The Fatal Shore: The epic of Australia's founding

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 11, 2012 - History - 752 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This incredible true history of the colonization of Australia explores how the convict transportation system created the country we know today.

"One of the greatest non-fiction books I’ve ever read ... Hughes brings us an entire world." —Los Angeles Times


Digging deep into the dark history of England's infamous efforts to move 160,000 men and women thousands of miles to the other side of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hughes has crafted a groundbreaking, definitive account of the settling of Australia.

Tracing the European presence in Australia from early explorations through the rise and fall of the penal colonies, and featuring 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps, The Fatal Shore brings to life the history of the country we thought we knew.
 

Contents

The Harbor and the Exiles I
1
A Horse Foaled by an Acorn
19
The Geographical Unconscious
43
The Starvation Years
84
The Voyage
129
Who Were the Convicts?
158
Bolters and Bushrangers
203
Bunters Mollies and Sable Brethren
244
Metastasis
425
Norfolk Island
460
Toward Abolition
485
A Special Scourge
523
The Aristocracy Be We
561
The End of the System
581
Governors and Chief Executives of New South Wales 17881855
607
Bibliography
656

The Government Stroke
282
IO Gentlemen of New South Wales
323
To Plough Van Diemens Land
368

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About the author (2012)

Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938. In 1970, he moved to the United States to become chief art critic for Time, a position he held until 2001. His books include The Shock of the New, The Fatal Shore, Nothing if Not Critical, The Culture of Complaint, Barcelona, American Visions, A Jerk on One End, Goya, Things I Didn’t Know, and Rome.  He is a New York Public Library Literary Lion and was the recipient of a number of literary awards and prizes, including two Frank Jewell-Mather Awards. He is widely held as the most respected art critic of our time.

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