Christmas 2011: John Dawson

I’ve been reading some history. 

Risdon Cove by John Owen dismantles the massacre myth. 

Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication Volume III dismantles the stolen generations myth too thoroughly – the usual suspects have gone to ground. 

Aboriginal Self-determination: the whiteman’s dream by Gary Johns exposes tragic folly with devastatingly factual analysis. 

A Shorter History of Australia (2009 edition) by Geoffrey Blainey paints pictures of the life and times of Australians whose ancestors walked here from New Guinea or sailed from England or flew from wherever, and plaits them into our lucky plot. How he achieves this in 300 pages is a mystery. A clue is deft selection of people, statistics and events, pivotal or peripheral, “on which clothes can be hung, thus depicting part of an era”. 

This Blainey magic serves The Short History of Christianity well too. Reviewer Peter Craven says that if Christianity makes you scream you won’t like this book. It does, but I did.