The Story of Australia's People [Vol 1]: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia by Geoffrey Blainey

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges, with all corners now protected by book tape.

Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia is the first instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the life's work of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian.

The vast continent of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin. The first came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century.

Each had to come to terms with the land they found and make sense of the other. The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life, while agriculture revolutionised other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and resources.

Traditional Aboriginal life was threatened when Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. That land rewarded, tricked, tantalised, and often defeated the latest arrivals.

The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult and complex meetings in recorded history. In this book, Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns first to the subject of his celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980), retelling our history up to 1850 in light of the latest research.

He has changed his view about vital aspects of the Indigenous and early British history of this land and has examined other aspects for the first time.