"In Volume II of The Story of Australia's People, Geoffrey Blainey continues his account of the history of this country from the early Gold Rush to the present day, completing the story of our nation and its people. When Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land, traditional life for Australia's first inhabitants changed forever. For the new arrivals, Australia was a land that rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated. From the Gold Rush to Land Rights and the Digital Age, Blainey brings to life the key events of more recent times that have shaped us into the nation and people we are today. Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People Volume II is the second instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the lifework of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian. a "

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.