AustLit

'Just over a decade ago, Ross McMullin published Farewell, Dear People (2012), a magisterial biography of ten remarkable Australians killed in World War I. The book met with much acclaim, including the award of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2013. Life So Full of Promise, a sequel to this volume, provides three more biographies of men whose early lives suggested that they would have made extraordinary contributions to Australian public life, had they survived the war.'(Introduction)

'This is a book with an axe to grind. Specifically, the author is very aggrieved at the way in which Melbourne’s colonial sex work and sex workers are represented in what she calls ‘tabloid histories’, especially historical tours and websites relating to Little Lonsdale Street’s brothels. She characterises this tabloid history as history that ‘prefers titillation to truth, and values sales above respect for its subjects, breathing sensationalism and the colourful language of denigration’ (2). Curiously, though, she provides few specific examples of the target of her annoyance – in the case of offending websites she states that she ‘refuses to dignify any of these efforts with references’ (279). As a result, the argument has a very ‘straw man’ feel. This reader was irritated by the approach, and the frequent chastising meted out to ‘historians’ (without the earlier qualification of ‘tabloid’) throughout the book, again with few specific examples. Although Minchinton’s published work in refereed journals indicates that she is aware of the broader academic historiography of sex work in Australia as a subject that has attracted solid research and subtle analysis, very little of this historical scholarship is referred to, leaving the reader with the impression that she is the only writer with valid historical skills. And her claims to focus on the ‘facts’ rather than the sensational are belied by the very cover of the book, which features a raunchy photo of a sex worker in Vienna, not Melbourne or even Australia.'(Introduction)

Kenneth Stanley Inglis died of pancreatic cancer on 1 December 2017. He continued to write until a few days before his death, imparting careful instructions to Jay Winter and Seamus Spark, on their collective two-volume biography of the 'Dunera Boys'. It says much about Ken Inglis that his last work was a collaborative endeavour, and a project that profiled the talent of both established and early career scholars. As Frank Bongiorno, one of many grateful students, has noted, the measure of Inglis' scholarship is not just the distinctive contribution he made to our discipline, but the opportunities he created all his life for others.'  (Introduction)

'The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen an increasing trend in the field of Australian Studies for scholars to situate their research within a broader international context and conversation. In some cases, this involves exploring how concepts developed in other national contexts can be employed to illuminate aspects of the Australian experience; in others, the focus is on the transnational movement of people and ideas between Australia and the rest of the world. This collection of essays represents a selection of this recent scholarship, particularly in relation to conversations between scholars in Australia and India, and was initiated under the auspices of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (Eastern Region). The essays are drawn from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives – history, literature, film, education, sociology and politics, cultural studies and environmental studies.

'The papers collected in the volume are selections from the conference proceedings of an international conference on “Re-mapping the Future: History, Culture and Environment in Australia and India”. This volume particularly explores various intersections of history, culture and environment in the discourse of cross-cultural linkages between Australia and India. It builds on the commonality of cultural networks, the intercolonial history of encounter and exchange, and the Indian diasporic presence in Australia, and looks forward to a future in terms of a developing bilateral relationship between Australia and India.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.