Ian Tyrrell

Ian Tyrrell is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. A specialist in American history, he most recently authored River Dreams: The people and landscape of the Cooks River (UNSW Press) and is writing American Exceptionalism: The idea that simply refuses to lie down and die.

Ian Tyrrell reviews 'The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the world in the free market era' by Gary Gerstle

November 2022, no. 448 • 25 October 2022

American presidential elections can be frustrating for outsiders. Non-Americans can’t vote, but humanity’s future may depend upon a few votes in a handful of gerrymandered states. I spent much of 2020 driving myself to distraction over the possibility that Donald Trump might be re-elected. I had no such anxiety in 2016: in my opinion, Hillary Clinton did not deserve to win. She personified too ... (read more)

Ian Tyrrell reviews 'Secularists, Religion and Government in Nineteenth-Century America' by Timothy Verhoeven

May 2019, no. 411 • 22 April 2019

In an address to the National Prayer Breakfast (8 February 2018), President Donald Trump called the United States a ‘nation of believers’. As evidence, he reminded his audience that the American currency includes the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ and that the Pledge of Allegiance is ‘under God’. Trump omitted that, in their present state, these godly references date only from the Cold War e ... (read more)

Ian Tyrrell reviews 'Progressive New World: How settler colonialism and transpacific exchange shaped American reform' by Marilyn Lake

March 2019, no. 409 • 22 February 2019

In 1902, Australian feminist and social reformer Vida Goldstein met Theodore Roosevelt in the White House during her North American lecture tour. Marilyn Lake retells the story of their encounter in her important new book. Seizing Goldstein’s hand in a vice-like grip, the president exclaimed: ‘delighted to meet you’. Australasian social and economic reforms attracted Roosevelt and other Amer ... (read more)