Kirjahaku

Since 1962 the Australian Dictionary of Biography has been prepared by its staff in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. It provides concise, informative and fascinating descriptions of prominent men and women of this country who contributed their vision and energies to a growing nation.Each entry is prepared by a leading scholar. The subjects come from all walks of life—from premiers, generals and bishops, through artists, actors and authors, farmers, engineers and schoolteachers, to prostitutes, thieves and murderers—providing a cross-section of Australian society.This magnificent cumulative work continues to be a valuable and popular reference tool for all libraries, large and small.

A major Australian university and a great Victorian freeway are named after Sir John Monash, but many people - especially younger generations - know little about him. The son of Jewish immigrants from Prussia, Monash graduated from the University of Melbourne in three faculties - Arts, Law and Engineering. He was a man of wide-ranging intellect, and especially devoted to literature, music, theatre, languages and Jewish scholarship. He achieved fame as a soldier - a citizen-soldier - in World War I. Before the war, Monash pioneered the Australian use of reinforced concrete, then a revolutionary construction material. On his return, he became the first chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, putting his gift for leadership to harnessing Gippsland's huge brown coal deposits. Monash spent his energies lavishly on the public affairs of his native Australia and placed his immense prestige at the service of many great causes.

In the early 1970s, Geoffrey Serle presented a series of groundbreaking lectures on Australian cultural history. These lectures became the book From Deserts the Prophets Come, first published in 1973. Serle relates in his preface to the original edition, "I was aiming to cut a new path for teaching and research in Australian history, to bring cultural history into the general discourse of Australian historians, and to bridge the gap between general history and the major works in literary, art, musical, and architectural history which have appeared in recent years." Serle's articulation of the particular relations between the arts, politics, economics, and society within Australia, and what he called his "rudimentary attempt at a theory of cultural growth," remain important. *** The first edition of From Deserts the Prophets Come was the winner of the 1974 National Book Council Award for Australian Literature. (Series: Monash Classics) Subject: History, Australian Studies, Cultural Studies]