The History Wars

Description

The publication of The History Wars sparked months of intense debate last year about the way historians, politicians and others choose to interpret the Australian story. Now the book is reissued with a new afterword by Stuart Macintyre which considers the critical and public response to the book, and the impact of its publication. History is under fire. We have seen our past become the subject of newspaper head lines, the stuff of heated arguments among journalists, historians, politicians, and campus radicals. The History Wars have split academic departments, dominated the opinion pages of the nation's broad sheets, and fuelled a national exercise in self-criticism. Arguments have broken out between the Left and Right, Black and White Australians, and Labor and Liberal politicians over our ideas about Australia's past. In an unashamedly engaged account, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark explain how history has polarised the nation.

Stuart Macintyre is Ernest Scott Professor of History, Dean of Arts and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include A Colonial Liberalism; A History for a Nation (MUP); The Oxford History of Australia, vol. 4; and The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality. Anna Clark is a doctoral student at the University of Melbourne engaged on a study of school history.