Barry Jones

David Lange’s autobiography was published on 1 August 2005. Twelve days later, he died in Auckland, at the age of sixty-three, after kidney failure and a long battle with amyloidosis, a rare disorder of plasma cells in the bone marrow, having been kept alive by a pacemaker, chemotherapy, peritoneal dialysis, and blood transfusions. He had been a diabetic for many years. When My Life appeared, pr ... (read more)

Geoffrey Blainey made his reputation as a prolific and accomplished economic historian, then turned to broader themes and wrote important analytical works, including The Tyranny of Distance (1966), The Causes of War (1973), The Triumph of the Nomads (1975), and The Great Seesaw (1988). When the so-called ‘history wars’ began in the 1980s, Blainey was characterised as an optimistic conservative ... (read more)