Book Review – W.E.H. Stanner: Selected Writings

Book Review – W.E.H. Stanner: Selected Writings

Wayne Bradshaw reviews W.E.H. Stanner: Selected Writings (La Trobe University Press, 2024)   The works of W.E.H. Stanner loom large within the Australian tradition of progressive writing on Aboriginal and settler relations. Before Henry Reynolds rewrote the history of Australian settlement, Bill Stanner revolutionised Australian anthropology. In any format, Stanner should be considered mandatory reading […]
Book Review – Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain

Book Review – Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain

Anna Kent reviews Charlotte Lydia Riley’s Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain (London: Bodley Head, 2023)   Imperial Island is an engaging book that shows the great power that historical research can wield. Changing understandings of what Empire was, and in some ways still is, is important to the understanding of contemporary […]
Q&A with Graeme Davison, author of My Grandfather’s Clock: Four Centuries of a British–Australian Family,

Q&A with Graeme Davison, author of My Grandfather’s Clock: Four Centuries of a British–Australian Family,

Lyndon Megarrity interviews Graeme Davison, author of My Grandfather’s Clock: Four Centuries of a British–Australian Family, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2023.   Congratulations on your new book. You have now published two volumes of family history, the first on your mother’s side of the family (Lost Relations) and this current, second volume, on your father’s […]
Book Review – The Locked-Up Country

Book Review – The Locked-Up Country

Tim Rowse reviews Tom Chodor and Shahar Hameiri’s The Locked-Up Country (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2023), $32.99   In 2023 Tom Chodor and Shara Hameiri published ‘COVID-19 and the Pathologies of Australia’s Regulatory State’ in the Journal of Contemporary Asia. Congratulations to University of Queensland Press for giving their argument, expanded to a […]
Book Review – Decolonial Archival Futures

Book Review – Decolonial Archival Futures

Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey, Decolonial Archival Futures (Chicago: Society of American Archivists and the American Library Association, 2023), USD $39.99, 112 pp.   Decolonising archives and record-keeping spaces is a dreadfully slow process, one attached to the post-World War Two decolonisation movement and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and […]
Book Review – ‘Order, Order!’ A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives

Book Review – ‘Order, Order!’ A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives

Matthew Allen reviews Stephen Wilks, ed., ‘Order, Order!’ A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives (Canberra: ANU Press, 2023).   This edited collection of biographies, covers all the Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives from Federation until 2021. There has been little […]
Book Review – The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it

Book Review – The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it

Christopher Waters reviews Graeme Turner’s The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what can be done about it (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2023).   In the last fifteen years several books have been published which start from the position that Australia has run off the rails as a nation over the last […]
Book Review – Australia’s Pivot to India

Book Review – Australia’s Pivot to India

Liam Detering reviews Andrew Charlton’s Australia’s Pivot to India, (Collingwood: Black Inc, 2023).   Australia and India’s relationship has shown signs of maturation over the last decade after a history of false starts in the relationship between the two countries. Therefore, Andrew Charlton’s Australia’s Pivot to India, comes at a timely juncture in the Australia-India […]
Book Review – Killing for Country: A Family History

Book Review – Killing for Country: A Family History

Jonathan Richards reviews David Marr’s Killing for Country: A Family History (Melbourne: Black Inc Books, 2023).   Racial violence is a touchy subject in settler-colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) because some non-Indigenous people seem more concerned by the accusation than the action. Perhaps this can be explained by lived experience: the […]
Book Review – Double Nation: A History of Australian Art

Book Review – Double Nation: A History of Australian Art

Emerita Professor Catherine Speck reviews Ian McLean’s Double Nation: A History of Australian Art, (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 303pp.   Ian McLean’s new history of Australian art, Double Nation, a companion volume to his 2016 book Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art, is a refreshing and engaging read. He hasn’t attempted to do […]
Book Review – My Father’s Shadow

Book Review – My Father’s Shadow

Professor Emerita Joan Beaumont reviews Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo’s My Father’s Shadow: A Memoir, (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2023). ISBN 9781922979186   Samuel Goldbloom (1919-1999) was a prominent figure in Australian left-wing politics during the Cold War decades. A professed socialist, he was also a covert and deeply loyal member of the Communist Party. Other radicals […]
Book Reviews – Revealing Secrets and The Factory

Book Reviews – Revealing Secrets and The Factory

Peter Edwards reviews John Blaxland and Clare Birgin’s Revealing Secrets: An Unofficial History of Australian Signals Intelligence & The Advent of Cyber (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2023) and John Fahey’s The Factory: The Official History of the Australian Signals Directorate, Volume 1, 1947 to 1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2023).   The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), […]