John Curtin's War: Volume 1: The Coming of War in the Pacific and Reinventing Australia by John Edwards

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Dust jacke has creasing at edges and some scratches. Interior and binding are still very good.

John Curtin became Australia's Prime Minister eight weeks before Japan launched war in the Pacific.

Drawing on extensive new material, John Edwards' vivid, landmark biography places Curtin as a man of his times, grappling with the immense challenges in Australia and its region unleashed by the mighty shock of the Pacific War.

It shows Curtin not as a hero and certainly not as a villain but as the pivotal figure making his uncertain way between what Australia was and what it would become. It locates the turning point in Australian history not at Gallipoli, the Western Front, or even Federation, but in the Pacific War and in Curtin's Prime Ministership.

This two-volume work is a major contribution to Australian biography and to understanding our history. In this first part, Edwards takes Curtin's story from the late 19th-century socialist ferment in Melbourne through to his appointment as prime minister and a Japanese onslaught so complete and successful that within a few months of launching, its military leaders in Tokyo debated between the options of invading Australia or sealing it off from Allied help.