Military History

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War by Joan Beaumont

Reviewed by •
February 2014, no. 358
Broken Nation

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

Reviewed 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.

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Marilyn Lake

Marilyn Lake is Professor in History and ARC Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her first book, based on her MA thesis, was A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War I (1975). It was followed by The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38 (1987). Her current research focuses on the international history of Australian democracy.
Broken Nation

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War

by Joan Beaumont

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

Leave a comment
Marilyn Lake

Marilyn Lake is Professor in History and ARC Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her first book, based on her MA thesis, was A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War I (1975). It was followed by The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38 (1987). Her current research focuses on the international history of Australian democracy.

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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

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