Adv-LVL: Living History Day G5 Trphies Book

Manning 'The Mystic' Clark condenses 200 years of Australian History into a series of edifying myths about the colonies and the political confrontations since federation. Propelled by Clark's Dostoevskyian impulse to mythologise Australia's political greats by artfully imagining their inner turmoil, 'A Short History's inclination toward the cosmic cannot slough off the trappings of 20th century scholarship. It is a professedly political history that ignores radical politics. Women are completely absent, migrant stories are mentioned as a statistic but never investigated, and the cause of Indigenous Australians is treated with exceptional cruelty. Clark reduces these issues to the structure of Australia's society of 'ruthless men', rather than a problem his scholarship acknowledges but never attempts to overcome.