John Monash: A Biography
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few figures in Australian history command the reverence afforded to Sir John Monash — the civil engineer who became the most celebrated Allied commander of the First World War. Geoffrey Serle's landmark biography chronicles the full arc of a remarkable life, from Monash's birth in Melbourne in 1865 to a Jewish immigrant family, through his driven pursuit of professional excellence, and finally to the Western Front, where his meticulous planning and intellectual brilliance reshaped the conduct of modern warfare. Serle presents a portrait of a man who was simultaneously a devoted father and husband, a shrewd businessman, and a military genius whose tactical innovations at the battles of Hamel and the Hundred Days Offensive are widely credited with hastening the end of the war. Serle's scholarship, grounded in exhaustive archival research, illustrates the profound contradictions that animated Monash's character — his ambition and self-doubt, his warmth and calculating pragmatism — with a clarity that elevates this work far beyond conventional military biography. Written with the authority of one of Australia's foremost historians, the biography situates its subject within the broader currents of Australian nationalism, Jewish identity, and the forging of a national consciousness through the crucible of war. Decades after its first publication, John Monash: A Biography remains the definitive account of a man whose full genius, Serle provocatively suggests, Australia has perhaps never truly reckoned with.
Author: Geoffrey Serle
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few figures in Australian history command the reverence afforded to Sir John Monash — the civil engineer who became the most celebrated Allied commander of the First World War. Geoffrey Serle's landmark biography chronicles the full arc of a remarkable life, from Monash's birth in Melbourne in 1865 to a Jewish immigrant family, through his driven pursuit of professional excellence, and finally to the Western Front, where his meticulous planning and intellectual brilliance reshaped the conduct of modern warfare. Serle presents a portrait of a man who was simultaneously a devoted father and husband, a shrewd businessman, and a military genius whose tactical innovations at the battles of Hamel and the Hundred Days Offensive are widely credited with hastening the end of the war. Serle's scholarship, grounded in exhaustive archival research, illustrates the profound contradictions that animated Monash's character — his ambition and self-doubt, his warmth and calculating pragmatism — with a clarity that elevates this work far beyond conventional military biography. Written with the authority of one of Australia's foremost historians, the biography situates its subject within the broader currents of Australian nationalism, Jewish identity, and the forging of a national consciousness through the crucible of war. Decades after its first publication, John Monash: A Biography remains the definitive account of a man whose full genius, Serle provocatively suggests, Australia has perhaps never truly reckoned with.