The Australians Author:Ross Terrill The vast island continent of Australia, once little more than a remote British backwater, is today a dynamic and influential nation with a personality all its own. The Australians is a panoramic picture of this fascinating land and its colorful people, a wonderfully readable book crowded with rich and riveting details of every aspect of Australi... more »a's past, its present, and its prospects for the future. Ross Terrill, the widely acclaimed author and one of the world's leading authorities on China (800,000,000: The Real China and many other books), writes of Australia, his native land, with both intimate understanding and objective candor. An engaging storyteller, he begins his narrative with memories of his own childhood in the outback, selling rabbit skins for pocket money and catching caramels tossed by friendly American GIs during World War II. He then traces the history of "The Land Down Under," from its origins in the late 1700s as a brutal penal colony, through its placid years as an outpost of empire, to its emergence as a prosperous commonwealth, a corner of the western world tucked into the far east.
But Terrill's primary focus is on an adventurous journey of discovery. To learn how Australians really live.« less