Rather than treating federation as the smooth birth of a nation — cue trumpets, flags, school assemblies, constitutional coma — this book shows it as something argued over, sold, resisted, mocked, desired and politically engineered.

A sharp little sourcebook from the federation years, collecting speeches, letters, poems, arguments and public material from the period when Australia was still deciding what shape it wanted to take. 

The appeal here is in the texture: not just the official story, but the rhetoric around it. The book gathers pro-federation arguments alongside more skeptical and uneasy material, giving a sense of how strange and unsettled the whole thing actually was before it hardened into civic mythology. A good one for readers interested in Australian history, constitutional politics, nationalism, labour history, republicanism, political language, or the long and stupidly persistent question of what Australia thinks it is doing.

First published in 1977 by Primary Education / Longman, under the Dummond imprint. Paperback. Edited by Hugh Anderson. Illustrated cover by Derrick Stone. Good used condition: general shelf wear, rubbing and creasing to covers, light age-toning to pages, but clean internally and solidly bound.