Kirjahaku

Manning Clark intimately reconstructs Lawson's agonising, and ultimately unsuccessful search for fulfilment of genius and happiness. Henry Lawson was a deeply divided man. He was a soul burdened with an insatiable craving for love, a combative spirit with impossible hopes that mankind might sort itself our. Yet, he openly loathed huge sections of humanity and sang the blessings of war. Manning Clark intimately reconstructs Lawson's agonising, and ultimately unsuccessful search for fulfilment of genius and happiness. The great irony is that Lawson's poetry inspired the feeling that life was worth living.

Brings together forty-two selected speeches and lectures by Professor Manning Clark. They range over fifty years from ""What of Germany"", delivered in 1940, to the last, delivered in 1991 just before his death at the launch of Barry Humphries' book ""The Life and Death of Sandy Stone"" and reveal recurring themes in his thinking.

Covers Federation, the Boer War and World War I's Gallipoli. The book finishes with the story of an emerging Australian identity at the point of its greatest trial - the outbreak of World War II.