Yanks Down Under purports to examine the “American impact on Australia” during the second world war. After some 400 pages of text I was no wiser as to the nature of this impact. I could not decide whether the authors thought that the wartime American presence here had a permanent effect or whether it was significant but strictly temporary. In their final sentence the authors claim that the American presence led to the “development, years before the creation of any formal diplomatic and military agreements, of a lasting alliance”, but it is difficult to discover any basis for this assertion in the evidence that the authors provide. The bulk of the book is devoted to a mountain of almost entirely trivial detail which is not without interest, nostalgic or otherwise, but which falls far short of sustaining the argument that the authors apparently seek to advance.