Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War

Description

In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon, clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction. Never before-or since-has the alliance sunk to such depths. Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, this book portrays the bitter clash between these two leaders and their competing visions of the world. As the Nixon White House went increasingly on the defensive in early 1973, reeling from the lethal drip of the Watergate revelations, the first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years looked to redefine ANZUS and Australia's global stance. It was a heady brew, and not one the Americans were used to. The result was a fractured alliance, and an American president enraged, seemingly hell bent on tearing apart the fabric of a treaty that had become the first principle of Australian foreign policy.

James Curran teaches history at Sydney University and is a Research Associate at the US Studies Centre. He is the author of Curtin's Empire, The Power of Speech- Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image-shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the NSW Premier's History Prize-and, with Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation- Australia After Empire, shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Australian History Prize. He is a Fulbright Scholar and in 2013 was the Chair of Australian History at University College Dublin.