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Book Cover
E-book
Author Rickard, John, 1935- author.

Title Australia : a cultural history / John Rickard
Edition Third edition
Published Clayton, Victoria : Monash University Publishing, [2017]
©2017

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 306 pages) : illustrations, maps, portraits
Series Australian History
Australian history
Contents Part 1. Sources -- Aboriginal Australians -- Immigrants -- Part 2. Interactions : 1788-1901 -- The environment -- Society -- Part 3. The culture: 1901-1939 -- Loyalties -- Political institutions -- Relationships and pursuits -- Part 4. The culture questioned: 1939-2016 -- Dependence 1939-1988 -- Diversity 1939-1988 -- Vision -- The view from the twenty-first century
Summary John Rickard's "Australia : a cultural history," first published in 1988, is still the only short history of Australia from a cultural perspective. It has also acquired a unique reputation as an introduction to the development of Australian society and was listed by the historian and public intellectual John Hirst in his "First XI: the best of Australian history books." Although arranged chronologically, this book is not a chronicle, still less a laborious detailing of governors and governments: rather, it focuses on the transmission of values, beliefs and customs among the diverse mix of peoples who are today's Australians. The story begins with the sixty thousand years of the Aboriginal presence and their continuing material and spiritual relationship with the land, and takes the reader through the turbulent years of British colonisation and the emergence, through prosperity, war and depression, of the cultural accommodations which have been distinctively Australian. This Third Edition concludes with a critical review of the challenges facing contemporary Australia and warns that "we may get the future we deserve." [Some images unavailable for OA]
Analysis Australian culture
Australian history
Australian society
Contemporary Australia
History
Indigenous Australians
Notes Originally published 1988
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-293) and index
Notes English
Print version record
In OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) OAPEN
Subject History.
History
history (discipline)
Australasian and Pacific history.
History.
Humanities.
Regional and national history.
HISTORY -- Australia & New Zealand.
History
Civilization
Social conditions
SUBJECT Australia -- History. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85009591
Australia -- Civilization. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87002863
Australia -- Social conditions
Subject Australia
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781921867613
1921867612