With a B.A. majoring in History, one might expect the non-fiction section of the site to be rather heavy on historical tomes. Then again, having been away from the academic side of things for a good thirty years there’s an inevitable backlog of content I’d need to be reading to catch up.
My first year History subject, The Contemporary World 1890-1960 has some relevance to Interesting Times, as do some aspects of the second year South-East Asian History and while I found Problems in Australian History interesting and thought-provoking, the recent History Wars means I’m not particularly interested in wading through highly partisan historiography, thank you very much.
Those subject areas took me through to the end of Teachers’ College, and an excursion into the origins and outcomes of the American Civil War kept me busy through my first year in the workforce, shaped my attitude to various aspects of American society and showed me that pursuing any of those matters in detail could end up being a full time occupation.
I was back at James Cook finishing off my degree in 1974, studying Race Relations with Henry Reynolds and the emergence of Indonesian nationalism with Bob Hering, and while I’d anticipated finishing off an honours degree with a thesis on frontier conflict around Cooktown and a course work fourth year subject various factors put the kibosh on the course work, and, consequently, the thesis failed to get completed wither.
Scanning over those subject areas it’s fairly obvious that even a half-hearted attempt to keep up with one of them would end up being time consuming and rather heavy on the hip pocket, particularly given the scarcity of titles on most of those areas on the shelves of general book stores in Townsville and Brisbane. As a result, the historical works referenced here are the result of chance encounters rather than definite searches designed to explore a particular theme at length.
When Interesting Times returns to the forefront, of course, things may change quite dramatically.
And on the shelves:
Stephen E. Ambrose Crazy Horse and Custer
Niall Ferguson Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World
Maya Jasanoff Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire
