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Title: |
The Fatal Lure of Politics |
| Sub-title: |
The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe |
Search Result:
| By (author): |
Terry Irving |
| ISBN10-13: |
192583574X : 9781925835748 |
| Illustrations: |
24 images |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Size: |
234x153mm |
| Pages: |
448 |
| Weight: |
.000 Kg. |
| Published: |
Monash University Publishing - May 2020 |
| List Price: |
26.99 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: |
Temporarily Out of Stock, more expected soon
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| Subjects: |
Biography: historical, political & military |
| Renowned Australian-born archaeologist and prehistorian Vere Gordon Childe (1892â 1957) had a lifelong fascination with socialist politics. In his early life he was active in the Australian labour movement and wrote How Labour Governs (1923), the worldâ s first study of parliamentary socialism. However, he decided to pursue a life of scholarship to â escape the fatal lureâ of politics and Australian labourâ s â politicalismâ â his term for its misguided emphasis on parliamentary representation. In Britain, with the publication of The Dawn of European Civilisation (1925), Childe began a career that would establish him as preeminent in his field and one of the most distinguished scholars of the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, he aimed to â democratise archaeologyâ and involve people in its practice. What Happened in History (1942), his most popular book, sold 300,000 copies in its first 15 years. Politics continued to lure Childe, and for forty years he was spied upon by security services of Britain and Australia. He supported Russiaâ s â grand and hopeful experimentâ and opposed the rise of fascism. His Australian background reinforced his hatred of colonialism and imperialism. Politics was also implicated in his death. There is a direct line between Childeâ s early radicalism and his final â and fatal â political act in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The Fatal Lure of Politics is a new and radically different biography about the central place of socialist politics in Childeâ s life, and his contribution to the theory of history that this politics entailed. |
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