Military History

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War by Joan Beaumont

by •
February 2014, no. 358

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War by Joan Beaumont

Allen & Unwin, $55 hb, 656 pp, 9781741751383

Military History

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War by Joan Beaumont

by •
February 2014, no. 358

If you read only one book about Australia’s experience of World War I, as the deluge of commemorative publications marking the outbreak of the war becomes a veritable tsunami, make it Broken Nation, an account that joins the history of the war to the home front, and that details the barbarism of the battlefields as well as the desolation, despair, and bitter divisions that devastated the communities left behind.

Leave a comment
Marilyn Lake

Marilyn Lake AO is Professorial Fellow in History at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent books include Drawing the Global Line: White men’s countries and the international challenge of racial equality, co-authored with Henry Reynolds and published by Cambridge University Press; and Progressive New World: How TransPacific exchange and settler colonialism shaped American reform, published by Harvard University Press in 2019.
Broken Nation

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War

by Joan Beaumont

Allen & Unwin, $55 hb, 656 pp, 9781741751383

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Comment (1)

  • Sturdy review of an impressive work. The key to attitudes to war perhaps found in the remark about 'sympathy for the Anzacs can deflect anger from those who sent them to war and kept them there'. Governments always want sympathy for soldiers to flow over to support for politicians. More reviews of the book linked from http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/beaumont-joan-broken-nation/
    Posted by David Stephens
    14 April 2014

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.