The Rise and Fall of Australia: How a great nation lost its way

Nick Bryant

Jul 2014 · Sold by Random House Australia

About this ebook

A forensic look at the Lucky Country, from the inside and outside.

Never before has Australia enjoyed such economic, commercial, diplomatic and cultural clout. Its recession-proof economy is the envy of the world. It’s the planet’s great lifestyle superpower. Its artistic exports win unprecedented acclaim. But never before has its politics been so brutal, narrow and facile, as well as being such a global laughing stock. A positive national story is at odds with a deeply unattractive Canberra story.

The country should be enjoying The Australian Moment, so vividly described by the best-selling author George Megalogenis. But that description may turn out to be inadvertently precise. It could end up being just that: a fleeting moment.

At present the country seems to be in speedy regression, with the nation’s leaders, on both sides, mired in relatively small problems, such as the arrival of boat people, rather than mapping out a larger and more inspiring national future.

In The Rise and Fall of Australia, BBC correspondent and author Nick Bryant offers an outsider’s take on the great paradox of modern-day Australian life: of how the country has got richer at a time when its politics have become more impoverished.

In this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing with politics, racism, sexism, the country’s place in the region and the world, culture and sport, the author argues that Australia needs to discard the out-dated language used to describe itself, to push back against Lucky Country thinking, to celebrate how the cultural creep has replaced the cultural cringe and to stop negatively typecasting itself. Rejecting most of the national stereotypes, Nick Bryant sets out to describe the new Australia rather than the mythic country so often misunderstood not just by foreigners but Australians themselves.

Ratings and reviews

All Australians should have the knowledge of their own country that this visitor has.

great insight

About the author

During a career spanning almost thirty years, Nick Bryant came to be regarded as one of the BBC’s finest foreign correspondents and was described as ‘the new Alistair Cooke’. He has been posted in Washington, South Asia, Australia and, most recently, New York, where he covered the Trump years. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Monthly and The New Statesman. He broadcasts regularly on the BBC and ABC. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. He now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. His book, When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present, currently resides on Joe Biden’s bookshelf in the Oval Office.