Joan Beaumont
Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War
The Australian experience of war in all its complexity - from the home front as well as the battlefront - as the men and women who experienced it chose to understand and remember it.
Allen & Unwin, 2013
The Great War is, for many Australians, the event that defined our nation. The larrikin diggers, trench warfare, and the landing at Gallipoli have become the stuff of the Anzac 'legend'. But it was also a war fought by the families at home. Their resilience in the face of hardship, their stoic acceptance of enormous casualty lists and their belief that their cause was just made the war effort possible.
Broken Nation is the first book to bring together all the dimensions of World War I. Combining deep scholarship with powerful storytelling, Joan Beaumont brings the war years to life: from the well-known battles at Gallipoli, Pozieres, Fromelles and Villers-Bretonneux, to the lesser known battles in Europe and the Middle East; from the ferocious debates over conscription to the disillusioning Paris peace conference and the devastating 'Spanish' flu the soldiers brought home. We witness the fear and courage of tens of thousands of soldiers, grapple with the strategic nightmares confronting the commanders, and come to understand the impact on Australians at home, and at the front, of death on an unprecedented scale.
Winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History 2014
Winner of the NSW Premier's History Awards, Australian History Prize 2014
Winner of the Queensland Literary Awards, History Award 2014
Winner, Australian Society of Authors, Asher Award, 2015, AU
Short-listed, West Australian Premier's Book Awards, Non-fiction Prize, 2014, AU
Short-listed, Council for the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Book Prize AU
About the Author
Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at the Australian National University. Her publications include the critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (2013); with Aaron Pegram and Lachlan Grant, Beyond Surrender: Australian Prisoners of War in the Twentieth Century (2015); (ed.) Australia’s War, 1939–45 (1996); Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity, 1941–1945 (1988); and Comrades in Arms: British Aid to Russia, 1941–1945 (1980). In 2011–13 she led the research team for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs commemorative website, The Thai-Burma Railway and Hellfire Pass.
