About this title: This nationwide bestselling account of the founding of Australia is "a brilliant and enduring achievement . . . history of the highest order combining thorough research with vivid narrative and thoughtful assessment".--Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Two 16-page black-and-white photo inserts.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Pan Books Ltd
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Fair. Paperback, a good reading copy. Cover image is a stock image and may vary. Your book will be securely packed and promptly dispatched from our UK warehouse. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Good. This book is in GOOD overall condition. It shows signs of having been read and has general light wear to the cover, spine and pages. read more
Description: Good. Ships from the UK. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Description: Acceptable. Ships from the UK. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Good. Our aim is to create value for our customers through the provision of low cost, affordable products and an overall satisfying buying experience. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Good. Book cover-The cover of this book is creased or has markings in accordance with the book's age. Page colour-Slightly discoloured in accordance with book age. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Edition: 1st Vintage Book Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780394753669ISBN:0394753666
Description: Fair+ 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall 0-394-75366-6 Softcover The idea for this book occured to me in 1974, when I was working on a series of television documentatires about Australian art. On location in Port Arthur, among the ruins of the great penitentiary and its out-buildings, I realized that like nearly all other Australians I knew little about the convict past of my own country. The desire to forget about our felon origins began with the origins themselves. To call a convict a convict in early ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780099448549ISBN:0099448548
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Description: Good. No Jacket. Size: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall; Good reader, some creases. 688 pages Post Typically 1-2 days UK, 2-7 days Worldwide. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: PAN BOOKS
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Published by Pan Books in 1988. Paperback. Number of pages: 720. Condition: Good. Used book but in Good Condition for sensible price. With Index. Illustrated. With photographs. Corners bumped. Spine creased. Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780394753669ISBN:0394753666
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 752 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780394506685ISBN:0394506685
Description: Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Interesting history of the British shipment of prisioners to Australia from 1788 to 1900. 688 pages, maps, illustrations. a great read. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: PAN BOOKS
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780330298926ISBN:0330298925
Description: Published by Pan Books in 1988. Paperback. Number of pages: 720. Condition: Good. Used book but in Good Condition for sensible price. Shipped from UK. Delivery is usually 2-3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail. read more
"I read this along with books by Alan Moorehead in order to better understand the peoples and history of the SW Pacific region which my father had served in during WWII.
This particular book is very well written and serves as a painless introduction to the history of modern Australia."
"Robert Hughes's masterful and definitive history of the European settlement of Austalia. The continet became Britain's largest prison labor destination and its unique contemporary culture springs largely from national myths that turn embarrased eyes from the most degrading and revolting phases of the early national experience.
For example, the treatment of the Australian prisoners, and their response to the ghastly treatment they received, is a central theme of Austrialian political life. Freed prisoners, or "Ticket of Leave Men (or Women)" were never referred to as freed prisoners or ex-offenders because of a national aversion to admitting that those individuals had committed crimes in Blighty. The Antipodiean society adjusted itself quicly to a division between prisoners, trusties and non-prisoners.
One of the more amusing Australian national myths is that the women who arrived in Austrialia in convict ships had been convicted, for the most part, of crimes related to the oldest profession (actually, second-oldest after flint-knapping, if the archeologists are to be believed). This national myth that the land was originally populated by a cheerful band of big-hearted ex-harlots is just so much balderdash and wishful thinking. Prostitution was never a transportable offense under British law.
The book does accurately depict the astounding cruelties of the Australian prisons-within-prisons, which in their efforts to create a subculture that would be even more dehumanizing, painful, devoid of amusement and riddled with arbitrary and savage physical tortures, some resulting in deformation and death, exceeded in their cruelties the first-hand records of American chattel slavery.
Robert Hughes does miss one wrinkle of the British experience with transportation, i.e., that the current stae of Georgia was also used as a destination for England's human effluvia. That fact explains a lot about Georgia today.
Hughes' book does accuratel depict the role of the successive waves of Fenian insurrectionists in the progressive peopling of Australia. The antipodeon version of the Irish race appears to have retained all of the affinitiy for alcohol abuse and Papist idolatry of itis native and North American variants, without the offsetting advantages of devotion to education and aspirations to rise from the status of obdurate, ill-tempered malcontents focused alternately on their goals of inebriation;, fanatical devotion to an overseas religious autocracy of comp;ulsive pederasts with an array of other flagrantly degenerate habits; and an obsession with procreation which in its unremitting and undescriminating frenzy has spawned countless millions of bawling, incorrigible Celtic demon-brats worldwide,"
"I decided to add this book to my list because I've recommended it so many times to friends visiting OZ. I know it is not liked by some Aussies because of the dark portrayal of the 'convict stain'.
But it helps me put so much of Australian culture in a historic context on my travels. It also aroused my curiosity about Tasmania to the point that I have now been there twice."
"History like it is supposed to be written. Another example of real life written well making all fiction seem, well, trite. Don't get me wrong; I like a good novel as much as the next person, but the stories can never measure up to what history has to offer, and when written by someone like Mr. Hughes (or Mr. Schama or Mr. Foote or Ms. Tuchman or Mr. DeVoto or Mr. Parkman, to name a few) you're at an altitude where fiction can never go. After reading this book - a history of the settling of Australia, by the way - I will never again look at Australians as fun loving and benign or those animals as cute and cuddly."
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