Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life
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: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few figures in Australian intellectual and political life burned with quite the fierce, uncompromising conviction of Brian Fitzpatrick — historian, civil libertarian, and tireless agitator for the working class — and Don Watson's Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life restores this towering yet often overlooked figure to his rightful place in the national story. Watson chronicles Fitzpatrick's extraordinary journey from his roots in early twentieth-century Australia through his emergence as one of the country's most provocative left-wing historians, whose landmark works on Australian capitalism and colonial exploitation reshaped how a generation understood their own past. A founding force behind the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Fitzpatrick waged relentless campaigns against censorship, political repression, and the abuse of state power at a time when such stands carried genuine personal cost. Watson, who would himself go on to become one of Australia's most celebrated writers and intellectuals, brings a sharp biographical eye and a prose of considerable elegance to this portrait, situating Fitzpatrick not merely as a political actor but as a deeply human contradiction — brilliant and embattled, principled and turbulent. The biography stands as both a work of serious historical scholarship and an impassioned argument for the enduring relevance of dissent in a democratic society. Readers drawn to the intersection of ideas, politics, and personality will find in Fitzpatrick's story a life that continues to pose uncomfortable questions about power, conscience, and the cost of speaking truth.
Author: Don Watson
Format: Paperback
Published: 1979, Hale & Iremonger
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few figures in Australian intellectual and political life burned with quite the fierce, uncompromising conviction of Brian Fitzpatrick — historian, civil libertarian, and tireless agitator for the working class — and Don Watson's Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life restores this towering yet often overlooked figure to his rightful place in the national story. Watson chronicles Fitzpatrick's extraordinary journey from his roots in early twentieth-century Australia through his emergence as one of the country's most provocative left-wing historians, whose landmark works on Australian capitalism and colonial exploitation reshaped how a generation understood their own past. A founding force behind the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Fitzpatrick waged relentless campaigns against censorship, political repression, and the abuse of state power at a time when such stands carried genuine personal cost. Watson, who would himself go on to become one of Australia's most celebrated writers and intellectuals, brings a sharp biographical eye and a prose of considerable elegance to this portrait, situating Fitzpatrick not merely as a political actor but as a deeply human contradiction — brilliant and embattled, principled and turbulent. The biography stands as both a work of serious historical scholarship and an impassioned argument for the enduring relevance of dissent in a democratic society. Readers drawn to the intersection of ideas, politics, and personality will find in Fitzpatrick's story a life that continues to pose uncomfortable questions about power, conscience, and the cost of speaking truth.