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History

Changing Fortunes: A history of the Australian treasury by Paul Tilley

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December 2019, no. 417
Geoffrey Blainey reviews 'Changing Fortunes: A history of the Australian treasury' by Paul Tilley

Paul Tilley classes the Treasury, now housed in Canberra, as ‘one of Australia’s great enduring institutions’. It began humbly in 1901, in a smallish stone building that still stands at the corner of Collins and Spring Streets in Melbourne. That handsome structure appears to be just about the correct size for its initial staff of five. Just across the street stands a statue of Sir William Clarke, a rich pastoralist of that era who, had he sold some of his properties and sheep, might easily have paid for all the salary cheques signed by the nation’s Treasury in its first weeks.

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The Somme by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

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August 2005, no. 273
Martin Ball reviews 'The Somme' by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

The Somme – it is a name that still strikes dread in the ears for its carnage, ineptitude and sheer waste of life. For the English-speaking world at least, the battle of the Somme has come to symbolise all that was bad about the Great War in general, and the Western Front in particular. The 141-day battle cost the British Army alone more than 400,000 casualties, including 150,000 men killed. The first day (1 July 1916) saw the death of 20,000 soldiers – the single bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. It wasn’t quite as bad as the savage slaughter at Towton on 29 March 1461, where about 30,000 Englishmen perished in the vicious quarrel between York and Lancaster, but on the Somme the bloodshed kept going, day after day for four and a half months, and no one seemed to know how to stop it.

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Underland: A deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

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November 2019, no. 416
Alison Pouliot reviews 'Underland: A deep time journey' by Robert Macfarlane

Underland is English nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s longest and, by his own admission, deepest and strangest book. It took almost a decade to write. From the remote mountain peaks of his first book,

Red Meat Republic: A hoof-to-table history of how beef changed America by Joshua Specht

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November 2019, no. 416
Cameo Dalley reviews 'Red Meat Republic: A hoof-to-table history of how beef changed America' by Joshua Specht

During a steamy Brisbane summer in the early 1990s, my father planned an outing for his preteen children, an adventure that would punctuate an otherwise predictable cycle of sleepovers, movies, and trips to the swimming pool. At the time, Dad was a board member of the Queensland Abattoir Corporation, and his idea of entertainment was a guided tour of the nearby Cann ...

The Great Cauldron: A history of southeastern Europe by Marie-Janine Calic, translated by Elizabeth Janik

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October 2019, no. 415
Iva Glisic reviews 'The Great Cauldron: A history of southeastern Europe' by Marie-Janine Calic, translated by Elizabeth Janik

South-eastern Europe is a region defined by ambiguity: with few clear geographic boundaries or consensus over its correct appellation, it is a palimpsest bearing the marks of Balkan, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, and central European cultures. As the identities of the region’s inhabitants have shifted across the centuries, their position within the European ...

Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the road to war by Tim Bouverie

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October 2019, no. 415
Glyn Davis reviews 'Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the road to war' by Tim Bouverie

Speechless, Adolf Hitler sat glowering at Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Since 1933 the führer had gambled repeatedly that France and Britain would capitulate to his latest demands. Now he tried again, reassured by Ribbentrop (no aristocrat, a vain man who had purchased his title) that the feckless Allies would not intervene if ...

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Hitler: A Life by Peter Longerich, translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe

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October 2019, no. 415
Philip Dwyer reviews 'Hitler: A Life' by Peter Longerich, translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe

It’s a disconcerting image. Piercing blue eyes stare out at you from the cover of the book. It renders Adolf Hitler somehow human, which is the intent of the author, Peter Longerich, and which sets this biography apart from the many others that have preceded it. Two other notable biographers, Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest, refused to engage with Hitler’s personal ...

The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A rodent history of Australia by Tim Bonyhady

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October 2019, no. 415
Libby Robin reviews 'The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A rodent history of Australia' by Tim Bonyhady

The enchanting of rats has a long history. The Pied Piper, who enchanted first the rats then the children of Hamelin, is familiar to European readers. Here, Tim Bonyhady brings us a new story of rat enchantment by the Diyari and the Yandruwandha people in the eastern Lake Eyre basin. According to explorer Edwin Welch, they sang ‘in low, weird and dirge-like tones ...

Project RAINFALL: The Secret History of Pine Gap by Tom Gilling

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October 2019, no. 415
Alison Broinowski reviews 'Project RAINFALL: The Secret History of Pine Gap' by Tom Gilling

Since the 1960s, US military bases have continuously occupied Australian territory, with the permission of successive governments. Of the original sites, the missile-launch tracker Nurrungar is closed and North West Cape no longer communicates with US nuclear submarines, but it has since gained space surveillance and military signals intelligence functions. Pine Gap ...

How To Hide An Empire: A short history of the greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr

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January–February 2020, no. 418
Andrew Broertjes reviews 'How To Hide An Empire: A short history of the greater United States' by Daniel Immerwahr

On 7 December 1941, Japan bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. The following day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that it was a date that would ‘live in infamy’. Those who heard his radio broadcast knew that the United States would be drawn into the war that had engulfed Europe and the Middle East ...

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