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Fifty years after the event, here is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that — with the help of booksellers and readers around the country — forced the end of literary censorship in Australia. For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; a...
Winner of the 2020 Australian National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award. The oddly compelling story of a man regarded as Australia’s worst prime minister. William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked, figure in Australian politics in the second half of the twentieth century. This biography tells the story of his life, his career, and his doomed attempts to recast views of his much-maligned time as Australia’s prime minister. After a long ministerial career under Menzies, McMahon became treasurer under Harold Holt, and fought a fierce, bitter war over protectionism with John McEwen. Following Holt’s death in 1967, McEwen had his revenge...
Dr. Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1766) was, according to John Adams, a "transcendental genius . . . who threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of the country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardor till his death." He was also, J. Patrick Mullins contends, the most politically influential clergyman in eighteenth-century America and the intellectual progenitor of the American Revolution in New England. Father of Liberty is the first book to fully explore Mayhew's political thought and activism, understood within the context of his personal experiences and intellectual influences, and of the cultural developments and political events of his time. Analyzing and assessing ...
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is under an existential threat, especially from the conservative federal government, even though it is the best-trusted news organisation in Australia, and plays a vital role in Australian life. For years, the ABC's funding has been slashed, forcing it to let go journalists with decades of experience in asking hard questions about anyone and everyone, including government. It has been besieged by written complaints from ministers, hectoring by prime ministers, and intense pressure on its most senior executives. Its board has been stacked with a succession of political appointees. It has been relentlessly, often baselessly, attacked by the Murdoch media...
This edited collection brings together research that focuses on historic figures who have been largely neglected by history or forgotten over time. The question of how to recover, reclaim or retell the histories and stories of those obscured by the passage of time is one of growing public and scholarly interest. The volume includes chapters on a diverse array of topics, including semi-biographical fiction, digital and visual biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs, among others. Apart from the largely forgotten, the book provides fresh perspectives on historical figures whose biographies are distorted by their fame or limited by public perception. The subjects explored here include, among others, a child author, a Finnish grandmother, a cold war émigré, an Elizabethan era playwright, a castaway, a celebrated female artist, and the lauded personalities Mary Shelley, Judy Garland and J.R.R. Tolkien. Altogether, the chapters included in this collection offer a much-needed snapshot of new research on biography and its many variations and hybrids which will be of interest to academics and students of biography and life writing in general.
After an illuminating account of the history of Patrick and Henry counties, which occupies the first third of the book, the authors turn their attention to genealogy, providing authoritative histories of no fewer than 110 families. The genealogies generally begin with the first settler in either Patrick or Henry County and proceed to enumerate descendants in several generations, providing incidental detail according to the materials available. In addition to the remarkable collection of genealogies, the book also contains transcriptions of important genealogical source materials, such as the Patrick and Henry land grants and patents registered in the old Land Office in Richmond.
Over the past two decades, Australia has been experiencing a sustained period of accelerated socio-cultural change, accompanied by existential threats from natural disasters and the Covid pandemic, and punctuated by repeated cycles of political upheaval. The divisive and hyper-partisan version of party politics that has accompanied these events has hamstrung the nation' s capacity to respond to the challenges of the day &– from dealing with climate change, to advancing gender equity, or to renovating the buckling structures of social welfare. At the same time, we have seen the quality of our democracy compromised. In The Shrinking Nation, leading cultural historian Graeme Turner examines a wide range of social and cultural change, including the role played by a media environment swamped by misinformation, the social consequences of neoliberal economic policy, and the divisive legacy of the culture wars, before considering how we might strengthen the bonds of community and belonging that tie our nation together.
History of Patrick and Henry Counties, Virginia by Lewis G. Pedigo is a comprehensive account of the rich history and development of these two counties in the heart of Virginia. Drawing from a wide range of historical sources and records, Pedigo traces the counties' growth from their early settlement through the 20th century. This detailed chronicle provides valuable insights into the social, economic, and political forces that shaped Patrick and Henry Counties over the centuries, making it an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of this region.
The first book-length study of the Stamp Act in decades, this timely collection draws together essays from a broad range of disciplines to provide a thoroughly original investigation of the influence of 1760s British tax legislation on colonial culture, and vice versa. While earlier scholarship has largely focused on the political origins and legacy of the Stamp Act, this volume illuminates the social and cultural impact of a legislative crisis that would end in revolution. Importantly, these essays question the traditional nationalist narrative of Stamp Act scholarship, offering a variety of counter identities and perspectives. Community without Consent recovers the stories of individuals often ignored or overlooked in existing scholarship, including women, Native Americans, and enslaved African Americans, by drawing on sources unavailable to or unexamined by earlier researchers. This urgent and original collection will appeal to the broadest of interdisciplinary audiences.