An accomplishment of both great sweep and impressive detail, Geoffrey Blainey's ambitious account of this country, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia, takes us from the gold rush to the present day. It marks the culmination of a lifelong study by one of Australia's most significant historians. Book jacket.

Geoffrey Blainey is one of Australia's most significant and popular historians. He has written some 36 full-length books including The Tyranny of Distance, Triumph of the Nomads, Black Kettle and Full Moon, A Short History of the 20th Century, Sea of Dangers, A Short History of Christianity and the best-selling A Short History of the World. Professor Blainey held chairs in economic history and then in plain history at the University of Melbourne for 21 years. He was a delegate to the 1998 Constitutional Convention and also chaired various Commonwealth government bodies, including the Australia Council, the Literature Board, the Australia-China Council, and the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. He is one of the few Australians whose biography appears in Encyclopaedia Britannica.