AustLit

'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)

Nat Bonacci was a valued contributor to the Melbourne University school of engineering, an enthusiast to the Catholic cause in education and healthcare, and a cherished member of the Italian-Australian community. This is his story, and a vision for how engineers might contribute to a new Australia. Nat Bonacci's life holds many secrets for how his adopted country might prosper in the uncertain times ahead. [Trove]

'When John F. Kelly was called to his vocation as a priest in 1928, Australia was still staunchly British and Catholics were a minority, confined to the margins of professional and business life, and shackled by their Irish past. This remarkable Australian priest foresaw the day that the Australian Church would no longer be Irish, when Catholic teachings on social justice would be widely debated, and when Catholic women would demand equality.

'An impressive scholar, John F. Kelly was always in the vanguard of new ideas. As a leader in education, theology and history, he left a mark in many fields. He wrote the first Australian Catechism in 1962, the handbook by which the postwar generation were to live the Catholic life. He was a standard bearer for Vatican II, and taught hundreds of young couples about the Catholic approach to marriage in his famous pre-Cana weekends. As director of the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne, he helped transform the crowded parochial system into a well-managed network of schools.

'This biography of Monsignor John F. Kelly mirrors the trajectory of Catholic thought through the twentieth century. It is a reminder that earlier generations of Catholics also found themselves in opposition to church hierarchy, while remaining obedient to the core Catholic teachings.' (Publisher's blurb)