Book Review – Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague

Book Review – Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague

Richard Trembath reviews Philippa Nicole Barr’s Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague*, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).  ISSN 2632-1068 (online)   I was unaware of the Cambridge Element series until I accepted the offer of reviewing this recent addition to their program.  Having taught for many years in university courses based on the […]
Book Review – Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia

Book Review – Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia

Richard Trembath reviews Evan Smith, Jayne Persian and Vashti Jane Fox (eds), Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia* (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2023), 266 pages including footnotes, introduction and index.   Australian writer Dennis Glover states in the Guardian (25 August 2024) that ‘we are entering a new age of savagery and organised […]
Book Review – Liberalism as a way of life

Book Review – Liberalism as a way of life

Georgina Downer reviews Alexander Lefebvre’s Liberalism as a way of life, (NewSouth, 2024)   The term ‘liberal’ is likely to inspire admiration or loathing depending on the company you keep. It’s also likely to be understood differently by everyone you ask. The definition eludes us; there are national distinctions such as the differences between North […]
Book Review: The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations

Book Review: The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations

Hirokazu Matsui reviews Kate Darian-Smith and David Lowe’s (eds.), The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations (ANU Press, 2023)   In 2017, as a postgraduate student in Japan, I took a course run by David Carter, who then held the visiting professorship at the Center for Pacific and American Studies (CPAS) at the University […]
Book Review – Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018

Book Review – Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018

Nicholas Hoare reviews Anna Kent’s Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2024).   ‘Are Australian universities racist?’ This was one of the main provocations of a recent PhD seminar where the student – a scholarship recipient from the Pacific Islands – expressed their frustration with […]
Book Review – Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers

Book Review – Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers

Matthew Allen reviews Lachlan Strahan, Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2022).   Justice in Kelly Country   is an engaging blend of family and police history. This is the story of Lachlan Strahan’s great-great grandfather, Senior Constable Anthony Strahan, and his career […]
Book Review – John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest

Book Review – John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest

Russell McGregor reviews Iain McCalman, John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2024). 264pp + 8pp insert of colour and monochrome illustrations. ISBN 9781761170096 (Paperback), RRP $36.99.   Iain McCalman’s biography of John Büsst carries endorsements by a scintillating array of Australia’s historians. They’re well deserved, for this is […]
Book Review – Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications

Book Review – Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications

Nicholas Brown reviews John Doyle’s Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications  (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022).   Crossed Lines tracks an archetypical story in the undoing of the ‘Australian settlement’  – a ‘transition from a system of rigid state monopolies in the 1960s to a competition-based model in the 1990s’ (p.193). John Doyle’s […]
Book Review: Abortion Care is Health Care

Book Review: Abortion Care is Health Care

Jacquelyn Baker reviews Barbara Baird’s Abortion Care is Health Care (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2024)   In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned the ruling set in 1973 by Roe vs Wade. This was a landmark case that ‘recognised that the decision to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the individual, not […]
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 […]