It is thirty-six years since the Australian National University Press published Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years; thirty-five since the unassuming Penguin paperback that became both a loved and critically acclaimed bestseller. Now Melbourne University Publishing has produced a deluxe, large-format, sombrely and evocatively illustrated edition. On the front cover is a Frank Hurley photograph of Australian troops crossing on duckboards a flooded field near the Menin Road in late October 1917. In the background stand stripped, gaunt, sentinel trees. Flip to the back cover and the image is of ‘A Young South Australian Patriot in 1916’. A cherub in uniform, he holds a toy rifle, in earnest for a conflict that, blessedly, will end before it is his turn to go.