Stuart Macintyre

The year 1913 was a fascinating and important time for Australians, although the events of the following year have tended to cast a retrospective shadow over it. In places as far apart as Antarctica, Papua and Great Britain, Australian ambitions were high; the new navy was a source of national pride; the arts flourished and the motor car and movies...

Communism was unlike any other political movement Australia has ever seen. At its peak in the 1940s, unions led by communists could call a strike that paralysed the nation, and communists influenced the highest level of government, commanding the unswerving loyalty of thousands. It showed working men and women they could have a better life and gave them the tools...

Winner of The Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award 1998 Shortlisted for Best Australian History Book in the NSW Premier's History Awards 1998 In 1920, 26 men and women met in a dingy hall in Sydney to create a new political party. They expected the overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity—here, and all around the world. Two...

In this landmark book, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, Stuart Macintyre explains how a country traumatised by World War I, hammered by the Depression, and overstretched by World War II became a prosperous, successful, and growing society by the 1950s. An extraordinary group of individuals, notably John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Nugget Coombs, John Dedman, and Robert Menzies, re-made the country, planning its...