A Short History of Australia

A Short History of Australia
Author: Manning Clark
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1992
Genre: Australia
ISBN: 9780140166897

A reissue of the 1986 revised and illustrated edition of the 1963 title which takes the story of Australia up to 1986. Chapters cover Aborigines and the 200 years of white settlement in an often controversial narrative. Clark also wrote the six-volume TA History of Australia'. Includes notes and an index.

History Wars

History Wars
Author: Doug Munro
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1760464775

‘In 1993, Manning Clark came under severe (posthumous) attack in the pages of Quadrant by none other than Peter Ryan, who had published five of the six volumes of Clark’s epic A History of Australia. In applying what he called “an overdue axe to a tall poppy”, Ryan lambasted the History as “an imposition on Australian credulity” and declared its author a fraud, both as a historian and a person. This unprecedented public assault by a publisher on his best-selling author was a sensation at the time and remains lodged in the public memory. In History Wars, Doug Munro forensically examines the right and wrongs of Ryan’s allegations, concluding that Clark was more sinned against than sinning and that Ryan repeatedly misrepresented the situation. More than just telling a story, Munro places the Ryan-Clark controversy within the context of Australia’s History Wars. This book is an illuminating saga of that ongoing contest.’ — James Curran, University of Sydney ‘The Ryan-Clark controversy … speaks to the place of Manning Clark in Australia’s national imagination. Had Ryan taken his axe to another historian, it’s unlikely that we would be still talking about it 30 years later. But Clark was the author and keeper of Australia’s national story, however imperfect his scholarship and however blinkered that story. Few, if any, historians in the Anglo-American world have occupied the space that Clark occupied by dint of will, force of personality, and felicity of pen.’ — Donald Wright, University of New Brunswick

Making Australian History

Making Australian History
Author: Anna Clark
Publisher: Random House Australia
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2022-02
Genre: Australia
ISBN: 1760898511

Australian history has been revised and reinterpreted by successive generations of historians, writers, governments and public commentators, yet there has been no account of the ways it has changed, who makes history, and how. Making Australian History responds to this critical gap in Australian historical research.A few years ago Anna Clark saw a series of paintings on a sandstone cliff face in the Northern Territory. There were characteristic crosshatched images of fat barramundi and turtles, as well as sprayed handprints and several human figures with spears. Next to them was a long gun, painted with white ochre, an unmistakable image of the colonisers. Was this an Indigenous rendering of contact? A work of history?Each piece of history has a message and context that depends on who wrote it and when. Australian history has swirled and contorted over the years: the history wars have embroiled historians, politicians and public commentators alike, while debates over historical fiction have been as divisive. History isn't just about understanding what happened and why. It also reflects the persuasions, politics and prejudices of its authors. Each iteration of Australia's national story reveals not only the past in question, but also the guiding concerns and perceptions of each generation of history makers.Making Australian History is bold and inclusive: it catalogues and contextualises changing readings of the past, it examines the increasingly problematic role of historians as national storytellers, and it incorporates the stories of people.

The History Wars

The History Wars
Author: Stuart Macintyre
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 0522851282

'The History Wars is very important. The book will sit on the shelves of libraries as a code stone to help people understand the motivations of players in today's contemporary debate. It sheds light on the political battle which is carried on in the pubs and on the footpaths about who we are and what has become of us.' andmdash; Hon. Paul Keating, Prime Minister of Australia, 1991-1996 The nation's history has probably never been more politicised than it is today. Politicians, journalists, columnists, academics and Australians from all walks of life argue passionately andmdash; and often, ideologically andmdash; about the significance of the national story: the cherished ideal of the 'fair go', the much contested facts of Indigenous dispossession, the Anzac legend, and the nation's strategic alliance with the United States. Historians have become both combatants and casualties in this war of words. In The History Wars, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark explore how this intense public debate has polarised the nation and paralysed history departments. This edition includes a new afterword by Stuart Macintyre which recounts, with rueful irony, the outbreak of controversy that followed the book's original publication, and the further light it shed on the uses and abuses of Australian history.

A Concise History of Australia

A Concise History of Australia
Author: Stuart Macintyre
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2009-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521516082

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 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.

Don Dunstan

Don Dunstan
Author: Angela Woollacott
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2019-08-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 176087177X

The first major biography of Don Dunstan, one of the few state premiers to stride the national stage and make a lasting mark on Australian life. Don Dunstan was one of the most significant political figures of twentieth-century Australia. As Premier of South Australia, he blazed a trail of reform. But his influence reached far beyond his home state. He was seen as the architect of a new kind of Australian society, and his decade in office marked a golden age. This is the first comprehensive biography of a larger than life figure. Angela Woollacott recounts how he battled Adelaide's conservative establishment to win office for Labor, and then pioneered Aboriginal land rights, abolished the death penalty, supported women's rights, relaxed censorship and drinking laws and decriminalised homosexuality. He worked against the White Australia Policy, and was an ardent supporter of the arts and food. Although he was much loved by the public, Dunstan's career was marked by controversy and vilification, with scandal surrounding his personal relationships. Dunstan's life story helps us to appreciate just what a watershed era the 1960s and 1970s were in Australia, and to see how one small state could, for a time, lead a nation. 'A fitting tribute' - Penny Wong 'Whitlam and Dunstan were the Washington and Jefferson of modern Australian Labor politics.' - Mike Rann 'Angela Woollacott's biography captures what was so special about him.' - Maggie Beer

A History of Australia

A History of Australia
Author: Mark Peel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2017-12-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137605510

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 country's past, from its first Indigenous people, to the great migrations of recent centuries, and to those living within the more anxiously controlled borders of the present day. This engaging textbook is an ideal resource for undergraduate students and postgraduate students taking modules or courses on the History of Australia. It will also appeal to general readers who are interested in obtaining a thorough overview of the entire history of Australia, from the earliest times to the present, in one concise volume.

The Puzzles of Childhood

The Puzzles of Childhood
Author: Charles Manning Hope Clark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The early life of Australian historian Manning Clark.