Who have been the wealthiest Australians ever? How many are still alive today? How do we measure wealth through the ages and how do today's wealth giants like Murdoch and Packer compare with those in the past? This extraordinary social history lists over 200 of the wealthiest Australians of all time. Readers will delight in the astonishing history of these individuals: * the surgeon who joined in the 1797 Mutiny of the British fleet and was transported to Sydney, who then developed the largest medical practice in the colony and became a major landowner; * one of the most famous Australians who allegedly amassed his wealth by getting officers and small landholders drunk at his public house and then allowing them to sign away their rights to their possessions as security for their debts; * the director of the Bank of New South Wales who committed suicide due to a bad case of depression and gout; * the pronounced lunatic' who got into constant strife with the governor; * the grazier who was stabbed in the groin with a pair of sheep-shears; * one of Australia's richest ever women and the great mystery surrounding her. With detailed information on how they made their money and what sort of people they were and are, The All-time Australian 200 Rich List paints a lively portrait of these distinctive individuals. Some of them were transported as convicts, others had de facto relationships with convicts, and yet as a group they became the nation's wealthiest people and formed the very foundation of our traditional ideas about how Australian history and its economic development were created. Professor William D. Rubinstein has 14 books to his credit, including Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since the Industrial Revolution (Rutgers University Press, 1981), The Jews in Australia (AE Press, 1986) and Jews in the Sixth Continent edited by W.D. Rubinstein (Allen + Unwin, 1987). He holds the Chair in History at the University of Aberystwyth (Wales) and previously held academic posts at the Australian National and Deakin Universities.

Is Australia fair enough? And why does inequality matter anyway? In Battlers and Billionaires, Andrew Leigh weaves together vivid anecdotes, interesting history and powerful statistics to tell the story of inequality in this country. This is economics writing at its best. From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now, inequality is returning to the heights of the 1920s. Leigh shows that while inequality can fuel growth, it also poses dangers to society. Too much inequality risks cleaving us into two Australias, occupying fundamentally separate worlds, with little contact between the haves and the have-nots. And the further apart the rungs on the ladder of opportunity, the harder it is for a kid born into poverty to enter the middle class. Battlers and Billionaires sheds fresh light on what makes Australia distinctive, and what it means to have – and keep – a fair go.

Australia's economic history is the story of the transformation of an indigenous economy and a small convict settlement into a nation of nearly 23 million people with advanced economic, social and political structures. It is a history of vast lands with rich, exploitable resources, of adversity in war, and of prosperity and nation building. It is also a history of human behaviour and the institutions created to harness and govern human endeavour. This account provides a systematic and comprehensive treatment of the nation's economic foundations, growth, resilience and future, in an engaging, contemporary narrative. It examines key themes such as the centrality of land and its usage, the role of migrant human capital, the tension between development and the environment, and Australia's interaction with the international economy. Written by a team of eminent economic historians, The Cambridge Economic History of Australia is the definitive study of Australia's economic past and present.

ÔGlobalization, it seems, has propelled the worldÕs uber-wealthy to new heights of power and money, with tremendous repercussions for the other 99.9 percent of us. At a time when neoliberalism has propelled the world into a new Gilded Age, with rising inequality everywhere, an aggressive class war being waged by the wealthy, and billionaires inserting themselves bluntly into the political arena, understanding the behavior and spatiality of the super-rich has acquired a pressing urgency. This volume offers a richly textured suite of essays concerning how the super-rich have restructured local places, transforming landscapes as varied as London and Kentucky, Ireland and St. Barts, as well as domains as varied as art, thoroughbred horses, and housing.Õ Ð Barney Warf, University of Kansas, US ÔThe worldÕs super-rich, made up of just 11 million people, have access to about US$42.0 trillion of wealth. These are people who each have a spare million of ÒliquidÓ wealth. Their wealth is roughly equal to two thirds of global GDP. They own most of everything. As the editor of this books states Ò. . . library shelves and the pages of journals remain largely devoid of geographical work on the super-rich Ð a startling lacuna this volume sets out to fillÓ. The super-rich now own most of the planet. During the last year their share fell slightly. Times may be changing. Now is the time to begin to study the superÐrich in detail, especially if you are worried about where all the wealth has gone.Õ Ð Danny Dorling, University of Sheffield, UK This timely and path-breaking book brings together a group of distinguished and emerging international scholars to critically consider the geographical implications of the worldÕs super-rich, a privileged yet remarkably overlooked group. Emerging from this unique collection is an enlightening picture of the influence of the super-rich over a diverse range of affairs, extending from the shape of urban and rural landscapes to the future of art history. By concentrating on those at the apex of the economic pyramid, this book provides valuable insights to the institutions, practices and cultural values of our society, as well as allowing us a more comprehensive view of the consequences of global capitalism. Presenting case studies from across the globe Ð from Singapore to St Barts, London to Lexington Ð the spatial and cultural span of the book is wide-ranging and diverse. This truly unique book will prove a fascinating read for academics, researchers and students in the fields of geography, regional and urban studies, sociology, political science and development studies.

It is often asserted that the ruling elite in Western capitalist economies now consists of liberal intellectuals and their media sympathisers. By contrast this book looks at the real elite in Australian and New Zealand society and shows that there is still a ruling class based upon economic dominance. From an analysis of corporate and public records, interviews, and other primary and secondary data, it develops a picture of networks of power that are changing but are as real as any network in the past.

In 1901 the Australian colonies came together to form a new nation which, for the next twenty-six years, was governed from Melbourne. It was a small city, a place where people knew each other-not just the people who mattered, but those who didn't yet-where small changes loomed large and the import of big changes could scarcely be imagined. Yet in the extraordinary first quarter of the twentieth century the world lurched headlong into a new era. And this overgrown town, in all but name the nation's capital, oversaw the birth of modern Australia. In Capital, Kristin Otto describes how it happened. She looks at the developments that shaped the world we know today- from the story of Helena Rubinstein and the invention of the cosmetics industry, to the world's first feature film, to confectionery king Mac Robertson, packaging pioneer and author of the city's first motor car fatality. And she traces, with the lightest of touches, the web of influence, friendship and sheer coincidence that held it alltogether. For anyone who knowsMelbourne, Capital will be a fascinating conversation with an old friend. For anyone who doesn't, it will be a compelling introduction to a new one.

Biography of a Book traces the life of an iconic Australian literary work in the lead-up to, and for a century after, its initial publication: Henry Lawson's 1896 collection While the Billy Boils. Paul Eggert follows Lawson's gradual development of a pared-back bush realism in the early 1890s, as he struggled to forge a career, writing short stories and sketches for the newspapers. Lawson's famous collection came out at a decisive moment for the development of a fully professional Australian literary publishing industry, then in its infancy in Sydney. The volume's editing, design and production were collaborative events that changed the feel and nature of Lawson's writing. He had to give ground on his texts and their sequencing. The collection went on to be reprinted and repackaged countless times. Its production and reception histories act like a geological cross-section, revealing the contours of successive cultural formations in Australia. In unravelling the life of Lawson's classic work Eggert's book-historical approach challenges and clarifies established understandings of crucial moments in Australian literary history and of Lawson himself