There are hundreds of book reviews on the Honest History site, but two of the most popular have been Diane Bell’s reviews of Tom Griffiths’ The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft and Clare Wright’s You Daughters of…
From the Honest History vault: Diane Bell’s reviews of Tom Griffiths and Clare Wright
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Blainey, Geoffrey: Before I Forget: An Early Memoir
Geoffrey Blainey Before I Forget: An Early Memoir, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 2019; electronic version available Before I Forget is the long-awaited memoir from Professor Geoffrey Blainey – Australia’s most significant and popular historian – that tells the story of the first…
Abbott, Derek: Geoffrey Blainey’s engaging narrative of his emergence as man and historian
Derek Abbott* ‘Geoffrey Blainey’s engaging narrative of his emergence as man and historian’, 9 August 2019 Derek Abbott reviews Geoffrey Blainey’s Before I Forget: An Early Memoir Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia’s most highly regarded and most prolific historians.…
Stephens, David: Paul Daley and Don Watson address the place of place in the Australian story – as well as death and the Australian character
David Stephens* ‘Paul Daley and Don Watson address the place of place in the Australian story – as well as death and the Australian character’, Honest History, 7 June 2019 Sunday papers contain long reads and thoughtful essays, some of…
Piggott, Michael: We are in debt to those responsible for these two journals
Michael Piggott* ‘We are in debt to those responsible for these two journals’, Honest History, 2 June 2019 Michael Piggott reviews the Australian Journal of Biography and History and the ANU Historical Journal II If the appearance of new journal…
Marilyn Lake’s new book reviewed by Clare Wright: Australia was much more than Anzac – and well before it, too
Sometimes things come together just right. Such was the case when Nine (Fairfax) got Clare Wright to review Marilyn Lake’s new book Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform. Wright is most recently the author…
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Parliamentary committee recommends national resting place for Indigenous remains – but resists temptation to push hard for corporate dollars for national institutions
Update 20 May 2019: Paul Daley in Guardian Australia makes a useful comparison. Update 17 April 2019: Gina Fairley in ArtsHub comments. Update 5 April 2019: Canberra Times story on the puzzlement of MOADOPH on what the report said about…
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Brett, Judith: From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting
Judith Brett From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting, Text, Melbourne, 2019; electronic version available It’s compulsory to vote in Australia. We are one of a handful of countries in the world that enforce this rule…
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Jones, Benjamin T.: Australia’s national heroes of the electoral system again show there is more to us than Anzac
Benjamin T. Jones* ‘Australia’s national heroes of the electoral system again show there is more to us than Anzac’, Honest History, 13 March 2019 Benjamin T. Jones reviews Judith Brett’s From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory…
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Daley, Paul: Decolonising the dictionary: reclaiming Australian history for the forgotten
Paul Daley ‘Decolonising the dictionary: reclaiming Australian history for the forgotten‘, Guardian Australia, 17 February 2019 updated Long article pointing to the deficiencies in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB, located at the Australian National University), especially its earlier volumes…
Wells, Alexander: Whatever happened to the arts of peace?
Alexander Wells ‘Whatever happened to the arts of peace?‘ Overland, 8 February 2019 In the mass media and cultural institutions, we have just marked the 100-year anniversary of Armistice by continuing to fixate on warfare – at the expense of…
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Stephens, David: Review note: Meanjin’s Summer 2018 issue is nutritious and thought-provoking
David Stephens* ‘Review note: Meanjin’s Summer 2018 issue is nutritious and thought-provoking’, Honest History, 29 January 2019 updated There’s always a lot to read in an issue of Meanjin and its Summer 2018 issue is rightly labelled ‘Bumper’. This reviewer…
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Megarrity, Lyndon: Geoffrey Bolton and the writing of Australian history
Lyndon Megarrity ‘Geoffrey Bolton and the writing of Australian history‘, Australian Policy and History, 10 December 2018 Question and answer style in the website’s ‘Prominent Profiles’ series. Covers broad overview of Bolton’s career, how Megarrity came to know Bolton and…
Honest History review roundup: the books we wrote up in 2018
It’s been a great year for history publishing in Australia. Honest History has had the privilege of publishing reviews of materials that discuss, interrogate and eloquently distill the multi-faceted realities of our country’s history. From Diane Bell’s stirring reflection on…
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Stephens, David: Paul Daley’s On Patriotism: an appreciation from a fellow-traveller
David Stephens* ‘Paul Daley’s On Patriotism: an appreciation from a fellow-traveller’, Honest History, 16 December 2018 updated This is not really a book review, though a book has set it off. The book is Paul Daley’s On Patriotism, actually an…
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Bongiorno, Frank: The year some things changed
Frank Bongiorno ‘The year some things changed‘, Sydney Review of Books, 3 December 2018 updated Head of the ANU School of History (and Honest History president) reviews The Year Everything Changed: 2001 by Phillipa McGuinness, author (and publisher of The…
Davies, Geoff: Lest we also forget
Geoff Davies ‘Lest we also forget‘, Pearls and Irritations, 20 November 2018 Pungent and telling piece by an author and retired scientist. He enjoins us regarding a number of important events and issues, introducing each one with the words ‘lest…
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Davison, Graeme: The year of living anxiously
Graeme Davison ‘The year of living anxiously‘, Inside Story, 26 June 2018 Long review of the recently published book by Phillipa McGuinness, NewSouth publisher. The book is called The Year Everything Changed: 2001. The book offers, says Davison an understanding…
Daley, Paul: How do we settle the “statue wars”? Let’s start by telling the truth about our past
Paul Daley ‘How do we settle the “statue wars”? Let’s start by telling the truth about our past‘, Guardian Australia, 29 June 2018 The author says colonial-era statues, properly considered, can lead us towards an honest history. The article riffs…
ANU not to hook up with Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation
Update 21 August 2018: Alexander Wells in Overland, including on the irrelevance of ‘Western civilisation’ to today’s issues. Update 5 July 2018: Frank Bongiorno talks to Phillip Adams on Late Night Live. Update 26 June 2018: Geoffrey Blainey and Simon…
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Whyte, Sally: War Memorial should ditch weapons manufacturers: Anti war organisation
Sally Whyte ‘War Memorial should ditch weapons manufacturers: Anti war organisation‘, Canberra Times, 21 May 2018 updated Interview with Sue Wareham of Medical Association for Prevention of War (and one of Honest History’s distinguished supporters). Wareham discusses MAPW’s submission to…
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Reynolds, Henry: The fighting retreat of the Anglo-Australians
Henry Reynolds ‘The fighting retreat of the Anglo-Australians‘, Pearls and Irritations, 16 May 2018 Anglo-Australian atavism is at the root of the recent moves for an upgraded Captain Cook Memorial and related stuff, the defence of Australia Day, and the…
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Honest History’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Canberra’s National Institutions – and the proposed $500m extension to the Australian War Memorial
Note: This post has grown since it began and now covers two closely related matters: the Honest History submission to the parliamentary inquiry into Canberra’s national institutions; the proposed $500m extension of the Australian War Memorial – an underground project…
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Flanagan, Richard: ‘Our politics is a dreadful black comedy’ – press club speech in full
Richard Flanagan ‘”Our politics is a dreadful black comedy” – press club speech in full’, Guardian Australia, 19 April 2018 Man Booker Prize winner considers the possibilities for authoritarian politics around the world, before moving on to look at whether…
Stanley, Peter, ed.: Victory on Gallipoli and Other What-ifs of Australian History
Peter Stanley, ed. Victory on Gallipoli and Other What-ifs of Australian History, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2018 With a twist of fate – and of historical fact – Gallipoli was a military success, Australia had a female prime minister…
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Abbott, Derek: If only we had more what-ifs: a book of counterfactuals
Derek Abbott* ‘If only we had more what-ifs: a book of counterfactuals’, Honest History, 16 April 2018 Derek Abbott reviews Victory on Gallipoli and Other What-ifs of Australian History, edited by Peter Stanley Jack Lang prepares to cut the ribbon…
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Reynolds, Henry: Brendan Nelson and the War Memorial – what about the frontier wars?
Henry Reynolds ‘Brendan Nelson and the War Memorial – what about the frontier wars?‘ Pearls and Irritations, 10 April 2018 Historian of invader-Indigenous relations in Australia considers the proposed extension to the Australian War Memorial and the Memorial’s inadequate recognition…
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Stephens, David: Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today
David Stephens ‘Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today’, Honest History, 10 April 2018 updated Yassmin Abdel-Magied, 2017 (Guardian Australia/ABC) Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Somali-Australian Muslim woman, was…
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McKenna, Mark: Quarterly Essay 69: Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future
Mark McKenna Quarterly Essay 69: Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2018; electronic version available Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with…
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Highlights reel: historian Mark McKenna writes in 1997 on ‘black armband history’
‘Highlights reel: historian Mark McKenna writes in 1997 on “black armband history” ‘, Honest History, 10 April 2018 Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay 69: Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future (2018) considers related issues. HH *** Historiography, like history itself,…
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Piggott, Michael: Time for something from the heart, from and for all of us: Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay 69
Michael Piggott* ‘Time for something from the heart, from and for all of us: Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay 69’, Honest History, 10 April 2018 Michael Piggott reviews Mark McKenna’s Quarterly Essay 69: Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future Sixteen…
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Australians’ perceptions of historic events vary subtly across the country
A recent survey of Australians’ perceptions of important historic events shows some variation across states and territories. There are also some differences across gender and age. The survey was conducted in November last year by the Social Research Centre and…
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Stephens, Jane: Review note: Stephen Foster: Zoffany’s Daughter: Love and Treachery on a Small Island
Jane Stephens* ‘Review note: Stephen Foster: Zoffany’s Daughter: Love and Treachery on a Small Island’, Honest History, 13 January 2018 This intriguing narrative, appropriately first published in the Channel Islands, is based on extensive research into an obscurely unsettling 19th…
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Cabinet papers from 1994-95 opened, including commentary by Honest History’s Frank Bongiorno
Every year about this time another pile of Cabinet papers is made public under the 25 year rule. This year’s tranche covers 1994-95 and there is good coverage in The Conversation, including an article by Honest History president and ANU…
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What Honest History reviewed in 2017: might be some Christmas reading here
Honest History’s reviews are found here, with the latest at the top of the list. You can scroll down and find reviews of a wide range of books, of a generally historical bent, along with the occasional movie or television…
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McCormack, Matthew: Historians and Twitter
Matthew McCormack ‘Historians and Twitter‘, Twitter/History at Northampton blog, 20 November 2017 This is a first for Honest History – turning a Tweet into a post – but it is done gladly because Matthew McCormack up there at the University…
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Davison, Graeme: Do we belong here? Reflections on family, locality and community
Graeme Davison ‘Do we belong here? Reflections on family, locality and community (Address to the Victorian Community History Awards, 16 October 2017)‘, RHSV News, November 2017, pp. 4-5 This speech was delivered in Melbourne. It asks some important questions: Do…
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Glover, Jeff: “Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons
Jeff Glover* ‘“Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons’, Honest History, 10 November 2017 As a 61-year-old avid reader of Australian military history, all too often these days I find inaccuracies, mistruths and even lies about…
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More thoughts on the memorials/statues debate: Don Watson and Tracey Spicer
We have collected lots of links from home and abroad on the recently aired (but perennial) issue of statues, monuments, memorials, remembering and forgetting. You can find them here, under the heading ‘The past, choosing our history, and memorials: an…
Clark, Anna: Trench warfare: The Honest History Book
Anna Clark ‘Trench warfare: The Honest History Book‘, Sydney Review of Books, 19 September 2017 Review of The Honest History Book (long read). [The authors, says Clark] provide a powerful argument against the superficial, the commercial, and the celebratory aspects…
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Shooting the Past: Clare Wright presents radio with historical pictures on ABC RN
Coming up on ABC RN is Shooting the Past, a series of programs each starting with a single photograph and asking ‘what is going on in this picture?’ The series kicks off proper on Friday, 1 September, at 1.30 pm,…
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McQuire, Amy: Don’t just change the date of Australia Day … get rid of it all together
Amy McQuire ‘Don’t just change the date of Australia Day … get rid of it all together‘, Buzzfeed, 19 August 2017 Honest History doesn’t claim this is the only – or a representative – piece on the latest outbreak of…
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Macintyre, Stuart, Lenore Layman & Jenny Gregory, ed.: A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton
Stuart Macintyre, Lenore Layman & Jenny Gregory, ed. A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 Geoffrey Bolton [1931-2015] was the most versatile and widely travelled of his generation of Australian historians. As a…
Stumbling Past the recent Australian Historical Association conference in Newcastle
Blogger Yvonne Perkins (Stumbling through the Past) has performed a great service by collating material from the recent Australian Historical Association conference in Newcastle. There is an analysis of tweets and blogs, some papers, and lots of other material which…
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…
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The generations of us: Australian Lives (review of Puri and Thomson, ed.)
‘The generations of us: Australian Lives’ (review of Puri and Thomson, ed.), Honest History, 25 July 2017 Michael Piggott* reviews Australian Lives: an Intimate History, edited by Anisa Puri and Alistair Thomson The imperative to secure research grants is one…
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This week in the Russian Revolution 1917: courtesy of the World Socialist Web Site – and Alexander Kerensky
We have previously respectfully drawn readers’ attention to the resources of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), which tracks world politics from the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The Fourth International was founded by Leon…
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Gainsborough, Vance: Tocsin first and Meanjin latest: alarm bells at the bend in the river: review note
Vance Gainsborough* ‘Tocsin first and Meanjin latest: alarm bells at the bend in the river: review note’, Honest History, 2 July 2017 A ‘tocsin’ is an alarm bell or signal and ‘Meanjin’ is an Indigenous word for the bend in…
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Highlights reel: Hilary Mantel, historical novelist, on what history is all about
Dame Hilary Mantel (author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and other books) is this year’s Reith Lecturer for the BBC. You can find transcripts and audio of the lectures (weekly, 13 June 2017 for five weeks) on the…
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Stephens, David: Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier
David Stephens ‘Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier’, Honest History, 22 June 2017 Norman Graham Freudenberg AM is 83 years old this year. He has written speeches for Labor leaders,…
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Schultz, Julianne & Jerath Head, ed.: Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back
Julianne Schultz & Jerath Head, ed. Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back, April 2017 Millennials, those born in the final decades of the twentieth century, have had bad press for a long time. Now they are fighting back as they…
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Time-travelling millennials: Griffith Review 56
‘Time-travelling millennials: Griffith Review 56’, Honest History, 13 June 2017 Emily Gallagher* reviews Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back There is no such thing as a normative childhood. Generations of children might share in a collection of culturally specific circumstances,…
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Butler, Richard: The Honest History Book (UNSW Press 2017)
Richard Butler ‘The Honest History Book (UNSW Press 2017)‘, Pearls and Irritations, 15 May 2017 A review of The Honest History Book. This is a book of singular importance [says Butler]. It provides the evidence and materials for the correction…
Bongiorno, Frank: Is Australian history still possible? Australia and the global Eighties: Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Australian National University, 10 May 2017
Frank Bongiorno ‘Is Australian history still possible? Australia and the global Eighties: Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Australian National University, 10 May 2017‘, Honest History, 15 May 2017 This lecture canvasses some of the themes and subject matter in the author’s prize-winning…
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Is Australian history still possible? Australia and the global Eighties: Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Australian National University, 10 May 2017
Frank Bongiorno* ‘Is Australian history still possible? Australia and the global Eighties: Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Australian National University, 10 May 2017’, Honest History, 15 May 2017 It is a mark of the limiting character of a purely national perspective that…
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Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University: Contemporary Histories Blog
The group has commenced a new series on exploring contemporary histories and decision-making. It gets under way with a note from Carolyn Holbrook on ‘The Australian Federation of the Mind’. She points to something of a contradiction in the way…
Mnemosyne: online opportunity for feminist writers on the New South Wales South Coast
Mnemosyne is a new online journal wrangled by feminist writers on the south coast of New South Wales. It ‘celebrates the power and vitality of women’s storytelling and acknowledges the deep connection that many South Coast women, particularly Indigenous women,…
Holbrook, Carolyn: Q & A with Peter Stanley
Carolyn Holbrook ‘Q & A with Peter Stanley and other historians, including early career historians‘, Australian Historical Association Early Career Researchers, 1 April 2017 updated Research professor at UNSW Canberra (and Past President of Honest History), Peter Stanley, discusses aspects…
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Turning the yellow South Australian hills green? Marian Quartly on a state of hope
‘Turning the yellow South Australian hills green? Marian Quartly on a state of hope’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 Marian Quartly* reviews Griffith Review 55: State of Hope Any collection of essays focussing on a single state of Australia will…
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Munro, Doug: ‘How illuminating it has been’: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark
Doug Munro “‘How illuminating it has been”: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark’, Philip Payton, ed., Emigrants & Historians: Essays in Honour of Eric Richards, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2016, pp. 98-131 (pdf made available courtesy of the…
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Schultz, Julianne & Patrick Allington, ed.: State of Hope: Griffith Review 55
Julianne Schultz & Patrick Allington, ed. State of Hope: Griffith Review 55, January 2017 As the industrial model that shaped twentieth-century South Australia is replaced by an uncertain future, now more than ever the state needs to draw on the…
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Atlas charts a very useful online resource for all sorts of historical information
A contact referred us to this site for a chart showing international comparisons of mobile internet speeds – Australia (fifth) is not too shabby, much to our surprise – but we can imagine it being very useful in many fields…
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Sydney University graduate (and writer for Honest History) appointed Executive Director of Toynbee Prize Foundation
Aden Knaap, a graduate in History and Law from the University of Sydney and now a PhD student and Knox Fellow at Harvard University, has been elected Executive Director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation. The Toynbee Prize was established to…
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Bongiorno, Frank: This storied land
Frank Bongiorno ‘This storied land‘, The Monthly, February 2017 An essay riffing off Mark McKenna’s book, From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, which tells four stories of encounters between Indigenous and settler Australians. Bongiorno divides histories of Australia into pre-…
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Tan, Monica: I’m dizzily in love with Australia. Patriotism shouldn’t be reserved for the right
Monica Tan ‘I’m dizzily in love with Australia. Patriotism shouldn’t be reserved for the right‘, Guardian Australia, 1 February 2017 Reflection following a trip around Australia. Attracted more than 500 comments pro and con. Patriotism has become a touchy subject…
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Bongiorno, Frank: The Australian history boom has busted, but there’s hope it may boom again
Frank Bongiorno ‘The Australian history boom has busted, but there’s hope it may boom again‘, The Conversation, 25 January 2017 First in a series on Australian identity, this piece from one of Honest History’s distinguished supporters, Frank Bongiorno, looks at…
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Sherratt, Tim: Turning the inside out: Keynote at Australian Society of Archivists Annual Conference 2016
Tim Sherratt Turning the inside out: Keynote presented at the Australian Society of Archivists Annual Conference, Parramatta, 2016 A detailed examination, using a case study, of ‘the workings of legislation, archival practice and technology’. In this talk, I want to…
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Faber, David: An activist sense of history: indications for users
David Faber* ‘An activist sense of history: indications for users’, Honest History, 20 December 2016 ‘Never underestimate the power of dogma when propagandistically spread about among people who do not know much history.’ (Lawrence Davidson) We all know that those…
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Edgar, Bill: Where’s the 19th century in the National History Curriculum?
Bill Edgar ‘The Australian National History Curriculum: A note of concern: whither the 19th century?‘ Honest History, 16 December 2016 We have received the attached brief document from Dr Bill Edgar of Perth. He asks: Have the “movers and shakers”…
Rizzetti, Janine: Contesting Australian history: a festschrift for Marilyn Lake
Janine Rizzetti ‘Contesting Australian History: a Festschrift for Marilyn Lake‘, The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, 13 December 2016 A report of this recent event held at the University of Melbourne in honour of Professor Marilyn Lake. The author mentions…
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What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)
‘What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 The Honest History team gets to read a lot of books during a year and we are getting more and…
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Catching up with The Conversation: three very worthwhile days (and no pay-wall)
Queensland University of Technology academic, Axel Bruns, set out earlier this year a cogent argument for preserving social media as ‘a first draft of the present’ in a similar way to how journalism has traditionally been described as ‘the first…
Griffiths, Tom: The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft
Griffiths, Tom The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2016 No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us. The art…
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An anthropologist, an historian and his historians: Diane Bell on Tom Griffiths
‘An anthropologist, an historian and his historians: Diane Bell on Tom Griffiths’, Honest History, 26 October 2016 Diane Bell* reviews Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft Who is your favourite Australian historian? Why? In 14…
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Frankopan, Peter: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Frankopan, Peter The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2015 For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west – in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east…
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The Silk Roads to everywhere (review of Frankopan)
‘The Silk Roads to everywhere’, Honest History, 21 October 2016 Derek Abbott reviews Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World ‘Europe is but a molehill, all the great reputations have come from Asia’ (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1797).…
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Rees, Anne: How women historians smashed the glass ceiling
Rees, Anne ‘How women historians smashed the glass ceiling‘, The Conversation, 19 October 2016 Since the 1970s, the [history] profession has become conspicuous for the number of women in its ranks and the widespread acceptance of feminist scholarship. Compared to…
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Daley, Paul: Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national ‘cult of forgetfulness’
Daley, Paul ‘Why Australia Day and Anzac Day helped create a national “cult of forgetfulness”‘, Guardian Australia, 16 October 2016 updated Update 21 August 2017: Tony Smith on Pearls and Irritations muses about the proposal by Yarra Council in Melbourne…
Honest History highlights reel: Nick Dyrenfurth’s Mateship: A Very Australian History
‘Honest History highlights reel: Nick Dyrenfurth’s Mateship: A Very Australian History’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 Nick Dyrenfurth’s book Mateship: A Very Australian History, was published by Scribe in 2015. This highlights reel picks out some key paragraphs. We used…
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Honest History goes to the pictures: movie and TV reviews from the Honest History archives
Quite early in the Honest History project we realised that it was important to review movies and television series that came within our areas of interest. (We even explained why we were doing it.) Practically (due to resource limitations), this…
Port of Melbourne pictures just the tip of the photographic iceberg
Photo credit for home page, 23 September. The port of Melbourne has been leased for a lot of money. This provoked the Melbourne Age to run a set of photographs of the port, dating back well into the 19th century.…
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Stephens, David: We go to Rio: questioning received war history
Stephens, David ‘We go to Rio: questioning received war history’, Teaching History (History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales), 50, 3, September 2016, pp. 4-6 Pdf accessible here made available by courtesy of HTANSW, which holds copyright. Anzac may be…
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Flanagan, Richard: Australia has lost its way: The inaugural Boisbouvier Lecture, Melbourne Writers Festival 2016
Flanagan, Richard ‘Australia has lost its way: The inaugural Boisbouvier Lecture, Melbourne Writers Festival 2016’, The Monthly, 1 September 2016 This article, originally a lecture, is subtitled, ‘Does writing matter?’ The author says he does not believe in national literature,…
Clark, Anna: On listening to new national storytellers
Clark, Anna ‘Friday essay: on listening to new national storytellers’, The Conversation, 2 September 2016 The author reminds us that ‘each piece of history has a message and context that depends on who wrote it and when. As the US…
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Buch, Neville: Do professional historians have a future?
Buch, Neville ‘Do professional historians have a future?‘ Honest History, 30 August 2016 The author, a professional historian based in Queensland, looks at statistics for tertiary history courses. He spells out the need to grow the non-academic employment market for…
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From the Honest History archives: ‘Defining Moments’ at the National Museum of Australia (September 2014 and since)
Honest History has tracked the ‘Defining Moments’ project at the National Museum of Australia pretty much since it began. The project was an expression of the NMA’s claim to be ‘Where our stories live’ – ‘stories’ plural – which we…
Do professional historians have a future?
Neville Buch ‘Do professional historians have a future?’ Honest History, 30 August 2016 Peter Mandler argued in his 2015 Aeon essay that the ‘crisis in the humanities’ since the 1950s has never existed except in the minds of humanities professors.[1]…
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Davison, Graeme: Distance and destiny (about Blainey’s Tyranny of Distance)
Davison, Graeme ‘Distance and destiny‘, Inside Story, 28 July 2016 Reflection on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance. The Tyranny of Distance changed our map of the Australian past. It was a bestseller…
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Sherratt, Tim: Unremembering the forgotten: Digital Humanities 2015 keynote
Sherratt, Tim Unremembering the forgotten: Keynote address, Digital Humanities 2015, University of Western Sydney, 3 July 2015 The article looks at some aspects of the history of science in Australia, including how we have been visited by scientists from overseas.…
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Sherratt, Tim: Investigating the Hansard black hole
Sherratt, Tim ‘Investigating the Hansard black hole‘, Tim Sherratt: Research Notebook, 29 May, 10 July 2016 Not about the Budget black hole this time but about deficiencies in the ParlInfo search engine which countless people have used for research in…
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Daley, Paul: Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the confluence of story and time
Daley, Paul ‘Indigenous songlines: a beautiful way to think about the confluence of story and time‘, Guardian Australia, 4 July 2016 For NAIDOC Week (3-10 July), a sensitive introduction (by a whitefeller) to songlines, a central part of Indigenous Australian…
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The Resident Judge of Port Phillip journeys to AHA Ballarat
Update 8 July 2016: Janine has added some more about the next day of the Conference, covering papers on the Red Cross during World War I, Australian soldiers in the Boer War, museums, and living and dying. Of particular interest…
Wide-ranging AHA conference in Ballarat nicely captured from a distance via Tweets
Yvonne Perkins, who blogs as Stumbling through the Past, didn’t go to the Australian Historical Association conference in Ballarat this year but she is still keeping in touch by following and collating the Tweets coming out of it (#ozha2016). Yvonne’s…
Midwinter (almost) Miscellany from Honest History (info-brokers to the gentry)
Illness has cut a swathe through the Honest History engine-room this week so the remaining HH elves have been forced to bundle some useful links together below. The bundling exercise also warmed us up in an unusually cold Canberra early…
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A quick skim through some subscription journals: review note
‘Review note: a quick skim through some subscription journals’, Honest History, 7 June 2016 updated Update 18 June 2016: Nicholas Farrelly and James Giggacher write in the Canberra Times about the history of their highly successful academic blog, New Mandala,…
From the Honest History Archives: Tangled up in red, white and blue
‘From the Honest History archives: Tangled up in red, white and blue (September 2013)’, Honest History, 7 June 2016 The Honest History website now includes more than 2000 posts and pages, many of them containing original writing. Readers can find…
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National Library of Australia Magazine March 2016 edition
The National Library puts out a quarterly magazine. The March one (downloadable two ways or in hard copy at the Library) includes Kristen Alexander writing about her book on ‘aviatrix’ Lores Bonney, Honest History vice president, Alison Broinowski, on Norman…
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Wright, Clare: Who will be Australia’s future folk heroes?
Wright, Clare ‘Who will be Australia’s future folk heroes?‘ The Conversation, 19 May 2016 Riffs off the capture of five Australian citizens attempting to leave the country without passports, allegedly to fight in Syria. Compares Ned Kelly with Man Haron…
Bruns, Axel: A first draft of the present: Why we must preserve social media content
Bruns, Axel ‘A first draft of the present: Why we must preserve social media content‘, The Conversation, 16 May 2016 History is written on the basis of records that survive and are accessible. Even journalism has traditionally been described as…
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Daley, Paul: Australian patriotism: it’s not about war, it’s in our love of the land
Paul Daley ‘Australian patriotism: it’s not about war, it’s in our love of the land‘, Guardian Australia, 7 May 2016 updated Daley rejects violent metaphors for election campaigns and suggests patriotism, always evoked at such times, is more subtle and…
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Clark, Anna: Private Lives, Public History
Clark, Anna Private Lives, Public History, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 2016 The past is consumed on a grand scale: popularised by television programs, enjoyed by reading groups, walking groups, historical societies and heritage tours, and supported by unprecedented digital…
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Five Inside Stories and four Conversations: Honest History miscellany
‘Five Inside Stories and four Conversations: Honest History miscellany’, Honest History, 22 March 2016 updated Recent update on the Reef 20 April 2016: ABC report on the extent of bleaching, including map, showing particularly the extreme position in the northern…
Brookes, John: Constructing nationalism: telling us how it is on Anzac
Brookes, John* ‘Constructing nationalism: telling us how it is on Anzac‘, Honest History, 15 March 2016 The article explores how nationalism is ‘a politically constructed discourse designed to delineate and reveal a community to itself. The rise of Anzac in…
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Constructing nationalism: telling us how it is on Anzac
John Brookes* ‘Constructing nationalism: telling us how it is on Anzac’, Honest History, 15 March 2015 Nationalism is a politically constructed discourse intended to delineate and reveal a community to itself. The rise of Anzac in Australia in the last…
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Four reasons why the National Library of Australia is so valuable to Australia and Australians
The first three entries below are cut-and-pasted (with permission) from the Petherick Reading Room newsletter put out by the Library to Petherick readers. The fourth entry introduces to Trove those who do not know of it – or reminds those…
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McQuire, Amy: the viral rise of Stan Grant: why diplomacy won’t be enough
McQuire, Amy ‘The viral rise of Stan Grant: why diplomacy won’t be enough for our people‘, New Matilda, 26 February 2016 The reaction to [Grant’s speech], the thought that maybe Australians are “better than this” … gives strength to many…
Choices for First Australians: Honest History miscellany
This is our fourth miscellany this month on matters affecting First Australians and the relationship with them of settler Australian-based governments. Some of the items repeat familiar themes. One could ask who has most control over why these themes do…
Linking 40 000 Australian years: Honest History miscellany
Wiradjuri heritage journalist, Stan Grant, launched his book, Talking to My Country, at the National Press Club. Details about the book are here. Guardian Australia carried extracts from the book. We know this history, my people. This is a living…
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Daley, Paul: Cultural institutions crisis and history being militarised
Daley, Paul ‘Our major cultural institutions are in crisis – and our history is being militarised‘, Guardian Australia, 22 February 2016 updated ‘What price do we put on a nation’s memory? And what should that memory recall?’ Analyses the current…
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A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016
Michael Piggott ‘A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016’, Honest History, 16 February 2016 Honest History has, over the past two years, praised and criticised various institutions’ and authors’ representations of the past, but rarely looked at an historian…
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Piggott, Michael: A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016
Piggott, Michael ‘A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016‘, Honest History, 16 February 2016 Honest History committee member and distinguished archivist, Michael Piggott, reviews the work of John Hirst, who died recently. This obituary draws on the tributes of…
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ABC Radio National Ockham’s Razor: Feeding curiosity
ABC Radio National ‘Feeding curiosity‘, Ockham’s Razor, 24 January 2016 Robyn Williams introduces Peter Macinnis, former science teacher and now writer of history books, who talks whimsically about he enjoys and writes history. Audio and transcript.
Five (now nine) links to finish off Australia Day – but no fireworks
Update: 27 January 2016 More came through today on Australia Day and related matters. There was: a video on Guardian Australia of Indigenous protest rallies to mark Invasion Day; a music critic, Andy Hazel, punting for 12 ‘classic’ Australian songs…
Kelly, Sean: Let’s celebrate Australia but not on 26 January
Kelly, Sean ‘It’s time to change our traditions: let’s celebrate Australia – but not on 26 January‘, The Monthly Today, 25 January 2016 One of a number of articles (this year and previous years) on the theme of finding a…
Pilger, John: Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards
Pilger, John ‘Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards‘, New Matilda, 23 January 2016 The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To…
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Stan Grant speech on racism and the Australian Dream gets a well-deserved run for Australia Day
As reported in Guardian Australia (and in the Sydney Morning Herald and Junkee) going viral today is a You Tube video of a great speech made by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant in a debate in Sydney. Grant argues for the…
Organ, Michael K.: Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal War of 1816
Organ, Michael K. ‘Secret service: Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal War of 1816: Proceedings of the National Conference of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Mittagong, 25-26 October 2014‘, University of Wollongong Research Online Detailed analysis of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s punitive actions against…
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McLoughlin, Liam: Australia Day: BBQs, beer goggles and Oi, Oi, Oi
McLoughlin, Liam ‘Australia Day: barbecues and beer goggles and Oi, Oi, Oi,’ New Matilda, 20 January 2016 Young writer surveys the big day, looking at jingoism, toxic masculinity, a horror movie from 1988, an Ocker video and a parody thereof,…
Sparrow, Jeff: militarisation of Australian nationalism
Sparrow, Jeff ‘The real problem is not the lamb ad but the militarisation of Australian nationalism‘, Guardian Australia, 12 January 2016 Examines a Meat and Livestock Australia advertisement showing paramilitary forces ensuring expatriate Australians are home to eat lamb on…
Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder
‘Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder’, Honest History, 20 December 2015 Christmas often brings a reckoning and it is the same in our compact little enterprise. We would have loved to have afforded some of the…
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Archives A.C.T.: Find of the Month 2008-
Archives A.C.T. Find of the Month 2008- This is a treasure trove of local (in this case, Canberra and A.C.T.) history as found in files in the A.C.T. Archives. The idea is simple: pull out a file and present the…
Big Ideas on ABC RN Monday features ‘defining moments’
Honest History went along last evening to a session at the National Museum of Australia on its ‘Defining Moments’ project. We have followed this initiative closely – partly because of the way it contrasts with the narrowly conservative interpretation of…
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Defining Moments in Australian history: events at National Museum
Honest History has been a fan of the Defining Moments project at the National Museum of Australia. We are pleased to see a program of events around Defining Moments is getting under way in Canberra next week, 24 September, with…
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Stephens, David: three Canberra art exhibitions (review)
Stephens, David ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra‘, Honest History, 16 September 2015 A review of Reality in flames at the Australian War Memorial, Heroes and villians: William Strutt’s Australia at the National Library of Australia…
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Less twaddling by the lake: three Canberra art exhibitions
David Stephens ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra’, Honest History, 16 September 2015 The three exhibitions covered in this review offer a multi-hued picture of parts of our history. The first show, Reality in flames, has…
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Froggatt, Emma: Australian Life prize 2015 (photographs)
Froggatt, Emma ‘Australian Life prize 2015: the colour, the joy, the weird and wonderful – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 2 September 2015 Finalists in this photographic exhibition, which is on in Sydney from 18 September to 11 October. There is…
Australian Teachers of Media: Screen Education study guides
Australian Teachers of Media Metro Magazine Screen Education Study Guides The site contains links to many resources, notably study guides to many Australian television productions, including The War That Changed Us, Gallipoli, and Australia: the Story of Us, all reviewed…
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Review note: accessing three special editions
‘Review note: accessing three special editions’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 The title of this note is chosen deliberately: while, like any review, this one will do some assessing it is also concerned with accessing – with how the reader…
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Atkinson, Alan: Europeans in Australia Vol. 3: Nation
Atkinson, Alan The Europeans in Australia, Volume 3: Nation, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 Follows Volume 1: The Beginning (1997) and Volume 2: Democracy (2004). This is the third and final volume of the landmark, award-winning series The Europeans in Australia that gives an…
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Dyrenfurth, Nick: Mateship
Dyrenfurth, Nick Mateship: A Very Australian History, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2014 In the first book-length exploration of our secular creed, one of Australia’s leading young historians and public commentators turns mateship’s history upside down. Did you know that the first…
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Offord, Baden et al.: Inside Australian culture
Offord, Baden, Erika Kerruish, Rob Garbutt, Adele Wessel & Kirsten Pavlovic Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values, Anthem Press, London, 2014 Given Australia’s status as an (unfinished) colonial project of the British Empire, the basic institutions that were installed…
Reynolds, Jonathan T., ed.: 30-second twentieth century
Reynolds, Jonathan T., ed. 30-Second Twentieth Century: the 50 Most Significant Ideas and Events, each Explained in Half a Minute, Pier 9, Sydney, 2015 Twentieth Century presents a unique approach to modern history, condensing 100 years of innovation and art,…
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Ballantyne, Hugh & Lisa Matthews (dir.): Australia: the Story of Us
Ballantyne, Hugh & Lisa Matthews (dir.) Australia: the Story of Us, Essential Media & Entertainment, 2015 Eight part documentary series on the history of Australia from 50 000 years ago to now. The first four episodes are reviewed by David…
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Australia comes in little cheerful chunks
‘Australia comes in little cheerful chunks’, Honest History, 11 March 2015 David Stephens reviews Australia: the Story of Us (Channel 7), episodes 1-4 Australia: the Story of Us (ASU hereafter) is a franchise owned by an American firm called Nutopia.…
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Piggott, Michael: storytellers for a nation?
Piggott, Michael ‘National cultural institutions: story-tellers for a nation?‘ reCollections (National Museum of Australia), 10, 1, 2015 For almost a decade now, the terms “story” and “storytelling” have been used as a marketing and branding theme by many of Australia’s…
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Review note: ‘These are our stories’ – Defining Moments at NMA
‘Review note: “These are our stories” – Defining Moments at the National Museum of Australia’, Honest History, 3 March 2015 Cultural institutions tell stories. At the entrance to the National Museum of Australia, on its promontory on Canberra’s Lake Burley…
National blend
‘The Australia of Australia Day is a land, a nation and a people with many different histories, cultures, ideas and stories to tell. They may not merge into a single, or a binding, story about ourselves, and some of them…
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Australia Day quartet: will you sing tomorrow?
Four very different views of Australia Day come from Paul Daley in the Guardian Australia, Miranda Devine in the Daily Telegraph, Dick Smith in The Age and Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times. And let’s make it a quintet with…
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Fox, Karen: Australian Dictionary of Biography
Fox, Karen ‘The art and graft of the Australian Dictionary of Biography‘, The Conversation, 5 December 2014 The ADB has been publishing short biographies since 1966 and has been online since 2008. The ADB has been hailed as one of…
Abjorensen, Norman & James C. Docherty: Historical Dictionary of Australia
Abjorensen, Norman & James C. Docherty Historical Dictionary of Australia, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD, 4th edition, 2014; electronic version available This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Australia covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive…
Keneally, Thomas: Australians: Flappers to Vietnam
Keneally, Thomas Australians: Flappers to Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2014 This is the third volume in the novelist-historian’s take on Australia. Volume 1; volume 2. It looks at behavioural change, consumerism and nascent left and right wing…
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Keneally’s Australians Volume 3 reviewed
‘Australians: Flappers to Vietnam reviewed’, Honest History, 18 December 2014 David Stephens reviews Thomas Keneally’s Australians: Flappers to Vietnam, the third volume in the author’s history of Australia. See Volume 1 and Volume 2. This is a fascinating but flawed…
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National History Challenge essays cover many strands of our history
The National History Challenge winners for 2014 have been announced. The national young historian was Angus Christie, a Year 5 student from The Friends School in Hobart, for his film on changing perspectives on Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War.…
Mitchell, Rose & Andrew Janes, ed.: Maps: their untold stories
Mitchell, Rose & Andrew Janes, ed. Maps: their Untold Stories: Map Treasures from the National Archives, Bloomsbury, London, 2014 A map is a snapshot of a place, a city, a nation or even the world at a given point in…
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History is about maps
‘History is about maps’, Honest History, 2 December 2014 Steve Flora reviews Maps: their Untold Stories: Map Treasures from the National Archives, edited by Rose Mitchell and Andrew Janes, and notes some other recent cartographical arrivals It used to be…
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Watson, Don: The Bush
Watson, Don The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 2014; e-book available Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is…
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Schultz, Julianne, et al: What is Australia For?
Schultz, Julianne, et al ‘What is Australia For?‘ Griffith Review 36, Autumn 2012 An extensive collection tries to answer the question posed in the title. Julianne Schultz’s introduction, ‘A question with many answers‘, suggests that ‘[t]he emerging Asian century’ provides…
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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…
Paul Daley on the NMA’s defining moments
Paul Daley writes in Guardian Australia in praise of the National Museum of Australia’s list of ‘defining moments’ in our history and of its initiative in seeking public comments. He quotes the Prime Minister’s remarks opening the exhibition, questions them…
ACT Fabians: Why things matter
ACT Fabians Why Things Matter and other Podcasts Podcasts (no transcripts) 2014 and back a couple of years of Wayne Swan and Bernard Keane (journalist) on why government matters, Andrew Leigh MP, Humphrey McQueen and Paula Matthewson (commentator) on why…
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University of SA: Hawke lecture series
University of South Australia Annual Hawke Lecture Series Podcasts, audios, some transcripts, some papers from the following wide-ranging speakers and topics going backwards from 2014 to 1998: Hugh White on comparisons between 1914 and 2014; Elizabeth Blackburn on biology and…
Beaumont, Joan, et al.: ANU Archives annual lectures
Beaumont, Joan, et al. ANU Archives Annual Lectures The ANU Archives and the Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre sponsor an annual lecture in Canberra and podcasts or vodcasts of recent ones are available. They include: 2014 Professor Joan Beaumont,…
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Australian Quarterly: 85 years in 85 days
Australian Quarterly 85 Years in 85 Days – AQ Celebrates Australian Quarterly, which claims to be Australia’s oldest current affairs magazine, temporarily lowered its paywall early in 2014 to give free access to articles published from 1929 to 1989 (which…
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Review note: a ‘non-khaki’ view of Australia
‘A “non-khaki view” of Australia: “defining moments” matched against Honest History themes’, Honest History, 7 October 2014 updated Background The National Museum of Australia has put together 100 ‘defining moments’ in Australian history. The aim is ‘to stimulate a public discussion…
Cultural heritage
Middle-class Australia’s shallow, derivative culture has in part been a consequence of the willful and continuing denial of its debt to the Aborigines, and its refusal to think about the nightmare on which the Australian dream has depended. (Judith Brett,…
Curran, James & Stuart Ward: Unknown Nation
Curran, James & Stuart Ward The Unknown Nation: Australia after Empire, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 2010 The book considers Australia’s search for national identity as ‘the receding ties of empire and Britishness posed an unprecedented dilemma as Australians lost…
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Honest History list: 10 useful Web portals
Web portals abound and we are trying to include useful ones on the Honest History site. Here are ten that are worth opening and exploring: Dance: Australian Dance portal site with brief history and many links to relevant sites and…
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Honest History list: seven nation-shaping events before Gallipoli
Some Australians say the Australian nation was ‘born’ at Gallipoli. Others hedge their bets by suggesting our nationhood was ‘affirmed’ there or that we ‘came of age’. The most extreme views imply that an effusion of blood is necessary before…
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Mark Twain Down Under
‘Australian history’, according to Mark Twain, lecturing in Australia in 1895 to raise some much needed cash, is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer,…
Coining our history
Australian anthropologist Ian McIntosh at Indiana University is trying to work out whether five coins found in the Northern Territory during World War II are evidence that sailors from Africa reached Australia up to 900 years ago. The coins originated…
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Anzackery – not new
Researching the history of the term ‘Anzackery’, we came across this, published in 1967: Australians must be in many respects among the least nationalistic people in the world and, on the surface anyway, most sceptical of patriotic gestures. It is…
Brutality at Swan River, 1837
It is a truth which is painful to relate, that in the 19th Century Englishmen and protestants, shall be so cruel and hunt after the aborigines like after a game, the innocent child is not spared; they are shot in…
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Bryant, Nick: Rise and fall of Australia
Bryant, Nick The Rise and Fall of Australia: How a Great Nation Lost its Way, Bantam, North Sydney, 2014 Former BBC correspondent in Australia claims of Australia that ‘never before has its politics been so brutal, narrow and facile, as…
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Murray, Robert: Making of Australia
Murray, Robert The Making of Australia: A Concise History, Rosenberg, Kenthurst, NSW, 2014 From the coming of the first Aborigines perhaps 60,000 years ago, certainly 40,000, to the election of the Abbott government in 2013, Murray traces the forces that…
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Review note: research sources miscellany
‘Review note: research sources miscellany’, Honest History, 12 June 2014 Honest History’s constant (perhaps obsessive) digging into historical sources turns up, as well as individual gems, lodes of promising ore. From World War I, the National Archives has a finding…
Sharp, Nonie: Three lost children
Sharp, Nonie ‘Three lost children: revisiting a heroic legend’, Meanjin, 69, 3, Spring 2010, pp. 132-41 In Australian literature and film, the figure of the ‘black tracker’ has a long and complicated history. In this essay, the author discusses the…
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Lamond, Julieanne: Women writers and literary value
Lamond, Julieanne ‘Stella vs. Miles: women writers and literary value in Australia’, Meanjin, 70, 3, Spring 2011, pp. 32-39 Literary awards, especially national ones like the Miles Franklin Award, are not just prizes that recognise quality writing; they also play…
Davidson, Jim: Biography and Australian ambiences
Davidson, Jim ‘The biography as periscope: exploring Australian ambiences‘, Meanjin, 73, 1, March 2014 Looks at how biography gives ‘glimpses of another world. A life will progress from one ambience to another, and at certain points the biographer can pause…
Serle, Geoffrey: Digger tradition
Serle, Geoffrey ‘The digger tradition and Australian nationalism‘, Meanjin Quarterly, 24, 2, June 1965, pp. 149-58 Describes Inglis’s ‘Anzac tradition’ article as ‘the first serious modern discussion of Anzac and the digger legend’ (149) and goes on that ‘most Australians…
Serle, Geoffrey: Austerica
Serle, Geoffrey ‘Godzone: (6) Austerica unlimited?’, Meanjin Quarterly, 26, 3, September 1967, pp. 237-50 Serle Austerica Unlimited (full text) This was a landmark article, skewering a culture in transition from postwar to postmodern but still encumbered by baggage from previous…
ABC News: Flag debate
ABC News ‘Time for a new flag?‘ ABC News, 16 March 2014 Debate between John Blaxland, ANU academic, ex-Army officer and vexillologist, and Don Rowe, New South Wales President of the RSL, on whether Australia needs a new flag. One…
Blaxland, John: Australian flag
Blaxland, John ‘Flying the flag for a fresh start‘, Canberra Times, 1 February 2014 Few realise that the overwhelming majority of Australia’s 102,000 war dead fought and died for the British Empire under Britain’s Union Jack as their national flag.…
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Maley, Jacqueline: Debate about Australia Day
Maley, Jacqueline ‘Needless debate masks true meaning of Australia Day‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January 2014 On Australia Day, we should, by all means, celebrate our good fortune, the hiccup of fate that means we get to live in Australia…
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Grant, Corinne: Straya stayin dumb
Grant, Corinne ‘I’m strayan and I love stayin’ dumb‘, The Hoopla, 23 January 2014 Stand-up comic and writer critical at Australia Day of Australians’ alleged liking for trivia: ‘We want short slogans, simple solutions and lots and lots of drama’.…
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Jauncey on the days (and years) of our lives (20 January 2014)
Happy New Year; 2014. Has anyone else noticed the significance of this year? Yes, of course, it is the centenary of the start of World War I and we won’t be allowed to forget that as the commemorative bandwagon rolls…
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Wright, Clare: Other Australia Day
Wright, Clare ‘The other Australia Day: November 11 throughout history‘, The Conversation, 11 November 2013 11 November is Remembrance Day but it is many other days as well. Illustrates the many-strandedness of Australian history.
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Paul Daley gets to the heart of Honest History
Author and journalist Paul Daley caught the spirit of Honest History and brought in a range of personal reflections from his work as a historical writer, during his talk as guest speaker at the formal launch of the Honest History…
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Daley, Paul: Heart of Honest History
Paul Daley ‘The Heart of Honest History’ (Honest History Launch, 7 November 2013, Manning Clark House, Canberra), Honest History, 8 November 2013 Thanks Peter [Stanley]. Thanks Sebastian [Clark]. I, too acknowledge the traditional owners of this land [Canberra]. And thanks…
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Jauncey unravels some strands (7 November 2013)
Sometimes the history of history is almost as vexing as history itself. One frustration of putting together a history bibliography rapidly is that you have no time to stop and read or re-read the books and articles that go into…
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Clark, Anna & Paul Ashton, ed.: Australian History Now
Clark, Anna & Paul Ashton, ed. Australian History Now, New South, Sydney, 2013; electronic version available The authors in this anthology include the editors and Alan Atkinson, Tony Birch, Leigh Boucher, Ann Curthoys, Graeme Davison, Tom Griffiths, Paul Kiem, Marilyn…
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Stephens, David: Tangled up in red, white and blue
Stephens, David ‘Tangled up in red, white and blue’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 5, September 2013 We choose our own history, which bits of the past we wish to burnish and which we prefer to leave alone.We are doing war…
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Piggott, Michael: Sums and parts in a new collection
Piggott, Michael ‘Sums and parts in a new collection’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 6, October 2013 Michael Piggott reviews Australian History Now, an anthology edited by Anna Clark and Paul Ashton. Read more…
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Davison, Graeme: Narrating the nation
Davison, Graeme Narrating the Nation in Australia: Menzies Lecture 2009, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London, The Australia Centre, London, 2009 Explores four narratives or foundation myths of settler societies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa…
Davison, Graeme: Use and abuse
Davison, Graeme The Use and Abuse of Australian History, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2000 Wide-ranging collection on many aspects of public, local and cultural history. The first chapter, ‘Introduction: Australian history on the eve of the millennium’, is…
Piggott, Michael: Sums and parts in a new collection
Piggott, Michael ‘Sums and parts in a new collection’, Honest History e-Newsletter, No. 6, October 2013 Australian History Now (edited by Anna Clark and Paul Ashton) NewSouth, Sydney, 2013 What does the sum of a book’s parts add up to?…
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Woollacott, Angela, ed.: History for the Australian Curriculum
Woollacott, Angela, ed. History for the Australian Curriculum; 9, 10, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Vic., 2012 Multiple authors produce curriculum materials and exercises within the broad parameters of the Australian Curriculum: history for Years 9 and 10. The Curriculum…
AHA multiple authors: AHA resources
AHA multiple authors ‘Resources‘, Australian Historical Association Links to many cultural institutions and archives bodies, federal and state, as well as to the National Library’s Trove resource.
Duncan, Macgregor, et al: Imagining Australia
Duncan, Macgregor, Andrew Leigh, David Madden & Peter Tynan Imagining Australia: Ideas for Our Future, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2004 Long chapters on national identity, democracy, nation-building, growth, social policy and global citizenship. Young authors; Leigh later entered…
Galligan, Brian & Winsome Roberts, ed.: Australian politics
Galligan, Brian & Winsome Roberts, ed. The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic., 2007 Four hundred entries of varying lengths, covering all levels of politics, including historical material. Multiple authors including Judith Brett, Galligan, Ian…
Schreuder, Derek & Stuart Ward, ed: Australia’s empire
Schreuder, Derek & Stuart Ward, ed. Australia’s Empire: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 2010; first published 2008 The volume examines the meaning and importance of empire in Australia across a…
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National Archives of Australia
National Archives of Australia Your Story, Our History Gateway to the holdings of the National Archives, covering everything from personal files to photographs, records of government departments to records of individual soldiers.
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Serle, Geoffrey: From deserts the prophets come
Serle, Geoffrey From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788-1972, Heinemann, Mebourne, 1973; online version available; new edition 2013 From Deserts the Prophets Come is a short history of literature, art, music, theatre, architecture, science and learning…
About Strands of Australian History
Click here for all items related to: Strands of Australian history Many strands and themes run through and enliven the chronological narrative of Australian history and this is the burden of Daley, a Jauncey column, another Jauncey column and Stephens.…
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Jauncey opens up (24 October 2013)
When the Honest History enterprise was just getting under way one supporter pointed out how great it would be to have in one place – a repository, indeed – a resource of material that put the Anzac myth under the…
Blainey, Geoffrey: All horizons
Blainey, Geoffrey This Land is All Horizons: Australia’s Fears and Visions: Boyer Lectures, ABC Books, Sydney, 2001 This is a discussion of equality and equality of opportunity in Australian history, and of the changing way in which Australians see their…
Blainey, Geoffrey: Tyranny of distance
Blainey, Geoffrey The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966; numerous later editions The book ‘describes how distance and isolation have been central to Australia’s history and in shaping its national identity, and will continue…
Anonymous: Bibliography of Australian History
Anonymous. Bibliography of Australian History Wikipedia. Patchy, but has some useful entries. Links to timeline and general history entries.
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Hirst, John: Oddity from the start
Hirst, John ‘An oddity from the start: convicts and national character‘, The Monthly, July 2008 Argues against the idea that our convict heritage made us an anti-authoritarian people. Includes criticism of the Russel Ward thesis in his The Australian Legend…
Davison, Graeme, John Hirst & Stuart Macintyre, ed.: Oxford Companion
Davison, Graeme, John Hirst & Stuart Macintyre, ed., with the assistance of Helen Doyle & Kim Torney The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic., 1998; revised edition 2001; e-version available This superb new companion provides…
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Macintyre, Stuart & Sean Scalmer, ed.: What if?
Macintyre, Stuart & Sean Scalmer, ed. What If? Australian History As It Might Have Been, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 2006 Providing a play on actual historical events versus possible ones, this fascinating volume asks leading Australian historians to wonder…
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Murray, Tim, Jan Kociumbas, et al: Oxford History
Murray, Tim, Jan Kociumbas, Beverley Kingston, Stuart Macintyre, and Geoffrey Bolton The Oxford History of Australia, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic., 1986-96, various editions Includes Volume I Aboriginal Australia (Murray), Volume II Possessions 1770-1860 (Kociumbas), Volume III Glad, Confident…
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Macintyre, Stuart: Concise History
Macintyre, Stuart A Concise History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Vic., 1999, 2nd edition 2004, 3rd edition 2009 Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens…
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McKenna, Mark: History and inheritance
McKenna, Mark ‘Australian history and the Australian “national inheritance”’, Australian Cultural History, 27, 1, 2009, pp. 1-12 Over the last decade, there has been an increasing push from political parties, both conservative and Labor, and sections of the political class—opinion…
Macintyre, Stuart with Anna Clark: The History Wars
Stuart Macintyre with Anna Clark The History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 2003; later editions including e-book Historical survey of a number of controversies affecting Australian historians and their craft. The book itself provoked further controversy, particularly about the political…
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Curthoys, Ann & Marilyn Lake, ed.: Connected worlds
Curthoys, Ann & Marilyn Lake, ed. Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective, ANU e-press, Canberra, 2006; free online version This volume brings together historians of imperialism and race, travel and modernity, Islam and India, the Pacific and the Atlantic to…
Peel, Mark & Christina Twomey: History of Australia
Peel, Mark & Christina Twomey A History of Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2011 The treatment is mostly chronological and the target the general reader and students. A robotic voice gives a summary here, there are some extracts of reviews…
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Lyons, Martin & Penny Russell, ed.: History themes and debates
Lyons, Martin & Penny Russell, ed. Australia’s History: Themes and Debates, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005 A review (no longer accessible Dec 2014) suggested the editors ‘evidently asked their contributors to adopt a democratic, or rather egalitarian,…
Bashford, Alison & Stuart Macintyre, ed.: Cambridge History
Bashford, Alison & Stuart Macintyre, ed. The Cambridge History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, New York & Port Melbourne, Vic., two volumes, 2013 Histories like this underline the many-strandedness of our history and the range of historians active in the…
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Brett, Judith: Relaxed and comfortable
Brett, Judith ‘Relaxed and comfortable: the Liberal Party’s Australia‘, Quarterly Essay, 19, August 2005 Describes how John Howard as Prime Minister (ultimately for 11 years to 2007) kept his government attuned to ‘the moderate middle of national experience’. (p. 74)…
Pearson, Noel: Keating biography launch
Pearson, Noel ‘An address to the Launch: Don Watson “Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM”, Random House Australia 2002 [Sydney, 1 May 2002]‘ Uses the launch of the Keating biography to criticise some aspects of…
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Watson, Don: Keating
Watson, Don Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, Knopf, Milson’s Point, NSW, 2002; later editions A view of 13 years of Australian history from the perspective of a prime ministerial speech writer. It contains a…
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Inglis, KS: One day will endure (1964)
Inglis, KS ‘Anzac Day: the One Day will endure’, John Lack. ed., Anzac Remembered: Selected Writings by K.S. Inglis, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1998, pp. 13-17; first published, The Age, 25 April 1964 Discusses early arguments about Anzac Day,…
Inglis, KS: Little boy from Manly (1964)
Inglis, KS ‘The Little Boy from Manly grows up’, John Lack. ed., Anzac Remembered: Selected Writings by K.S. Inglis, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1998, pp. 9-12; first published, The Age, 24 April 1964 Discusses early Australian attempts to find…
Hearn, Mark: Writing the nation in Australia
Mark Hearn ‘Writing the nation in Australia : Australian historians and narrative myths of nation’, Stefan Berger, ed., Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2007, pp 103-25 [The article] surveys a range of culturally influential twentieth-century Australian…
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Stephens, Alan: Acts of remembrance or expressions of nationalism?
Alan Stephens ‘Acts of remembrance or expressions of nationalism?‘ The Drum (ABC), 25 April 2013 Article (attracting 185 comments by readers) by an historian of the RAAF, arguing that [a]t the start, Australia needed Anzac Day. We were a small,…
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Green, Jonathan, Paul Daley & Clare Wright: Imagine Australia without Anzacs
Jonathan Green, Paul Daley & Clare Wright ‘Imagine Australia without Anzacs‘, ABC Sunday Extra, 21 April 2013 (audio, no transcript) Paul Daley and Clare Wright talk with Jonathan Green and try to imagine Australia without the Anzac legend. Who would…
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Gammage, Bill & Peter Spearritt, ed.: Australians 1938
Bill Gammage & Peter Spearritt, ed. Australians 1938, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library. Dozens of contributors, historians and others, present sections under the headings ‘Pioneers on Parade’, ‘Aborigines’,…
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Honest History: Many themes of Australian history
Honest History ‘Not only Anzac but also plenty of other stories, as well’, Honest History e-Newsletter No. 1, May 2013 An honest view of our history will reveal many themes. It will provide a ‘not only… but also’ view –…
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Pember Reeves, William: State experiments in Australia and New Zealand
William Pember Reeves State Experiments in Australia & New Zealand, Two volumes, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1969; first published 1902 Detailed study of initiatives before 1900 in the colonies regarding votes for women, federation, preferential voting, land reform, old age…
Inglis, KS: The Australian Colonists
KS Inglis The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History 1788-1870, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1974 While the subject matter is ostensibly people, war and peace, holidays and ‘the stuff of history’ in the years nominated, the book begins…
Camm, JCR & John McQuilton, ed.: Australians atlas
JCR Camm & John McQuilton, ed. Australians: A Historical Atlas, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A volume in the set Australians: A Historical Library. Maps, graphs and notes under the headings, ‘Place’, ‘People’ and ‘Landscapes’. Excellent illustrations.…
Mulvaney, DJ & J. Peter White, ed.: Australians to 1788
DJ Mulvaney & J. Peter White, ed. Australians to 1788, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A volume in the set Australians: A Historical Library. Twenty-three authors contribute under the main headings ‘The creation of Aboriginal Australia’, ‘Continuity…
Stell, Marion K. & Ruth Thompson: Australians 1988: Chronology
Marion K. Stell & Ruth Thompson (Kim Anderson, ed.) Australians 1988: Chronology, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Willoughby, NSW, 1989 A chronology of the bicentennial year. The final volume in Australians: A Historical Library. Almost every day is covered with…
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Vamplew, Wray, ed.: Australians: Historical Statistics
Wray Vamplew, ed. Australians: Historical Statistics, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes of Australians: A Historical Library. Multiple authors do the numbers on ‘People and land’, ‘Wealth and progress’, and ‘Society, politics and religion’.…
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Stephens, David: Tangled up in red, white and blue
David Stephens* ‘Tangled up in red, white and blue’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 5, September 2013 War remembrance and days of commemoration bring out extremes of rhetoric, little gems of hyperbole that even the speaker might reconsider had they given…
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Keneally,Thomas: Australia Vol. II
Thomas Keneally Australians Vol. II: Eureka to the Diggers, Crows Nest, NSW, 2012; first published 2011 Keneally’s second volume of three and continues in the style of the first, except that the cast of characters march more chronologically in chapters…
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Keneally, Thomas: Australia Vol I
Thomas Keneally Australia: Origins to Eureka: Volume 1, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2010; first published 2009 Novelist and historian Keneally ‘tells the stories of a number of Australians from the Pleistocene Age to 1860. The people whose tales…
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Kelly, Paul: The End of Certainty
Paul Kelly The End of Certainty: The Story of the 1980s, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1992; second edition, subtitled Power, Politics and Business in Australia, 2008 Influential book describing a decade of politics and economics. Kelly’s broader theme…
Horne, Donald: The Lucky Country
Donald Horne The Lucky Country, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., third revised edition, 1974; first published 1964; later editions Classic analysis of the emerging ‘modern’ Australia of the 1960s, touching on Anzac along the way, as it seemed to the author 50…
Horne, Donald: Looking for leadership
Donald Horne Looking for Leadership: Australia in the Howard Years, Viking, Ringwood, Vic., 2001 Almost his last book. Among wide ranging comment on the Australia of 2001, he asks ‘What use is the Anzac myth?’. In response, he writes of…
Hirst, John: The Australians
John Hirst The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2007; later edition Penguin 2010 Hirst compiles and comments upon multiple assessments of the Australian character, from Charles Bean to Charles Dickens, Dorothea McKellar…
Henderson, Heather, ed.: Letters to My Daughter: Menzies letters
Heather Henderson, ed. Letters to My Daughter: Robert Menzies, Letters, 1955-1975, Pier 9, Millers Point, NSW, 2011; e-book available Fairly intimate views of Sir Robert Menzies, the dominant politician of the early post World War II decades. Useful to read…
Davison, Graeme, et al, ed.: Australians 1888
Graeme Davison, JW McCarty & Ailsa McLeary, ed. Australians 1888, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library. The authors write about land and people, the regional mosaic, private lives and…
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Curthoys, Ann, AW Martin & Tim Rowse, ed.: Australians from 1939
Ann Curthoys, AW Martin & Tim Rowse, ed. Australians from 1939, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library. Thirty historians, political scientists and citizens contribute to sections on Australians and…
Crowley, Frank, ed.: A New History of Australia
Frank Crowley, ed. A New History of Australia, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1974; later edition 1986 A multi-author history intended to take the place of the Gordon Greenwood edited Australia from twenty years earlier. Twelve authors dealt with the years 1788…
Clark, CMH (Manning): A History of Australia
CMH (Manning) Clark A History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., six volumes, 1962-87; later editions The sub-titles of some of the volumes attest to the deep themes running within the work: The Earth Abideth for Ever, 1851-1888 (Vol.…
Borchardt, DH, ed.: Australians: A Guide to Sources
DH Borchardt, ed. Australians: A Guide to Sources, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library (other volumes have separate posts on the Honest History site). Dozens of contributors provide brief…
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Atkinson, Alan & Marian Aveling, ed.: Australians 1838
Alan Atkinson & Marian Aveling, ed. Australians 1838, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 Twenty-five contributing authors describe Australia around 1838, looking at Aborigines, families, work, markets, government, justice and other topics. The diversity of Australian history –…
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Aplin, Graeme, et al, ed.: Australians: A Historical Dictionary
Graeme Aplin, Graeme, SG Foster & Michael McKernan, ed. Australians: A Historical Dictionary, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A collection of short (and a few long) articles on people, institutions and events, with well-chosen illustrations from a…
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Aplin, Graeme, et al, ed.: Australians: Events and Places
Graeme Aplin, SG Foster & Michael McKernan, ed. Australians: Events and Places, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library, containing a chronology of events from 1788 and timelines of Aboriginal…
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Russell, Elaine, ed.: Australians: The Guide and Index
Elaine Russell, ed. Australians: The Guide and Index, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 A guide to Australians: A Historical Library, twelve volumes produced by Australia’s historians to mark the bicentenary of white settlement. The other volumes were…
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Rudd, Kevin: Keneally launch
Kevin Rudd ‘Launch of first volume of Tom Keneally’s Australians: Origins to Eureka, National Library, Canberra, 27 August 2009′ ‘[It was time] [t]o recognise there are competing strands in any nation’s history – of inclusion and exclusion; of hope and…
Mark, David: Rudd history wars
David Mark ‘Rudd calls for end to “history wars”’, ABC News, 28 August 2009 Quotes from Prime Ministers Rudd and Howard and Robert Manne. Rudd: [It was time] ‘to go beyond the so-called “black arm [band]” view that refused to…
Manne, Robert: The history wars
Robert Manne ‘The history wars’, The Monthly, November 2009 ‘Only when the overwhelming majority of Australians no longer flinch from the uncomfortable truths about their nation’s history … will we be able to declare the History Wars over.’
Gare, Deborah & David Ritter, ed.: Making Australian history
Deborah Gare & David Ritter, ed. Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson Learning, South Melbourne, 2008 Includes an introduction on ‘making history and the politics of the past’ and articles by Mark McKenna on ‘values and…
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Dickenson, Dyrenfurth & Scalmer, ed.: Rebirth of political history
Jacqueline Dickenson, Nick Dyrenfurth & Sean Scalmer, ed. ‘The rebirth of political history’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 56, 1, March, 2010 (special edition) The essays consider how political history has been written and how it ought to be…
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Curthoys, Ann & John Docker, ed.: Genocide? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective
Ann Curthoys & John Docker, ed. “Genocide”? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective’, Aboriginal History, 25, 2001, special section (downloadable) Multiple contributors on aspects of genocide and aboriginality. There is a brief survey here of instances of genocide in world…
Crotty, Martin & David Roberts, ed.: Turning Points in Australian History
Martin Crotty, Martin & David Roberts, ed. Turning Points in Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2008 Contributors consider the separation of Tasmania from the mainland, the Gallipoli landing, the Great Depression, the arrival of television, the…
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Cathcart, Michael: Manning Clark’s History of Australia
Michael Cathcart Manning Clark’s History of Australia, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1995 One volume abridgement.
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