Honest History list: seven general histories of Australia and beyond

We can’t manage links to full text with most of these references but we can provide a summary of what’s in them and who wrote them. There’s a counter-factual collection also, to give a different perspective:

  • Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, editors, The Cambridge History of Australia, two volumes, 2013: landmark work; door-stopper size, dozens of authors;
  • Manning Clark, A History of Australia, 1962-87 in six volumes: will be re-examined in 2015, the centenary of the author’s birth;
  • Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake, editors, Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective, 2006 (full text online): shows how the studies of Australian and transnational history can benefit each other;
  • Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt, editors, Australians 1938, 1987: gives an entry into the multi-volume series prepared for the Bicentennial in 1788; hard to get but still a classic set;
  • Thomas Keneally, Australians, with volume 1 (2009) and volume 2 (2011) already published and volume 3 (2014) on the brink: a novelist turns to history;
  • Stuart Macintyre and Sean Scalmer, editors, What If? Australian History as it Might Have Been, 2006: multiple authors ask questions like what would have happened if the French had colonised Australia;
  • Mark Peel and Christina Twomey, A History of Australia, 2011: innovative presentation, blending narrative with set pieces.

There is more in the introductory essay Strands of Australian history and the list of all items tagged ‘Strands of Australian history’.

18 October 2014

 

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