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John Curtin: A Life
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John Curtin: A Life
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John Curtin: A Life
Ebook932 pages11 hours

John Curtin: A Life

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David Day's biography John Curtin: A Life will be the first to critically reassess Australia's best remembered leader and examine his importance as the first prime minister to encourage a sense of Australian nationalism. John Curtin was the Labor Prime Minister from 1941 to 1945. It was during these turbulent times that Curtin decided to look no longer to Britain for assistance but to turn instead to America. He was the leader who welcomed Douglas MacArthur to Australia but who later tried to close the Pandora's box that he had opened. He was the leader who stood up to Churchill over returning Australian troops to Australia but who later allowed some to be detained in Ceylon and who, towards the end of the war, embraced Australia's membership of the Empire through all the twists and turns of his life, the many tragedies and conflicts, the dark days and the long anxious nights, Curtin's story remains one of the most inspiring Australian stories of the century. It is the story of a man who selflessly devoted his life to the service of his fellow Australians and who died while victory against Japan was in sight. John Curtin: A Life is a story in the tradition of Albert Facey and Weary Dunlop. It is the story of an ordinary person who finds himself confronted with extraordinary circumstances and ultimately triumphs. David Day's exploration into Curtin's past has uncovered not only the political persona but also the man. He looks at the demons and weaknesses that drove and shaped the man, and through him, shaped modern Australia. John Curtin: A Life is the most serious and substantial biography of John Curtin, looking closely for the first time at his childhood in order to explain his later life. All told, it is the story of an Australian hero that is both inspiring and finally, very moving. 'this is indeed a superbly researched biography' - Kim Beazley, speech to National Press Club 'A fine biography of a complex, flawed, self-sacrificing but ultimately triumphant personality - one of the great figures of Australian history' - Weekend Australian
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 1, 2015
ISBN9781460706152
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John Curtin: A Life
Author

David A Day

DAVID A. DAY has written more than twenty books to great acclaim, both here and overseas. Apart from six political biographies, including prize-winning biographies of John Curtin and Ben Chifley, he has written several books about the Second World War and others on Antarctica. His landmark history of Australia, Claiming a Continent, won the South Australian Festival Prize for Non-Fiction, while his book, Conquest: How societies overwhelm others, has been translated into several languages. A graduate of Melbourne and Cambridge universities, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, he has been a research fellow at Clare College in Cambridge, a visiting fellow at Churchill College in Cambridge, a professor of history at University College Dublin, a visiting professor for two years at the University of Tokyo, and a visiting fellow at Aberdeen University in Scotland. He has served as the official historian of the Australian Customs Service and the Bureau of Meteorology and been an Australian Research Council senior research fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne, where he is currently based.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Informative and easy to read, even for those not really familiar with Australian political history. Highly-recommended.