The Great War continues to fascinate us all. In this original approach, prize-winning
historian Peter Stanley cleverly weaves his narrative around striking images—many
never seen before—to create a visual history that immerses the reader in each
moment.
Peter has selected documents, photographs, artefacts, and
images—drawings, prints, postcards, advertisements, souvenirs, song-sheets,
posters, leaflets, maps, and cartoons—which together tell stories of battles
overseas with Turks and Germans, and battles at home, for and against
conscription, over ‘loyalty’ and ‘disloyalty’, and the war’s many imposts on
Australia’s people.
The National Library’s war memorabilia and documents help to connect the
conflict overseas with the equally bitter struggle at home. Men faced life-changing
choices: volunteer to fight or stay at home; join the industrial battles for hard-won
working conditions or break the strikes. Women bore the burdens of voting to
send men to their deaths, of raising children on their own, of waiting and
worrying. As communities fractured under the stress, even children were drawn
into the animosities between ‘German’, ‘Irish’, and ‘British’ Australians.
The Crying Years evokes the drama and tragedy, suffering and
sacrifice, the pain and the pity, of Australia’s Great War.
