Cirrus@Austlit

'How do historians make sense of the past? How do they make sense of Australia in particular, and the human condition more broadly? These are the central questions posed by Canberra historian Tom Griffiths in his latest book, The Art of Time Travel. Griffiths steps back from his own work as an environmental historian to ask how thirteen other practitioners of his craft have approached the task and what answers they’ve reached. They’re not all historians. One is a writer of historical novels, another is a poet, two are archaeologists and one is a farmer. But their work all dates from the 1930s onwards.' (Introduction)

'Shackled presents the first dedicated study of the 144 women transported to the Moreton Bay penal colony between 1826 and 1839. Like the male convicts sentenced to the isolated northern outpost, these women were mainly recidivists who had committed additional crimes subsequent to their transportation to New South Wales; a handful were colonial-born girls sentenced for local crimes. The marginality of these women in existing scholarship can be explained by the small proportion they comprised of transported women overall. Harrison suggests they have also lacked attention in Queensland histories due to the transitory nature of their presence, with only one of the women ultimately remaining at Moreton Bay rather than returning south.' (Introduction)

'Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of German novelist, and travel writer, Friedrich Gerstäcker’s birth, the account of his journey through Australia in 1851 has been made available in English, for the first time (originally published in German in 1854) — translated by a team of seven, edited by Peter Monteath, and published by Wakefield Press.' (Introduction)

'Ernest (“Ernie”) Lane has to some extent been overshadowed in historical memory by his brother William, the labour leader, writer, founder of a utopian colony in Paraguay, and fervent advocate of the White Australia policy. In this thoroughly researched biography of the life-long socialist activist Ernie, Brisbane-based labour historian Jeff Rickertt redresses the balance. The result is a book that would make a fine addition to any shelf of labour movement biographies.' (Introduction)

'This highly readable book deals definitively with an important yet neglected topic in post-war British-Australian relations. In part this neglect was due to the secrecy surrounding nuclear testing in post-war Australia, but also to the complexity of the events, comprising multiple series of tests (1952 -1963), undertaken across multiple locations by government agencies and actors.' (Introduction)

'Jean Martin is acknowledged as a pioneer of the study of sociology in Australia, yet her legacy is often more apparent in the work of colleagues and students for whom she was a formative influence rather than in her published research. This book, produced by three leading sociologists whose careers she helped foster, is an attempt to remedy that gap, drawing on her extensive archive of unpublished as well as published research, and interviews with many of her associates, to reconstruct her intellectual journey as part of the wider story of the development of the discipline.' (Introduction)