Australia’s identity and its place in the world. The book details the historical circumstances that led settlers to see their land as a British satellite that must look west for guidance and role models. Chapter Ten describes remnants of this outlook and contrasts it with the growing view of Australia as a vital country in its own right. The final chapters show why increasing numbers of Australians now see their country as part of the Asia Pacific region and want to participate in its affairs.

Chapter Five, Six and Eleven have considerable material about the indigenous people (or Aborigines).This includes issues such as the “Stolen Generations,” indigenous children once forcibly taken from their parents in an effort to make them discard their culture and live like Anglo-Australians. The book describes how indigenous people formed groups to campaign for the same rights as other Australians, at times in coalitions with sympathetic white groups. Their successes, and setbacks, are charted, including government policy shifts from protection to assimilation to self-determination—and back to assimilation recently under the current admimistration.

Australia as a Fair Go society. Chapter Three describes the historical role that workers played, through their labor unions and a political party geared to their needs, in promoting the egalititarian ethos that characterizes the country. The resultant development of innovative social services and a legal framework for mediating labor-managments disputes caused Australians workers in the early twentieth century to have a higher standard of living than their counterparts in most other industrialized nations, that chapter shows. Chapters Eight and Nine bring out the way the Australian tradition of services for its people was extended to recent immigrants after World War Two, and how this helped the country absorb several million people from numerous cultures without violence.

For serious travelers (and armchair travelers) who want to know more about countries they visit than what guidebooks and travelogues provide, Multiethnic Australia supplies information about the country’s history, cultures and politics in one readable volume.