In 2007, Kevin Rudd swept to power with a 23-seat victory, bringing Labor in from eleven years in opposition, and unseated John Howard, the longest-serving prime minister since Menzies.
So who was the man behind the phenomenally successful Kevin O7 campaign, this Mandarin-speaking, family-focused, church-going, 'here-to-help', policy wonk from rural Queensland?
In the first of a two-volume autobiography, Kevin Rudd brings us to the point of his election as the 26th Prime Minister of Australia. One of our most polarising and compelling figures, this is the first time we hear from the man direct.
Rudd chronicles a childhood shaped by the love of his mother and tragically disrupted by the death of his father, an event that left the family without a home or an income and which would foster Rudd's passion for social justice and forge his political vision.
He tells of his years as a budding Chinese scholar, his marriage to the remarkable Thérèse Rein, and his various successes and misadventures as a career diplomat. In Canberra, he takes on the absurdities of the Labor factions, the arrogance of John Howard, the mania of Mark Latham, while chronicling the daily high drama and low farce of life in the capital.
Written with passion, conviction, wit and insight, Rudd's story chronicles the unlikely and spectacular rise of the boy from Nambour and prepares the ground for the coming of one of the most tumultuous periods in Australian political history.
