Australians : Flappers to Vietnam / Thomas Keneally. Flappers to Vietnam

Collection type	Library
Author	Keneally, Thomas, 1935-, author.; Turner, Peter.;
Call Number	994.04 K33 v. 3
Document type	Monograph
Year	2014.
Pagination	xi, 624 pages, 48 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 26 cm.
Publisher	Allen & Unwin,
Note	Includes index. Previous edition: 2010. "Peter Turner wrote the updates and sidebars for this edition" -- Page 7. Includes bibliographical references (pages 569-600) and index. Australia emerged from WW1 into a decade of profound change, characterised by a revolution in behaviour amongst the young; by the first great age of consumerism; by the new and increasingly sophisticated impact of the movies; by secret right wing armies and the emergence of the Communist Party; and by two less remembered and very interesting PMs, the handsome, sombre Stanley Melbourne Bruce of the Melbourne Establishment, and Jim Scullin, unpretentious Labor man of humbler Irish parentage. As in the two p revious volumes of Australians Keneally brings history to vivid and pulsating life as he traces the lives and the deeds of Australians known and unknown. As another war grew closer he follows the famous and the infamous through the Great Crash and the ris e of Fascism, and explains how Australia was inexorably drawn into a war which led her forces into combat throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific. At home an atmosphere of fear grew with the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin, the Japanes e advance and then the American Alliance and the arrival of General MacArthur. Peace brought its own problems with the Depression that left one-third of Australians unemployed. Keneally believes too that the 1950s are misunderstood - depicted by some as a n age of full employment, by others as the age of suburban spread and boredom under the serene prime ministership of Robert Menzies. But Menzies was complicated and so were the 1950s. A majority of Australians believed there would be nuclear war before th e end of the decade. The Korean war was seen as prelude, and so our government agreed to British atom bomb tests in the South Australian desert and at the Montebello islands. The fall of the French in Vietnam was prelude to our engagement there and, along with the defection of the Sovie
Place made	Crows Nest, NSW :

Abstract

1. War's after shadows : from the secret armies to the Reds -- 2. The Great Crash and Fascism's rise : happy valleys and flirtations with extremes -- 3. Aggression everywhere : appeasement and war -- 4. In classic lands : success and tragedy in the shadow of the ancient -- 5. Japan ascendant : the unstoppable force -- 6. The prophet and the heroes, the politicians and the prisoners : MacArthur, Curtin; war and the people -- 7. In the balance : military success, political dreams -- 8. Peace and its discont ents : the people want; the people fear -- 9.Welcome to the 1950s : decade of employment and dread -- 10. The atomic years : dread defines Australia's nuclear enthusiam -- 11. A million immigrants and the advance towards Vietnam : new people, new ally.