UWA Institute of Advanced Studies, City of Perth Library and Boffins Books are pleased to present Mark McKenna, author of the latest Quarterly Essay # 69 on Moment of Truth: History and Australia's Future.
Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with the past. Indigenous recognition and a new push for a republic await action. Judging by the Captain Cook statue controversy, though, our debates about the past have never been more fruitless.
Is there a way beyond the history wars that began under John Howard? And in an age of free-floating fears about the global, digital future, is history any longer relevant, let alone equal to the task of grounding the nation? In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the frontier, the Anzac legacy and deep time. He drags some fascinating new scholarship into the light, and pushes the debate about history beyond the familiar polarities.
Copies of Quarterly Essay will be available for sale on the night.
Can't make it? We'll happily have a copy of Mark McKenna's Quarterly Essay 69 signed for you. Simply contact us via phone, email, online or visit us in-store, and we'll take care of the rest.
Quarterly Essay is an agenda-setting Australian journal of politics and culture. Each issue contains a single essay written at a length of about 25,000 words, followed by correspondence on previous essays.
Established in 2001, Quarterly Essay aims to present the widest range of political, intellectual and cultural opinion and to foster debate. It offers a forum for original long-form investigations, profiles and arguments.
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Mark McKenna is one of Australia's leading historians. A research fellow in History at the University of Sydney, he is the author of several prize-winning books, including Looking for Blackfellas' Point: an Australian History of Place, which won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and Book of the Year in the 2003 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Seven years in the making, his biography of Manning Clark, An Eye for Eternity, won the Non-Fiction Prime Minister's Literary Award and the National Biography Award; his book From The Edge: Australia's Lost Histories won the NSW Premier's Australian History Prize. His essays and articles have been widely published in Australia and overseas.
