Australian History
The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia edited by David Horton
Doc Evatt: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar by Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale and Wayne Reynolds
In October 1993 I picked up a copy of Window, the ‘Weekly Hong Kong Newsmagazine with Exclusive Coverage of China’ and found in the Business and Finance section a Profile, ‘Bob Hawke’s Eagle Eye in Asia’. There was a photograph of the Eagle, who described himself as a ‘business commentator and facilitator of increased enmeshment in Asia’. This was certainly a confident label. Reading on I discovered that Hawke saw himself as ‘overwhelmingly responsible for the vision of Australia as part of Asia’. He told the reporter than in his first days as Prime Minister he had used the phrase, ‘our future lies in enmeshment with Asia’, a sentiment that was at first greeted sceptically, but now, Hawke claimed, ‘no one questions the wisdom and correctness of Hawke’s vision. No one.’ Emphatic stuff, claiming sole credit for long term shifts in opinion and cultural practice, while dismissing the doubters. If that was all there was to my theme, this would be a very brief history indeed.
... (read more)Sojourners: The epic story of China’s centuries-old relationship with Australia by Eric Rolls
Prisoners of War: From Gallipoli to Korea by Patsy Adam-Smith
Prime Ministers’ Wives by Diane Langmore & Suffrage to Sufferance by Janine Haines
Living in a New Country: History, travelling and language by Paul Carter
Why do we read what we read? Bookshelves groan with biography, travel, social theory far left corner, cultural studies creeping up the front, Baudrillard in the back door and out the front. Some people’s books get featured in the weekend papers, others go straight into the back of the car and the second-hand shops. Love, sweat and tears … what’s it all for?
... (read more)