Defending Country welcomes Mark McKenna as a distinguished Supporter

Defending Country is pleased to welcome Emeritus Professor Mark McKenna of the University of Sydney to our list of distinguished Supporters.

Professor McKenna's books include Return to Uluru, From the Edge, Project Republic, and An Eye for Eternity: the Life of Manning Clark.

Professor McKenna's next book, The Shortest History of Australia, is due out in early November. His publisher, Black Inc., says:

In The Shortest History of Australia, Mark McKenna offers a compelling new version of our national story. This is a modern Australia permeated by First Nations history; a multicultural society with an island mindset; a continent of epic beauty and extreme natural events; a country obsessed by war abroad but blind to its founding war at home; and a thriving nation-state still to realise its political independence.

‍This new book will appear in the same week as The Australian Wars, which Defending Country noted last month.

For the first time [said publisher Allen & Unwin], The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into connection with its reverberations in the present'. It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years.

It is fitting that these two important books are coming out at the same time. Defending Country welcomes both of them.

David Stephens

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Picture credit: detail of book cover, The Shortest History of Australia (out in November).