Unholy Fury - Paperback

by James Curran (Author)

The inside story of just how close Australia came to losing the US Alliance

In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon-clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction.

Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, Unholy Fury brings to life the clash between the two leaders and their competing visions of the world.

As the Nixon White House reeled from the Watergate revelations, Australia's first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years looked to redefine the country's position on the world stage. It left an American president enraged and hell bent on tearing apart a strained alliance.

Author Biography

James Curran teaches history at Sydney University and is a Research Associate at the US Studies Centre. He is the author of Curtin's Empire, The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image--shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the NSW Premier's History Prize--and, with Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire, shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Australian History Prize. He is a Fulbright Scholar and in 2013 was the Chair of Australian History at University College Dublin.