AustLit

'It was one of the most notorious episodes in the annals of Australian publishing. In September 1993, writing in Quadrant, Peter Ryan, the former director of Melbourne University Press (1962–87), publicly disowned Manning Clark’s six-volume A History of Australia. Clark had been dead for barely sixteen months. For scandalous copy and gossip-laden controversy, there was nothing to equal it, particularly when Ryan’s bombshell was dropped into a culture that was already polarised after more than a decade of the History Wars.'  (Introduction)

'The Australian Historical Studies guideline that critiques should be conducted ‘in the spirit of generosity and engagement, and of furthering an academic conversation’ is particularly apposite when reviewing this book about one of the most bitter historical controversies in recent years. Doug Munro offers a restrained and reflective account of Peter Ryan’s surprising, tasteless and relentless posthumous attack on the person and writings of Manning Clark.' (Publication summary)

'For mostly practical reasons of time and distance, Doug Munro has relied on documentary sources and email correspondence to analyse the perplexing story of Manning Clark’s publisher defaming his prize author three years after his death. Oral history would have helped fill in some of the gaps in the account, but the book manages to explain in sufficient detail the contours of the episode, and to place it in the larger story of Australia’s History Wars. Key figures in the new Albanese Ministry promise an end to these History Wars, but, for reasons that are implicit in Munro’s account, the struggles to define Australian history and how it has been ‘manufactured’ are likely to continue unabated.' (Introduction)