The Way They Were

For many years, reading Alan Ramsey's vitriolic, vindictive but always entertaining and insightful pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald was a standard feature of Saturday mornings for many Australians. He may have disappeared from our Saturday papers, but he certainly hasn't been forgotten—by those who applauded his opinions, those who were enraged by them, and by the politicians he wrote about.

From mid-1987 to the end of 2008, no one had greater access to our national parliament and politicians than Alan Ramsey. From the granite quarry of national politics in Canberra, Ramsey wrote 2,273 columns for the Sydney Morning Herald. This collection of his best reveals how twenty-five years of national leadership by Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard changed Australia forever, as the Labor Party stopped being the Labor Party and became just another meaningless political label like the Liberal Party.

It also includes a new essay, reflecting on the tumultuous political events of 2010.