Anyone interested in quickly assessing the scope, direction and lacunae of urban history in Australia would be well advised to read this attractively priced and presented anthology. Although only two of the ten contributions have been specially commissioned, the rest are recent pieces, mostly from out-of-print, expensive or turgid larger works. These are two general essays, an article on each of the capitals (with the exception of Perth), and three specialised pieces on aspects of city growth (sub-division of Paddington 1875-90, essential services and Melbourne in the 1880s, and East Perth 1884-1904).

Undoubtedly the highlights are two seminal essays by John McCarty and David Merrett, the first a wide-ranging discussion of nineteenth-century commercial cities as products of the expansion of capitalism, the latter a resourceful and extremely revealing investigation of the course, conditioning and demographic sources of capital city growth in the twentieth century. The final section of McCarty’s original article, which examined the physical expansion and functional differentiation of the Melbourne metropolis, has unaccountably been omitted. As the thrust of the essay is an assault upon the myopic local history tradition, the original article possessed a balance lacing in the truncated version. Likewise, Merrett’s detailed tables setting out for intercensal periods the natural increase and migration components of population growth have been Mystery and Adventure abbreviated. Readers will now .have to chase up the original text which appeared in a small run in offset form. These are errors of editorial judgment, committed I suspect, in the mistaken pursuit of geographical balance.