Bookshelf | Page 2 | Australian Policy and History Network

Gwyn McClelland reviews Lesley Blume’s ‘Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World’

Dr Gwyn McClelland’s review of Lesley Blume’s Fallout describes how the US government sought to cover up the horrific effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Blume tells us the story of journalist John Hersey’s scoop in the New Yorker in August 1946, which signalled the beginning of a propaganda contest about the […]

The media and Indigenous political aspirations: Michael Dillon reviews Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz & Heidi Norman’s ‘Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations?’

What role does the media play in perpetuating social and economic disadvantage among Indigenous peoples in Australia? Michael Dillon reviews Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz & Heidi Norman’s survey of media reporting of key political moments, Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? While Dillon agrees with the authors’ conclusions about the inadequacy of media coverage, […]

Effie Karageorgos reviews Peter Yule’s, ‘The Long Shadow: Australia’s Vietnam Veterans Since the War’

Australians’ involvement in overseas conflicts has been in the news again recently, with the release of the Brereton report into alleged soldier atrocities in Afghanistan. In our latest article, Dr Effie Karageorgos reviews Peter Yule’s new book about the effect of war service on Vietnam veterans and their families. Yule shows how issues such as […]

Joanna Cruickshank interviews Kama Maclean about her new book, ‘British India, White Australia’

Kama Maclean’s new book, British India: White Australia, examines the history of the relationship between the two nations. In this interview with Dr Joanna Cruickshank, Kama explains how the treatment of Indian students in Australia during the COVID pandemic bears some resemblance to the difficult experiences of earlier generations of Indians living in Australia under […]

After COVID-19: Reviews of ‘Upturn’ and ‘What Happens Next?’

The Austrian economic historian’s Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book, The Great Leveler, argues that gross inequality is the natural state of human affairs. This structure is only interrupted by events such as mass war, revolution, state failure and pandemic disease. Does COVID-19 present an opportunity to halt growing inequality and reset our economic and social order? These […]

Jon Piccini reviews Kieran Finnane, ‘Peace Crimes: Pine Gap, National Security and Dissent’ (UQP, 2020)

In 1952 the Menzies government passed the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act, which banned entry to ‘prohibited area[s]’, as part of its defence against the ‘red menace’. That act was barely used until 2016, when a group of Christian peace protesters entered the Pine Gap base near Alice Springs. Jon Piccini reviews Kieran Finnane’s new […]

‘On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike’: Two Perspectives

On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike is a history of the great strike of marrngu (the Pilbara’s Aboriginal pastoral workers) during the later 1940s. This week we feature two reviews of the book, one from the historian and social scientist Tim Rowse, and the other from a former senior Commonwealth bureaucrat in Indigenous […]

Q&A with Richard Broinowski, author of Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of E.W. Cole

E.W. Cole, proprietor of Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne’s Burke Street Mall, was an amazing man. He condemned the White Australian policy when it was unpopular to do so and had decidedly progressive views about religion. He published the famous Cole’s Funny Picture Books and met his wife through an advertisement he placed in the newspaper. Carolyn Holbrook […]

André Brett reviews Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin’s ‘A populist exception? The 2017 New Zealand general election’

A Populist Exception? The 2017 New Zealand General Election, eds Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin. Canberra: ANU Press, 2020, pp.286+xvi. Print: AU$60, ISBN 9781760463854. Online: free, ISBN 9781760463861. The dust is settling on New Zealand’s 2020 general election. There are still about 480,000 special votes to count—overseas voters, people who registered on election day, […]

Border Wars: History and Creative Imagination

In our latest opinion piece, Richard Trembath steps into the always-contentious debate about history, historical fiction and ‘narrative non-fiction’, prompted by the publication of Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves. Kate Grenville’s latest novel set in early colonial New South Wales, A Room Made of Leaves, was published in July this year to positive reviews […]

Q&A with Jacqueline Kent, author of Vida: A Woman For Our Time

Vida Goldstein is one of Australian history’s most interesting and accomplished figures. She campaigned for the rights of women—including the vote —and the disadvantaged, opposed conscription and the First World War and stood unsuccessfully for federal parliament several times. She ought to be more widely known. Carolyn Holbrook interviewed the acclaimed biographer, journalist and broadcaster […]

The Fatal Lure of Politics: A Q&A with Terry Irving on Vere Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe was among the most influential archaeologists of the twentieth century but his connections to the intellectual worlds of the British and Australian Left have, until now, received less attention. In a major new biography, Terry Irving sheds light on Childe’s life as a political theorist, radical intellectual and pre-historian. History PhD student […]