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A Sporting Nation cover

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RRP Australia $36.30
RRP Overseas $33.00


 

A Sporting Nation:
Celebrating Australia's Sporting Life

Compiled and edited by Paul Cliff

A Sporting Nation will appeal equally to the serious sports enthusiast and mainstream reader. Its main text comprises excerpts from the Library's oral history recordings, with additional features by Olympian Marlene Mathews, and Eric Rolls and Marion Halligan.

Twenty-six richly illustrated features present a broad and popular sweep through the nation's sporting culture, opening with a recollection of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and a survey of the Sydney 2000 Games by Marlene Mathews. The book then moves through such diverse sports as fishing, boxing and wrestling, cricket (with a special focus on the hallowed tradition of England versus Australia Test matches), athletics, the modern pentathlon, ruby union, league and Australian football, horse racing, motor racing, waterskiing, surfboard riding, life saving and beach culture, tennis, wood chopping and cycling. The book closes with a tribute to country sport and a consideration of sports media and promotion.

Commentators, greater and lesser known, include Jack Brabham, Margaret Court and Adrian Quist, Bernard 'Midget' Farrelly, Bill O'Reilly and Ray Lindwall, Ern McQuillan, 'Gelignite' Jack Murray, Hubert Opperman, and pioneering Olympian swimmer Mina Wylie. Other sports identities or events featured include Donald Bradman, Douglas Jardine and the 'Bodyline' Test series, Andrew 'Boy' Charlton and Kieren Perkins, Norman Brookes, Rod Laver and Evonne Cawley, Heather McKay, Phar Lap and the Melbourne Cup, Vic Patrick and Tony Mundine, the Redex Road Trials, the Paralympics and disabled sports, and the proud tradition of picnic racing. Together they represent the full texture and sweep of Australian sporting life:how sport defines the way we live, work and enjoy our leisure, and forms a central part of our popular culture.

See article, NLA News, November 1999

Reviews:

'a tasteful and erudite selection of memoirs and memorabilia … as much a social history as it is a commentary on sport …
It is a tribute to the work of Paul Cliff and the National Library that a veritable treasure trove of historical photos and oral histories has been so sensitively collected … in such an eminently readable and charming manner … The book lends itself to browsing or structured reading and would be a useful addition to the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in Australia's past.'

Russell McCaskie, Australian Academic & Research Libraries (AARL) journal 31/1, March 2000

Information on author:

Paul Cliff is a freelance writer and editor. He is the author of the publication Spirit of Australia (1989) and has contributed to various Australian and International journals in the areas of poetry, Australiana, environment, natural history and travel and tourism.

ISBN 0 642 10704 1
1999, pb, 215 x 265 mm, 136 pp, col & b&w illus.

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Last updated 5 July 2001