Manning Clark's six-volume history is one of the masterpieces of Australian writing. It is also one of the most passionately debated visions of Australian history, in which the struggle to realise an Australian nation is played out on an epic scale. A History of Australia: 1888-1945 , covers Federation, the Boer War and World War I's Gallipoli. It finishes with the story of an emerging Australian identity at the point of its greatest trial-the outbreak of World War II. This is not a general Australian history-it does not attempt to cover all aspects-and it is not a definitive or quantitative analysis. It is a work of art, a living and breathing account of the remaking of a primitive continent, history come alive.