A Land Half Won

by Geoffrey Blainey

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0725104112
• ISBN13: 9780725104115
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Sun Books
• Length: 388 Pages
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.9" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Good Geoffrey Blainey

This is far less turgid than 'The Tyranny of Distance' mostly because it is less ambitious, I suppose. 'Tyranny' reads like a very long thesis. If you struggled through 'Tyranny' don't give up on Geoffrey Blainey, try this one. He is our best historian, doesn't have an axe to grind and writes really well. 'A Land Half Won' has lots of funny and unsettling stories about white men's first contact with aborigines and treats both not as cardboard cut-outs, me good, you bad stuff. An example is one story of first contact where the aborigines finally got up the courage to ask if the bullocks travelling with the Europeans were their women and another story about one older aboriginal bursting into tears when she first saw European settlers, thinking they must be the ghosts of dead relatives. It covers Australia up to about 1900. For the story of how the English made Australia into a successful, orderly and peaceful place in a very short time.