PHILIP PAYTON

At first glance this book suggests little relevance to Australian readers, being largely about an English writer and Cornwall, his favourite part of England. 

Like most history, however, nothing is that simple.

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RICHARD NEVILLE AND RACHEL FRANKS (EDS)

A picture collection chosen not for its aesthetic qualities, but for the stories it tells about the people and places of New South Wales, forms the subject of this handsome volume. Building a collection of pictures around their content rather than their creators is an interesting challenge and legacy inherited by the Mitchell Library in Sydney. It’s a delight to find a collection of works wherein the history in the paintings is the headline, rather than the artist, the style, or technique—although these are important and do feature—it’s the stories that reward the viewer here. 

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DENIS BYRNE, IEN ANG & PHILLIP MAR

Drawing on transnational approaches, this multi-disciplinary collection of essays explores the history of movement of ‘people, ideas, objects, and money’ between China and Australia that were ‘stimulated by initial acts of migration’. Its focus is the 1840s to 1940s. The book raises important issues about migrant heritage for those in the heritage industry, highlighting the importance of a historical understanding of these places that extends beyond their physical location and the nation-state.

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ALECIA SIMMONDS

If you’re in the habit of falling asleep with a book in bed, I’d suggest you read this one in a chair. It squeezes a huge set of ideas into a large volume of small print and thin margins. Thankfully, it is also beautifully written and full of captivating stories and vignettes.

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KATE FULLAGAR

The story of the extended encounter between Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip has been mined often over the past few decades. This has been part of the historical re-exploration of the British colonisation of Sydney Cove and the responses of local Aboriginal peoples. Can anything new be learned? Resoundingly: ‘yes’ is my answer, having immersed myself in this very readable book.

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GRAHAM SEAL

This compilation of stories by Graham Seal, a distinguished authority in folklore at Curtin University, presents a captivating tableau of Australia's historical underworld. Furthermore, the alternating shifts between innovation, folly, cruelty, and even altruism create an engaging reading experience.

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DAVID REEVE

‘I also saw myself in struggle with the people who wanted to make someone or something out of me, while I wanted to remain myself.’ This is Onghokham speaking to his biographer, David Reeve. Ong was trying to explain his reaction to the turmoil of the 1965 coup that overthrew Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, and the subsequent killings of communists (real and suspected), as well as many more, especially people of Chinese origin. What Ong meant by remaining himself is the subject of this book, a remarkable study in life writing and so much more, including an exploration of the emergence of the discipline of history in Indonesia.

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KATE AUTY

Bones and other human remains lie on the ground and are buried near the Forrest River northwest of Wyndham, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They have lain there since June 1926, when a vigilante squad of 13 white police and civilians, and Aboriginal trackers, killed more than 20 Indigenous people in revenge for the murder of one white man, Frederick Hay, later found to have ‘interfered’ with Aboriginal women. The incident, which closely followed another mass-murder by 2 white men (James St Jack and Leo Overheu), was carried out by a small group of men who believed they could kill without fear of recrimination.

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JAMES LESH

Values in Cities provides a historical treatment of heritage – as a discourse, a field of practice, a system – across the twentieth century in Australia. The book is an enjoyable and refreshing read. Its narrative is rich with interesting examples that bring Lesh’s analysis within mind’s reach.

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RAY KERKHOVE

As we head toward a referendum on the Voice to Parliament later in 2023, history looms in the rear vision mirror. The future success of the Uluru Statement of the Heart’s goals of Voice, Truth and Treaty are all deeply linked with how Australians view their past. Growing support for truth-telling in particular is emblematic of a broader shift in the way we understand – or want to understand – the wars of conquest over Aboriginal lands that occurred between 1788 and around 1930. These wars have had little recognition in places of national memory such as the Australian War Memorial, but now these places can’t possibly continue to avoid it.

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JANE CAREY

As Jane Carey outlines in Taking to the Field, the first half of the twentieth century was a boom era for women working in Australian science. This book does much to recapture their presence, confidence and contributions.

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EDITED BY GILLIAN DOOLEY & DANIELLE CLODE

For most Australians, the possibility of armed invasion is feared but unknown. Few people living on this land have experienced the disruption of armed conquest. How many of us could even begin to imagine what might have passed through the minds of Indigenous people when they first encountered non-Indigenous people on the coastal fringes of this continent?

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EDITED BY PAUL ASHTON & PAULA HAMILTON

In twenty-two chapters divided into five parts, the twenty-six authors of The Australian History Industry have covered a breathtaking array of how history is produced in Australia. It is a useful introduction for graduate historians who might wish to work in the field and should prompt vibrant discussion between historians in all corners of the discipline.

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KYLIE ANDREWS

Kylie Andrews’ investigation into the ABC during its transition into television focusses on four trailblazing women producers – those whose job was to bring together programming ideas, technical production, and the sourcing of talent and locations. Andrews’ purpose was to uncover the unsung backroom women of ABC productions. While media production roles were considered at the time to be beyond women due to their technical nature, each of these four women proved this to be a fallacy.

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CAROLYN HOLBROOK, LYNDON MEGARRITY, DAVID LOWE (EDITORS)

Since this blog started, we have published 30 reviews.* Among its offerings, it is striking to see more and more stories about encounters – too often violent – with Australia’s First Nations. Most of these stories are told by professional rather than academic historians. How history is written is another recurring theme, one that coincides with my aim as the blog editor of encouraging succinct, engaging distillations of current work. We need our history-making to be read! Lessons from history makes the same point, urging historians to engage with policy and to bring history to the fore of confronting contemporary challenges.

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ANNA CLARK

Making Australian History is essentially about the history of history in Australia – how it has shaped our national identity and how history has been shaped. An ambitious project, which Anna Clark admits that she struggled with. She found a way to structure the book during walks in the Dyarubbin-Hawkesbury region of New South Wales, where she came across the markings of colonial surveyors near Aboriginal rock art, including one that depicted the outline of a woman in a crinoline dress. This confronting sense that timeless layers of history-making existed, provided her with a novel way to structure the book.

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ROBERT T HARRIS

Dancing Before Storms is thought provoking. It recounts the expression of discontent in the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as that of our current century, which again highlights widening gaps in equity and equality. Whether the current malaise will result in political revolution is yet to become clear; attempts to predict it based on the features of another time in history are fraught with difficulty.

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NICK GUOTH & TREVOR THOMPSON

Burning Ambition begins with a wonderful coincidence. In May 1904 the Federation Internationale de Football Associations – otherwise known as FIFA – was brought to life in a back room in Paris. At the same time, in Sydney, newspapers invited local players of the round-ball game to selection trials for a tour of New Zealand. This sporting history offers a glimpse into the idea of Australasia as one that gained, then lost, traction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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RACHEL FRANKS

Crime and punishment: the irresistible twin themes for novelists and film makers, as well as lawmakers and historians. Rachel Franks brings to the story of hangman Nosey Bob Howard the craft of both crime fiction and history, revealing stories of the executioner and his ‘patients’. Her approach raises questions for professional historians about how to write compelling narrative history.

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