Crash Through Or Crash: The Unmaking Of A Prime Minister
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: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few political careers in Australian history burned as brightly — or collapsed as dramatically — as that of Gough Whitlam, and Crash through or Crash: The Unmaking of a Prime Minister by veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes stands as the definitive account of that turbulent downfall. Published in the mid-1970s in the immediate aftermath of the constitutional crisis that shook the Australian nation, this landmark work of political biography chronicles the internal tensions, bold policy gambits, and catastrophic miscalculations that ultimately brought down one of Australia's most ambitious and controversial leaders. Oakes, drawing on his unrivalled access to the corridors of Canberra power, presents a forensic and gripping reconstruction of the events leading to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975. Beyond the immediate political drama, the book illuminates the broader fault lines within Australian democracy — the fragile relationship between the Senate and the House of Representatives, the extraordinary reserve powers of the Governor-General, and the ruthless pragmatism that defines partisan politics. Oakes writes with the sharp precision of an insider and the narrative authority of a seasoned journalist, producing a work that is as much a meditation on power and hubris as it is a political history. For anyone seeking to understand the forces that shaped modern Australia, this account raises a question that still resonates today: how does a government with such sweeping ambitions come undone so completely, and so swiftly?
Author: Laurie Oakes
Format: Paperback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few political careers in Australian history burned as brightly — or collapsed as dramatically — as that of Gough Whitlam, and Crash through or Crash: The Unmaking of a Prime Minister by veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes stands as the definitive account of that turbulent downfall. Published in the mid-1970s in the immediate aftermath of the constitutional crisis that shook the Australian nation, this landmark work of political biography chronicles the internal tensions, bold policy gambits, and catastrophic miscalculations that ultimately brought down one of Australia's most ambitious and controversial leaders. Oakes, drawing on his unrivalled access to the corridors of Canberra power, presents a forensic and gripping reconstruction of the events leading to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975. Beyond the immediate political drama, the book illuminates the broader fault lines within Australian democracy — the fragile relationship between the Senate and the House of Representatives, the extraordinary reserve powers of the Governor-General, and the ruthless pragmatism that defines partisan politics. Oakes writes with the sharp precision of an insider and the narrative authority of a seasoned journalist, producing a work that is as much a meditation on power and hubris as it is a political history. For anyone seeking to understand the forces that shaped modern Australia, this account raises a question that still resonates today: how does a government with such sweeping ambitions come undone so completely, and so swiftly?