy, but an effective move to displace it ... 'Creating a Nation' is a power-taking, centralizing exercise in mainstream national history -- one shaped by white feminist priorities, but designed for general use. This is a splendid achievement." (Meaghan ... More »
6. A Military History of Australia
By Jeffrey Grey
A Military History of Australia provides a detailed chronological narrative of Australia's wars across more than two hundred years, set in the contexts of defence and strategic policy, the development of society and the impact of war and military service on Australia and Australians. It discusses the development ... More »
7. The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
By Simon Ville; Glenn Withers
Australia's economic history is the story of the transformation of an indigenous economy and a small convict settlement into a nation of nearly 23 million people with advanced economic, social and political structures. It is a history of vast lands with rich, exploitable resources, of adversity in war, ... More »
8. The Original Australians: Stories of the Aboriginal People
By Josephine Flood
The Original Australians tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime, to the first contacts between Europeans and indigenous Australians, right through to modern times, it offers an insight into the ... More »
9. Aboriginal Economy and Society: At the Threshold of Colonisation
By Ian Keen
Drawing on early colonial cources as well as the writing of amateur and professional anthropologists, liguists and archaeloogists, Aboriginal Economy and Society compares the socail life and culture os seven regions of Australia as they appear to have been at the threshold of colonisation. With a focus on ... More »
10. Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory
By Harry Lourandos
This book challenges traditional perceptions of Australian Aboriginal prehistory: that the environment is the major determinant of hunter-gatherers; that Aborigines were egalitarian and culturally homogeneous and therefore experienced few economic and demographic changes. Harry Lourandos argues that the social and economic processes of hunter-gatherers were complex and that ... More »
11. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People
By Tim F. Flannery
In this illustrated ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humans, to the European colonizers and industrial society. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, ... More »
12. Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia
By Stephen J. Pyne
Pyne traces the impact of fire in Australia, from its influence on vegetation to its use by Aborigines and European settlers."Mr. Pyne, showing what a historian deeply schooled in environmental science can contribute to our awareness of nature and culture, has produced a provocative work that is a ... More »
13. Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia
By Bill Gammage
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far ... More »
14. Dancing with Strangers: The True History of the Meeting of the British First Fleet and the Aboriginal Australians, 1788
By Inga Clendinnen
In January of 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who will be their new neighbours; the beach nomads of Australia. "These people mixed with ours," wrote a British observer soon after the landfall, "and all ... More »
15. From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory
By Chris Healy
From the Ruins of Colonialism throws fresh light on the history of memory, forgetting and colonialism. Focusing on Australia, the book charts how film, public commemorations, history textbooks and museums have, in a strange ensemble, become something called Australian History. It considers key moments of historical imagination, including ... More »
16. The Colony: A history of early Sydney
By Grace Karskens
The Colony is the story of the fantastically divergent, endlessly energetic early years of Sydney. It is an intimate account of the transformation of a campsite in a beautiful cove to the town that later became Australia's largest and best-known city. From the sparkling beaches to the foothills ... More »
17. The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia
By Patricia Curthoys; John Gascoigne
This book surveys some of the key intellectual influences in the formation of Australian society by emphasising the impact of the Enlightenment with its commitment to rational enquiry and progress - attitudes which owed much to the successes of the Scientific Revolution. The first part of the book ... More »
18. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, 1492-1830
By Anthony Pagden
This book, the first to compare theories of empire as they emerged in, and helped to define, the great colonial powers-Spain, Britain, and France-describes the different ways and arguments these countries used to legitimate the seizure and subjugation of aboriginal lands and peoples."Learned, wide-ranging and important. . . ... More »
19. European Vision and the South Pacific
By Bernard Smith; Sheridan Palmer
Bernard Smith (1916-2011) was arguably Australia's greatest art historian and one of the most important humanist thinkers internationally on ideas concerning cultural contact. His European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, showed how the ideas of the Enlightenment and the empirical structuring of scientific and ... More »
20. The Colonial Earth
By Tim Bonyhady
Tim Bonyhady reveals the extraordinary breadth and depth - as well as the limits - of environmental concern in Australia from the arrival of the First Fleet until Federation. Taking art as his starting point, Bonyhady explores how issues such as the preservation of endangered species, the protection ... More »
21. Van Diemen's Land
By James Boyce
Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen's Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life. In this book, James Boyce shows how the convicts were changed by the ... More »
22. Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia
By Joy Damousi
This innovative book marks a new way of looking at convict women. It tells their stories in a powerful and evocative way, drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder and race and class dynamics in a colonial context. It considers the convict past in light of ... More »
23. Convict Women
By Kay Daniels
Who were the female convicts? What kinds of lives did they lead in a new society half a world away from home?Convict Women looks beyond the conventional images to draw a new and often surprising picture of convict women's experiences in a strange and harsh country. Beginning with ... More »
24. The Fatal Shore
By Robert Hughes
In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonise Australia. Documenting the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the ... More »
25. The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History, 1788-1870
By Ken Inglis
A social history of the period from 1788 to 1870 from the beginning of British settlement of Australia to the year when the last British soldiers sailed home from the colonies. In his inimitable fashion Inglis tells the story of convicts, currency lads and emigrants settling into their ... More »
26. The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Politics in Early New South Wales
By David Neal
Ironically, the first civil case to be heard in Australia occurred at the behest of two convicts under sentence. Of course, convicts had first-hand experience of criminal law, but all the settlers were part of a culture which emphasised the rule of law as the guarantee of its ... More »
27. Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia's Past
By Stephen Nicholas
State and private employers in New South Wales recognised the convicts' previous occupations, and employed a large proportion of them in the same occupations they had held at home. The women convicts - often classified as prostitutes - in fact brought a range of occupational skills equally as ... More »
28. Out of Luck: Poor Australians and social welfare 1788-1988
By Stephen Garton
'The distribution of wealth is far more equal. To begin with, there is no poor class in the colonies. Comfortable incomes are in the majority, millionaires few and far between.' This opinion, voiced a century ago by a British journalist on a tour of the colonies, sums ... More »
29. Colonial Ambition
By Peter Cochrane
Colonial Ambition tells the story of the politicians and would-be politicians of Sydney, who were driven by a determination to lift themselves and their new colony to a higher level. They wanted parliamentary liberty, though they were sharply divided over the form it might take and these divisions, ... More »
30. Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836
By Lisa Ford
In a brilliant comparative study of law and imperialism, Lisa Ford argues that modern settler sovereignty emerged when settlers in North America and Australia defined indigenous theft and violence as crime. This occurred, not at the moment of settlement or federation, but in the second quarter of the ... More »
31. The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales Before 1856
By Terry Irving
Who would imagine that democracy in NSW was won through fierce political battles and street rallies The Southern Tree of Liberty sheds light on this turbulent and violent period in Australian history. For twenty years, the advocates of democracy mobilised the working class and fought hard to bring ... More »
32. The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia
By Dane Kennedy
For a British Empire that stretched across much of the globe at the start of the nineteenth century, the interiors of Africa and Australia remained intriguing mysteries. The challenge of opening these continents to imperial influence fell to a proto-professional coterie of determined explorers. They sought knowledge, adventure, ... More »
33. An Unruly Child: A history of law in Australia
By Bruce Kercher
The imperial view of Australian law was that it was a weak derivative of English law. In An Unruly Child, Bruce Kercher rewrites history. He reveals that since 1788 there has been a contest between the received legal wisdom of Mother England and her sometimes unruly offspring. The ... More »
34. Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown
By Ann Mcgrath
'Both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians have a lot to learn about each other before reconciliation between the two peoples can be realised. This book will go a long way towards achieving that end.' Paul Behrendt More »
35. In Good Faith?: Governing Indigenous Australia through God, Charity and Empire, 1825 - 1855
By Jessie Mitchell
In the early decades of the 19th century, Indigenous Australians suffered devastating losses at the hands of British colonists, who largely ignored their sovereignty and even their humanity. At the same time, however, a new wave of Christian humanitarians were arriving in the colonies, troubled by Aboriginal suffering ... More »
36. Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810-1850
By Noel George Butlin
This broad-ranging 1995 book provides a comprehensive account of the development of Australia's colonial economy before the gold rushes. Noel Butlin's analysis of the developing economy includes background discussion of eighteenth-century British social, economic, and military history and a detailed demographic analysis of the Australian population over a ... More »
37. The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia
By Henry Reynolds
The publication of The Other Side of the Frontier in 1981 profoundly changed the way in which we understand the history of relations between indigenous Australians and European settlers. It has since become a classic of Australian history. Drawing from documentary and oral evidence, the book describes in ... More »
38. Savage or Civilised?: Manners in Colonial Australia
By Penny Russell
In colonial Australia manners marked the difference between savagery and civilisation, between vulgarity and refinement. Colonists recoiled in shock and confusion at the customs of Indigenous Australians, but they also sensed the savagery lurking in white society. Manners mattered, to individuals and to society. Original and compelling, Savage ... More »
39. The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788-1996
By Mark McKenna
This first comprehensive history of republican thought and activity in Australia traces debate around an Australian republic from 1788 to the present. It explains the pivotal role played by republican philosophies, both before and after federation, and illustrates the striking similarities between the arguments of both republicans and ... More »
40. The Rush That Never Ended: a History of Australian Mining
By Geoffrey Blainey
Forget about Ned Kelly and the bushrangers: for my money if you want a really romantic and exciting saga of Australia, take a look at our mining history. It's a turbulent, dramatic story with enough material for a bookshelf full of best-sellers ... a saga of tough men, ... More »
41. A History of Queensland
By Raymond Evans
A History of Queensland is the first single volume analysis of Queensland's past, stretching from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present. It encompasses pre-contact Aboriginal history, the years of convictism, free settlement and subsequent urban and rural growth. It takes the reader through the ... More »
42. Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia
By John Fitzgerald
Much has been written about the White Australia Policy, but very little has been written about it from a Chinese perspective. ""Big White Lie"" shifts our understanding of the White Australia Policy - and indeed White Australia - by exploring what Chinese Australians were saying and doing at ... More »
Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia
Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia by John FitzgeraldMuch has been written about the White Australia Policy, but very little has been written about it from a Chinese perspective. ""Big White Lie"" shifts our understanding of the White Australia Policy - and indeed White Australia - by exploring what Chinese Australians were saying and doing at a time when they were officially excluded.""Big White Lie"" pays close attention to Chinese migration patterns, debates, social organisations, and their business and religious lives. It shows that they had every right to be counted as Australians, even in White Australia. The book's focus on Chinese Australians provides a refreshing new perspective on the important role the Chinese have played in Australia's past at a time when China's likely role in Australia's future is more compelling than ever.
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43. Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s
By David Goodman
Comparing the 1849 gold rush in California with the 1851 gold rush in Victoria, Australia, this book shows how cultural factors gave each gold rush a distinctive shape and character, and a distinctive set of social, cultural, and ethical meanings. But it also reveals that underneath these differences ... More »
44. Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film
By Roslynn D. Haynes
The desert has a hypnotic presence in Australian culture, simultaneously alluring and repellent. The 'Centre' is distant and unknown to most Australians, yet has become a symbol of the country. This exciting book reveals the singular impact that the desert, both geographical and metaphorical, has had on Australian ... More »
45. Settler Society in the Australian Colonies: Self-Government and Imperial Culture
By Angela Woollacott
The 1820s to the 1860s were a foundational period in Australian history, arguably at least as important as Federation. Industrialization was transforming Britain, but the southern colonies were pre-industrial, with economies driven by pastoralism, agriculture, mining, whaling and sealing, commerce, and the construction trades. Convict transportation provided the ... More »
46. A Colonial Liberalism: The Lost World of Three Victorian Visionaries
By Stuart Macintyre
This book focuses on the endeavors of a generation of high-minded reformers (Syme, Higinbotham and Pearson) to realize a liberal polity and social order in the Australian colonies. It charts the intersections of the public and private lives of these reformers as they sought to achieve a democracy ... More »
47. The Golden Age: History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851-61
By Geoffrey Serle
An outstanding account of a decade whose highlights included separation from New South Wales, the gold rushes, the Eureka Stockade, the establishment of parliamentary government, and the attempts to 'unlock the land'. More »
48. Larrikins: A History
By Melissa Bellanta
Australia has often been said to possess a "larrikin streak," from the "Stiffy and Mo" cartoons and the true-blue Crocodile Hunter to the characters in the silent film "The Sentimental Bloke." When it first emerged around 1870, "larrikin" was a term of abuse, used to describe teenage, working-class ... More »
49. In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885 -1905
By Verity Burgmann
For many Australian working men and women in the closing days of the nineteenth century, SOCIALISM IN OUR TIME was no mere slogan. The deepening economic depression cut living standards, increased class conflict and tested the newborn trade unions to breaking point. In this climate, the message of ... More »
50. A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic
By Bruce Scates
The 1890s were a watershed in Australian history, a time of mass unemployment, industrial confrontation and sweeping social change. They also nurtured a flourishing radical culture: anarchists, socialists, single taxers, feminists and republicans. This 1997 book, informed by feminist theory and cultural studies, recreates that political and social ... More »
51. Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship
By John Chesterman; Brian Galligan
This is the first comprehensive study of the ways in which Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have been excluded from the rights of Australian citizenship over the past 100 years. Drawing extensively upon archival material, the authors look at how the colonies initiated a policy of exclusion that ... More »
52. Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000
By Anna Haebich
A moving and comprehensive account of a tragic history, covering all Australian colonies, states and territories. The analysis spans two hundred years of white occupation and intervention, from the earliest seizure of Aboriginal children, through their systematic state removal and incarceration and on to the harsh treatment of ... More »
53. The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth
By John Hirst
John Hirst, one of Australia's pre-eminent historians, provides a compelling history of the long, sometimes difficult, and ultimately 'sentimental' process of Australian Federation. His account appears on the eve of the Centenary of Federation. More »
54. To Constitute a Nation: A Cultural History of Australia's Constitution
By Helen Irving
This imaginative and resonant 1997 book looks at the constitution as a cultural artefact. It attempts to understand the period during which it emerged, culminating in Federation in 1901. Irving looks beyond the well-known events, places and figures to locate federation and the constitution in the context of ... More »
55. The Light on the Hill: History of the Australian Labor Party, 1891-1991
By Ross McMullin
With total access to ALP and national archives, McMullin has produced a frank and authoritative record of the influence and development of all seven Labor parties--namely those in the six states--and the Federal Labor Party, which formed the first labor government soon after Australia became a nation in ... More »
56. Passions of the First Wave Feminists
By Susan Magarey
This work offers a new view of suffrage-era feminism in Australia, located in rich cultural, social and political context, which also presents a new view of the decades around federation. More »
57. The Ethical State?: Social Liberalism in Australia
By Marian Sawer
The ethical state, a state committed to the common good and equal opportunity, was the central tenet of the social liberalist theory that emerged in the late 19th century. Here, the author explores how Australia embraced the ideal. The title offers an critique of the challenges facing social-liberal ... More »
58. Colonial Technology: Science and the Transfer of Innovation to Australia
By Jan Todd
Australia has always imported overseas technology, largely out of necessity, but has this been exploitative, fostering a relationship of dependence, or used to Australia's advantage? Jan Todd explores this question in the context of nineteenth-century science. In her important study, Todd argues that the technology transfer was far ... More »
59. British Imperialism and Australian Nationalism: Manipulation, Conflict and Compromise in the Late Nineteenth Century
By Luke Trainor
British Imperialism and Australian Nationalism: Manipulation, Conflict and Compromise in the Late Nineteenth Century by Luke Trainor
This book examines the relationship of the Australian colonies with Britain and Empire in the late nineteenth century, and looks at the first murmurings of Australian nationalism. It is the first detailed study of the formative period 1880-1900. The book argues that many of the features of the British Empire at this time can be seen in the British-Australian connection. Luke Trainor shows that the interests of British imperialism were greatly advanced in Australia in the 1880s because of the increased involvement of British capital in Australia. And while British imperialism tolerated some Australian nationalism, this nationalism was highly masculine in character, was based on dispossession of the Aborigines and encouraged sub-imperialism in the Pacific. As we approach the centenary of the Australian Constitution and debate about an Australian republic becomes more heated, this book is a timely re-examination of the colonial character of Australia's federation and Australia's incorporation into an imperial framework.
60. Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise and Fall of Asia 1850-1939
By David Walker
From the late nineteenth century the Asianisation of Australia has sparked anxious comment. The great catchcries of the day . . the awakening East. , . the yellow peril. , . populate or perish. . had a direct bearing on how Australians viewed their future. Anxious Nation provides a full and fascinating account of Australia's complex engagement with Asia. Published by the University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland and the Journal of Australian Studies. "A thorough and entertaining summation of the discourse between Australia and Asia and an excellent primer, a sweeping but considered overview of the cultural influences that continue to dictate many aspects of that discourse." -John Shaumer, The Age "Was Australia destined to be European, Asian or Aboriginal? This book impressively combines the personal and the political; it makes sense of spatial and racial anxieties by exploring Australians' broader sense of their region. Drawing on history, science and literature, David Walker tells of Australia's real and imagined encounters with Asia. He provides us with a deep perspective on our current debates overpopulation, environmental limits, multiculturalism and the legitimacy of Australian settlement. This is a searching history of ideas and intrigue that probes the political and literary dimensions of blood, heat, sun, nerves, sex and dreams. Feverish fears and imaginings are reviewed with sensitivity and cool eloquence." -Tom Griffiths, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU
61. A History of Australian Schooling
By Craig Campbell; Helen Proctor
At a time when schooling is more important than ever for families, and where there is great public concern about educational standards and outcomes, Craig Campbell and Helen Proctor show what is new and what is an echo of older agendas. They offer a comprehensive history of Australian ... More »
62. Rights for Aborigines
By Bain Attwood
We cannot help but wonder why it has taken the white Australians just on 200 years to recognise us as a race of people' Bill Onus, 1967 Aboriginal people were the original landowners in Australia, yet this was easily forgotten by Europeans settling this old continent. Labelled as ... More »
63. Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard
By Judith Brett
The Liberal Party of Australia was late to form in 1945, but the traditions and ideals upon which it is founded have been central to Australian politics since Federation. This 2003 book, by award-winning author and leading Australian political scientist Judith Brett, provides the very first complete history ... More »
64. Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century
By Joy Damousi; Marilyn Lake
War has been a key part of the Australian experience and central to many national mythologies. Yet more than most activities, war polarises femininity and masculinity. This exciting collection of essays explores the inter-relationship of gender and war in Australia for the first time. Traditional images of Australians ... More »
65. The Cost of War: War, Return and the Re-Shaping of Australian Culture
By Stephen Garton
War has shaped Australian society profoundly. When we commemorate the sacrifices of the Anzacs, we rightly celebrate their bravery, but we do not always acknowledge the complex aftermath of combat. In The Cost of War, Stephen Garton traces the experiences of Australia's veterans, and asks what we ... More »
66. Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography
By Carolyn Holbrook
Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won't do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story? Standing firm on the other side of the enthusiasts is a chorus ... More »
67. Australia's War 1939-45
By Joan Beaumont
The Second World War was a dominant experience in Australian history. For the first time the country faced the threat of invasion. The economy and society were mobilised to an unprecedented degree, with 550 000 men and women, or one in twelve of a population of over 7 ... More »
68. Getting Equal: The history of Australian feminism
By Marilyn Lake
What woman today would accept losing her job or her nationality on marriage? What mother would accept that she had no custody rights to her children? Who would deny women the right to equal pay and economic independence? Women today enjoy freedoms unimagined by their mothers and ... More »
69. Australia in the Global Economy: Continuity and Change
By Barrie Dyster; David Meredith
With the global economy in crisis, there is great need for a deeper understanding of Australia's economic place in the world - both today and throughout history. This new edition of Barrie Dyster and David Meredith's highly successful book is fully updated and includes three new chapters covering ... More »
70. Australia 1944-45: Victory in the Pacific
By Peter J. Dean
The years 1944 and 1945 were pivotal in the development of Australia's approach to strategy during the Second World War and beyond. While the main battlefront of the Pacific War had moved further north, Australian air, land and sea forces continued to make a significant contribution to the ... More »
71. The Secret Army and the Premier: Conservative Paramilitary Organisations in New South Wales 1930-32
By Andrew Moore
This study looks at the rise of anti-communist paramilitary organisations, their historical context and establishment backers. A must read for anyone interested in the political impact of the Great Depression. More »
72. Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond 1900-1965
By Janet McCalman
The old Struggletowners, if they could see it now, would not believe their eyes.'In Struggletown, Janet McCalman takes us into the inner-city industrial working-class suburb of Richmond, in Melbourne, before the gentrification of the 1970s. This is a narrative richly informed by the voices and memories of those ... More »
73. Loving Protection?: Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Rights 1919-1939
By Fiona Paisley
In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a highly visible network of white women activists who vigorously promoted the rights of Australian Aboriginals. In this little-known campaign-by middle-class women's organisations such as the Australian Federation of Women Voters-Anglo-Australian women, among them Bessie Rischbieth, Edith Jones, Constance Cooke and ... More »
74. Recovery from the Depression: Australia and the World Economy in the 1930s
By Noel George Butlin; R. G. Gregory
In Australia's economic history, as in the nation's politics and culture, the Great Depression is a dominant theme. An international group of economists and economic historians has collaborated, in this volume, to look at the ways in which Australia survived economic depression and recovered from it, in the ... More »
75. Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945
By Michelle Arrow
From jitterbugging to ""Big Brother"", from the introduction of television to the rise of file-sharing, ""Friday on our Minds"" explores the ways popular culture has developed and changed in Australia. This book considers film, television, sport, music and leisure in relation to each other, rather than as stand-alone ... More »
76. The Sex Lives of Australians
By Frank Bongiorno
Cross-dressing convicts, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes - here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day. In this fascinating social history, Frank Bongiorno uses striking examples to chart the changing sex lives of Australians. Tracing the story up to the present, Bongiorno shows how the quest for respectability always has another side to it. Along the way he deals with some intriguing questions - What did it mean to be a 'mate'? How did modern warfare affect soldiers' attitudes to sex? Why did the law ignore lesbianism for so long? - and introduces some remarkable characters both reformers and radicals. This is a thought-provoking and enlightening journey through the history of sex in Australia.
77. Governing Prosperity: Social Change and Social Analysis in Australia in the 1950s
By Nicholas Brown
The 1950s' undeniable prosperity has become synonymous with conservatism, and inertia seen as its hallmark. This book offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of the 1950s in Australia. Nicholas Brown presents the decade as a time of great change, brought about by affluence. Society became increasingly complex, mass ... More »
78. Car wars: How the Car Won our Hearts and Conquered our Cities
By Graeme Davison
Graeme Davison, Australia s leading urban historian, explores the Melbourne he knows so well to show us how the car entered our consciousness - as an object of desire, a symbol of status, a creator of freedoms, a shaper of sexual mores. His is a fascinating journey through ... More »
79. Modern Girl: Girlhood and Growing Up
By Lesley Johnson
In the early 1960s, Betty Friedan made a plea for women to grow up, to become - in her terms - fully developed persons. In this book the author looks at the 1950s and early 60s in Australia as a period in which the girlhood and growing up ... More »
80. Menzies and the 'Great World Struggle': Australia's Cold War 1948-1954
By David Lowe
Lowe (history, Deakin U.) finds prime minister Robert Menzies to be the towering figure of the age as he explores the Cold War from Australia's perspective. More »
81. Australia's Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s
By Stuart Macintyre
In this landmark book, Stuart Macintyre explains how a country traumatised by World War I, hammered by the Depression and overstretched by World War II became a prosperous, successful and growing society by the 1950s. An extraordinary group of individuals, notably John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Nugget Coombs, John ... More »
82. A Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia's Vietnam War
By John Murphy
How did fears of the Cold War shape Australian images of Asia? What was the nature of the Vietnamese revolution, which some 50 000 Australian troops failed to reverse in the 1960s? How did a small and marginal peace movement grow into the powerful Moratorium and did it have any impact on the course of the War? Harvest of Fear is a beautifully crafted history of Australia's experience of the Vietnam War. It draws together a picture of social and political life in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam; an incisive look at Australian Cold War politics and the diplomacy that led us to Vietnam; and a brilliant portrait of the origins and political impact of the powerful Australian anti-war movement. No previous book has pulled together these three critical strands of the Australian experience of the Vietnam War; it is indeed a broad and rich canvas. Harvest of Fear presents the clearest picture yet of how the war came about, how it was seen from Australia, what the war in Phoc Tuy Province was like for the Australian soldiers sent there, and why our involvement was the cause of such division at home. Using a range of archival sources and interviews with participants, John Murphy shows how our intervention reflected the political alignments of Australia in the Cold War, as well as deeper and more troubled anxieties about Asia. The Australian intervention in Vietnam remains Australia's longest and most contentious war. The war and its echoes are powerfully evoked in John Murphy's story. Harvest of Fear is a book to appeal to everyone interested in Australian history and politics, and in Australia's involvement with Asia, especially with the Vietnam War.
83. Destination Australia: Migration to Australia Since 1901
By Eric Richards
In 1901 most Australians were loyal, white subjects of the British Empire with direct connections to Britain. Within a hundred years, following an unparalleled immigration program, its population was one of the most diverse on earth. No other country has achieved such radical social and demographic change in so short a time. Destination Australia tells the story of this extraordinary transformation. Against the odds, this change has caused minimal social disruption and tension. While immigration has generated some political and social anxieties, Australia has maintained a stable democracy and a coherent social fabric. One of the impressive achievements of this book is in explaining why this might be so. Eric Richards recounts the experiences of many individual migrants from all over the world, examines the dramas and challenges of officials involved in this grand experiment and ends up telling a truly remarkable story. Compelling and revealing, Destination Australia is essentially the Australian story of the twentieth century.
84. The 1960s in Australia: People, Power and Politics
By Shirleene Robinson; Julie Ustinoff
The 1960s is one of the most heavily mythologised decades of the twentieth century. More than 50 years on, the era continues to capture the public's imagination. The 1960s in Australia: Power, People and Politics recognises the complexity of social and cultural change by presenting a broad range ... More »
85. White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia
By Tim Rowse
The colonial practice of rationing goods to Aboriginal people has been neglected in the study of Australian frontiers. This book argues that much of the colonial experience in Central Australia can be understood by seeing rationing as a fundamental, though flexible, instrument of colonial government. Rationing was the ... More »
86. Dissent Events: Protest and the Media in Australia
By Sean Scalmer
Over the last four decades, publicity stunts, demonstrations, and audacious displays of moral commitment have become an increasingly familiar part of political life. - Within Australia, these have ranged from the pioneering efforts of Student Action For Aborigines, to the campaign against the Vietnam War, and to a ... More »
87. Australia's Own Cold War: The Waterfront Under Menzies
By Tom Sheridan
From the national maritime strike of 1890 to the violent dockside clashes of 1998, the waterfront has loomed large as a key battle site in Australian industrial relations. After Robert Menzies was swept to power on a wave of anti-communist sentiment in 1949, it emerged as the nation's ... More »
88. The Long, Slow Death of White Australia
By Gwenda Tavan
The history of the racist immigration policy that was Australia' s guiding light for the majority of the 20th century is examined in this work. Beginning with the policy' s introduction in 1901, this analysis traces the policy' s gradual transformation as successive governments reluctantly gave ground on barring non-Europeans from Australia. Originally intended to ensure an ethnic and cultural link to the mother country, the policy hurt Australia' s relations with Asia and had harsh consequences for non-Europeans residing in the country. The policy' s demise in the early 1970s was initially celebrated as a watershed moment when Australia came into its own as an independent and culturally diverse modern nation. Continued public support for preserving Australia' s white, Anglo-Celtic culture, however, begs the question of whether the White Australia policy really died or was buried alive by bureaucrats and politicians eager to present a new face of Australia to the world.
89. Australia And The British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal
By Stuart Ward
Until a generation ago, 'Britishness' lay at the heart of Australian political culture. How and why did this fundamental idea lose its meaning for Australians and their political institutions? The popular view is that the British ideal succumbed to a triumphant, long-thwarted Australian nationalism. The reality is much ... More »
90. Island off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy
By Clinton Fernandes
This book examines Australian foreign policy in multiple dimensions: diplomatic, military, economic, legal and scientific. It shows how the instruments of statecraft have defended domestic concentrations of wealth and power across the 230-year span of modern Australian history. The pursuit of security has meant much more than protection ... More »
91. The Big End of Town: Big Business and Corporate Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia
By Grant Fleming; David Merrett; Simon Ville
Never before had a book been published which provides such a comprehensive study of Australian corporate leadership over the past 100 years. Written by a team of economic historians The Big End of Town, first published in 2004, is a proper business history of twentieth-century Australia. This book ... More »
92. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story Of Australian Immigration
By James Jupp
There has never been a greater need for a sober, historically informed yet critical account of immigration policy in Australia. In this revised and updated edition, James Jupp, Australia's leading specialist on migration, surveys the changes in policy over the last thirty years since the seismic shift away ... More »
93. The Australian Moment
By George Megalogenis
Winner of the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award, 2012 Walkley Book Award, and Australia's bestselling political book of 2012 The book of the TV series Making Australia Great There's no better place to be during economic turbulence than Australia. Brilliant in a bust, we've learnt to use our ... More »
94. Welfare and Inequality: National and International Perspectives on the Australian Welfare State
By Peter Gordon Saunders
Over the past few decades the welfare state has been under increasing pressure. Rapid social and economic change has left many people dependent on social institutions, while deteriorating economic prospects have led to calls to cut welfare expenditure. This book introduces key concepts in the welfare state debate and questions the arguments for further cutbacks. It examines: • the role, nature and effects of the welfare state in contemporary society • the links between the welfare state and the economy, particularly in Australia in the 1990s • the success of the Australian welfare state in achieving its aims of improving economic equality and social cohesion. These issues are considered in the light of the experiences of comparable countries able to offer lessons to Australia. Written by economists in clear language, the book makes an important contribution to the discussion of social issues.
95. Contesting the Australian Way: States, Markets and Civil Society
By Paul Smyth; Bettina Cass; Stephen Bell
Since the 1980s public policy has been perceived as being in a crisis of uncertainty. Many argue that consolidating the market imperative in both economic and social policy is the way out of this crisis. In this 1999 book, a leading group of writers challenge this view, calling for reassertion of a 'mixed' rather than a 'market' economy and a reaffirmation of the egalitarianism that has characterised past Australian social policy. The book confronts key issues of our time, particularly rising inequality and unemployment. Attempting to look beyond familiar debates about economic rationalism, it discusses the role of industry policy, the impact of globalisation, and the usefulness of competition models in the public, welfare, and community sectors. Asking whether economic and social policy can be reintegrated in a shared vision, this groundbreaking book argues the case for reinventing government rather than marginalising it.
96. Battlers & Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia
By Andrew Leigh
'This is required reading for every Australian who seriously cares about the fair go enduring.' - Peter FitzSimons 'Be warned: this book will open your eyes and prick your conscience.' - Ross Gittins Is Australia fair enough? And why does inequality matter anyway? In Battlers and Billionaires, Andrew Leigh weaves together vivid anecdotes, interesting history and powerful statistics to tell the story of inequality in this country. This is economics writing at its best. From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now, inequality is returning to the heights of the 1920s. Leigh shows that while inequality can fuel growth, it also poses dangers to society. Too much inequality risks cleaving us into two Australias, occupying fundamentally separate worlds, with little contact between the haves and the have-nots. And the further apart the rungs on the ladder of opportunity, the harder it is for a kid born into poverty to enter the middle class. Battlers and Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes Australia distinctive, and what it means to have - and keep - a fair go. 'A thought-provoking book which emphasises how far we have strayed from confidently discussing public policies that seek to give meaning to our egalitarian spirit.' - Laura Tingle About the author: Andrew Leigh is the federal MP for Fraser and a former economics professor at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD from Harvard and in 2011 received the Economics Society of Australia's award for the best Australian economist under forty. He is the author of Disconnected, co-author of Imagining Australia and co-editor of The Prince's New Clothes. Redbacks - books with bite. Short books on big issues by leading Australian writers and thinkers.
97. Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources of Economic Growth
By Ian W. McLean
This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement, and how the nation has sustained an enviable level of income to the present. Why Australia Prospered is a fascinating historical examination of how Australia ... More »
98. Political Parties in Transition?
By Ian Marsh
Political Parties in Transition? reviews the recent developments affecting the major parties and the party system in Australia, and asks the question: are Australia's major parties acting like a cartel? The book includes detailed coverage about the evolution of the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party Coalition ... More »
99. The Iraq War and Democratic Governance: Britain and Australia go to War
By Judith Betts; Mark Phythian
This book examines the decisions by Tony Blair and John Howard to take their nations into the 2003 Iraq War, and the questions these decisions raise about democratic governance. It also explores the significance of the US alliance in UK and Australian decision-making, and the process for taking ... More »
100. How Australia Compares
By Rodney Tiffen; Ross Gittins
How Australia Compares is a handy reference that compares Australia with seventeen other developed countries across a wide range of social, economic and political dimensions.
Whenever possible, it gives not only snapshot comparisons from the present, but charts trends over recent decades or even longer. Encyclopaedic in scope, it provides statistics for a huge range of human activity, from taxation to traffic accidents, homicide rates to health expenditure, interest rates to internet usage. This new edition is fully revised and updated, and features two new chapters: The Howard Impact and The Search for Scoreboards. New sections include obesity, advertising, broadband internet access, childcare and corruption. Information is highly accessible with double-page spreads for each topic. Tables and graphs are presented on one page, and clear explanation and analysis on the facing page. In each discussion the focus is to put the Australian experience into international perspective, drawing out the implications for the nation's performance, policies and prospects.
Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A bit heavy to read, but taken in chunks, is very interesting.
Reviewed in Canada on 6 July 2013
Verified Purchase
Keep your brain fresh to read this book. Charts and graphs and facts abound, with a very interesting point of view to consider. Am now rereading this book to see what I may have missed!
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