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Puri, Anisa & Alistair Thomson, ed.: Australian Lives: an Intimate History

Anisa Puri & Alistair Thomson, ed.

Australian Lives: an Intimate History, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017; e-book available

Australian Lives: An Intimate History illuminates Australian life across the 20th and into the 21st century: how Australian people have been shaped by the forces and expectations of contemporary history and how, in turn, they have made their lives and created Australian society. From oral history interviews with Australians born between 1920 and 1989, fifty narrators reflect on their diverse experiences as children and teenagers, in midlife and in old age, about faith, migration, work and play, aspiration and activism, memory and identity, pain and happiness. In Australian Lives you can read and in the e-version of the book listen to the comedy, heartache and drama of ordinary Australians’ extraordinary lives. As our interviewee Kim Bear (born 1959) explains, “Stories are a great way to inform people about what it is to be human. Even if you say one thing that resonates … there’s that connection made”.

Australian Lives is reviewed for Honest History by Michael Piggott. Another review in Books and Publishing. Alistair Thomson on ABC RN Life Matters, and on ABC Nightlife. Age extracts and pictures of interviewees.