The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding by Robert Hughes Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
Book Review: Incredibly compelling. With extra flogging.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an extremely interesting book of historical non-fiction, and it's very well researched and written. I learned an enormous amount about early Australian history. It has two major recurring motifs: flogging, and starvation. If you don't like flogging or starvation, this book is not for you. Even the chapters that aren't about flogging and starvation have some flogging and starvation thrown in just for laughs. I learned almost as much about flogging and starvation as I did about Australian history, which is saying a lot. I am now eager to go on to read more about the non-flogging era of Australian history. Buy this book, it's great!Book Review: History Well Told
Summary: 4 Stars
Hughes' account of Australia's early history is solidly researched, informative, and entertaining (albeit shocking, and disheartening). Hughes is to be commended for eschewing the prevailing revisionism in Australian historiography and taking his subject head on. Were I able to, I would give Fatal Shore 4.5 stars. My only criticism is that Hughes' thematic approach is at times a bit repetitive and yields a somewhat confusing chronological picture. Overall, however, Fatal Shore is a terrific piece of social, political, and institutional history. An important read. Book Review: Excellent Writing, Highly Recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
On the book jacket, a reviewer said that it was one of the best non-fiction books he had ever read, and I would have to agree. The convict past of Australia is not a topic that has much written about it, and Hughes' book will become the benchmark for all to come. Hughes has made the past come alive. The characters are larger than life: the man flogged 2000 times, the prison warden who walked among his prisoners and insulted them, etc. The best part of the history for me was Hughes' continual use of primary source material, such as songs of the time period and journals of the convicts. These items, along with the great writing made it very hard to put down. Highly recommended for those interested in traveling to Australia, or those wanting to know more of its historyBook Review: A Worthy Entry in the Annals of Crime and Punishment
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book in anticipation of a trip to Australia, and indeed it was an excellent backdrop to travel there. But it proved to be much more: a deep insight into the genesis and nature of institutional evil, with its low-key, meticulous depiction of the brutality and sadism visited upon Australia's transportee convicts. Anyone who contemplates the Holocaust or any other of humankind's planned atrocities must wonder at the essential question of how basically sane people end up doing such horrendous things, with state sanction. Hughes' book illustrates how overly rigid, rationalistic bureaucracies, implementing theoretical constructs about human behavior without having to face the immediate consequences, tend toward sadism and self-justifying cruelties. His book is of great value not only to students of Australia, or of history, but to anyone in the criminal justice field, law enforcement, or penology.
Oh, and the book also is extremely sound, well researched and documented, and well written. This is not a quick read, but it is a rewarding one.
Book Review: Silver and Currency
Summary: 5 Stars
*The Fatal Shore* was originally recomended when I entered the criminal justice field, and is one of the few books I've ever read in one sitting. Once I had started it was impossible to put down. It is fascinating not only as an account of the founding of a nation, but as a history of prisons and prison reform, and also represents powerful argument against the notion of a "criminal class." It also highlights the differences between the three primary "settler societies:" Canada, the US, and Australia, as settled respectively by upper, middle, and working class British emigrants. It also places in context the current "nativist" struggles over the influx of the Asian diaspora. For a more traditional, but no less interesting, discussion of English settler societies see S.M. Lipset's *Continental Divide* or *The First New Nation*.