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gbatts's review
3.0
I'm so glad this book exists, is being mass marketed and heavily promoted. It has an important contribution to make to our national identity as Australians and also to the broader realities of colonialisation by the English. When I was in school, we were still taught the lies that Australia was peacefully founded and that no wars have been fought on Australian soil. I would highly recommend this book to all Australians. It's genuinely shocking how the legacy of colonial politics still plays out in Australia today, from the corrupt influences of property developers and banks in Sydney state politics to the reactionary conservatism of Queenslanders.
That's not to say that I found this an enjoyable read. It was quite a slog. I found the first section of Jones to be unnecessarily long scene-setting and it could have been a separate book on Sydney politics. The rest of the book was more heavily centred on the Uhrs than was interesting to me - I would have liked them backgrounded more. And there was a lot of genocide. Like a lot a lot. It's quite distressing to read a catalogue of slaughters over hundreds of pages, of real people that happened not that long ago.
Overall, a well-researched book that is shockingly contemporary but one I skim read for fair chunks.
That's not to say that I found this an enjoyable read. It was quite a slog. I found the first section of Jones to be unnecessarily long scene-setting and it could have been a separate book on Sydney politics. The rest of the book was more heavily centred on the Uhrs than was interesting to me - I would have liked them backgrounded more. And there was a lot of genocide. Like a lot a lot. It's quite distressing to read a catalogue of slaughters over hundreds of pages, of real people that happened not that long ago.
Overall, a well-researched book that is shockingly contemporary but one I skim read for fair chunks.
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