The only large-scale comprehensive account of an intriguing part of Australia's past.In 1920, 26 men and women met in a dingy hall in Sydney to create a new political party. They expected the overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity - here, and all around the world.Two decades later, when Australia joined the Second World War, the Commonwealth government suppressed the Communist Party of Australia. The handful of idealists and dissidents had...

Stuart Macintyre, one of Australia's most highly regarded historians, revisits A Concise History of Australia to provoke readers to reconsider Australia's past and its relationship to the present. Integrating new scholarship with the historical record, the fifth edition of A Concise History of Australia brings together the long narrative of Australia's First Nations' peoples; the arrival of Europeans and the era of colonies, convicts, gold and free settlers; the foundation of a nation stat...

The long awaited second volume in Stuart Macintyre's definitive history of the Communist Party of Australia.Communism was unlike any other political movement Australia has ever seen. At its peak in the 1940s, unions led by communists could call a strike that paralysed the nation, and communists influenced the highest level of government, and commanded the unswerving loyalty of thousands. It showed working men and women they could have a better life, and gave them t...

What is a fair wage? Is there a right to work? Is there a right to shelter or to good health? What are the entitlements of those who cannot work? Can opportunities be equal? For women? For Aborigines?For more than a century, Australians have addressed expectations of social justice to their governments and have had to live with the consequences.This book looks at how changing circumstances have generated changing popular aspirations, and how these in turn have been translat...

Geoffrey Bolton was the most versatile and widely travelled of his generation of Australian historians. As a scholar, teacher and commentator he enriched understanding of the country's regional mosaic, some of its notable figures and others who were just as revealing, the natural environment, social patterns and political life. He was also unflagging in his encouragement of others. The contributors to this volume take his work as a departure point for original essays on a variety of themes...

What are the social sciences? What do they do? How are they practised in Australia? The Poor Relation examines the place of the social sciences - from economics and psychology to history, law and philosophy - in the teaching and research conducted by Australian universities. Across sixty years, The Poor Relation charts the changing circumstances of the social sciences, and measures their contribution to public policy. In doing so it also relates the arrangements made to ...

Eminent contributors include Alan Atkinson, Graeme Davison, Greg Dening, John Hirst, Beverley Kingston, Marilyn Lake, and Iain McCalman.They not only ask but answer the hard questions about writing and researching history. How do historians choose their histories? What sort of emotional investment do they make in their subjects, and how do they control their sympathies? How do they deal with unpalatable discoveries? To whom are historians responsible? And for whom are they entitled ...

The nation's history has probably never been more politicised than it is today. Politicians, journalists, columnists, academics and Australians from all walks of life argue passionately — and often, ideologically — about the significance of the national story: the cherished ideal of the 'fair go', the much contested facts of Indigenous dispossession, the Anzac legend, and the nation's strategic alliance with the United States. Historians have become both combatants and casualties in this w...

A revolution swept through universities three decades ago, transforming them from elite institutions into a mass system of higher education. Teaching was aligned with occupational outcomes, research was directed to practical results. Campuses grew and universities became more entrepreneurial. Students had to juggle their study requirements with paid work, and were required to pay back part of the cost of their degrees. The federal government directed this transformation through the creatio...

There is a common belief that Australia acquired history only when it grew up and threw off its colonial origins after the Second World War. Yet earlier generations of Australians created their own histories to express their sense of who they were and what they might be. This book reveals that the quest for an Australian past found its way into our universities and schools from the early years of the Commonwealth.Ernest Scott was the most prolific teacher and writer of history in in...

It is time to reassess the work of Geoffrey Blainey, and consider his role in Australian history, politics and public life.Geoffrey Blainey has steered Australian history into the nation's conversation. No one would dispute that he is a courageous public intellectual, a writer of rare grace and a master storyteller. And he has indeed provoked a rare fuss, both public and professional, with some of his comments on Asian immigration and Aboriginal land rights.Blainey has chal...

Civil liberties are central to the freedoms that Australians value. They affirm the rights of all to protection from arbitrary authority and enable minorities to flourish; but they have also frequently been disputed. From arguments over censorship in the 1930s to present-day debates on mandatory sentencing, the concept of civil liberties and its impact on our everyday lives is a recurring motif of public life. Liberty is packed with new insights into the way civil liberties have b...