This book is conceived of as the first in a series of four volumes on the social history of Australia. Although this series will range from the beginning of British settlement in 1788 down to recent times, it will look backward and forward from 25 April 1915, the day on which soldiers from Australia landed at Anzac Cove?named after the initials of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps?as part of a British and French force which was supposed to capture Constantinople. Although the campaign failed before the year was out, the name of Anzac was on its way to becoming sacred. Ken Inglis, who has taught history at the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide, the Australian National Uni versity, and the University of Papua New Guinea, has a questioning, probing mind. In so far as the Australians at Anzac represented a distinctive culture, Inglis asks what were the various forces which shaped that culture. In this first volume he carries his investigation down to 1870 when the British Army pulled out of Australia. It is the historian's role to take the evidence which has survived from the past and, through a creative act of the imagination, attempt to bring the past alive again in the present. Most historians have con centrated on recreating political and military events using such sources as government decrees, legislative records, political memoirs, or news paper reports. But increasingly in the effort to understand the cultural life of a people, the spirit of a nation, its peculiar social traditions, his torians have also been delving into social records, poetry, songs, novels, paintings, engravings, caricatures, and popular festivities. In Canada some years ago Arthur Lower pioneered in writing social history using some such sources in Canadians in the Making, but his work was shorter and less richly documented than this splendid volume. Inglis examines the cultural baggage which the colonists brought with them, their clash with enemies both natural and human in a new environment, their religious celebrations and popular festivals, and the emergence of a new group of heroes. Often Inglis taps evidence from other historians, but he uses this material with consummate skill to produce new insights, and in exploring holidays he is largely opening new ground. Moreover, through out this volume, Inglis makes effective use of poetry, often ghastly as literature but useful evidence of the developing outlook of cultural leaders.