No comments about "Over There" with the Australians (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press).

No comments about Innocence to Independence: Life in the Papua New Guinea Highlands 1956-1980.

1 comments about Courage a Grace: A Biography of Dame Mary Gilmore.

1. I didn't like the book I have read and personally would never buy the book. My close friend and I also agree that the book has no real info

1 comments about Keeping The Wanjinas Fresh: Sam Woolagoodja And The Enduring Power Of Lalai.

1. This is a fantastic story about an intriguing man. Sam Woolagoodja is one of the most amazing people you will ever come across. He took on unbelievable challenges during his life, and always had the best interest of his people at heart. His struggle to keep his culture vibrant is one for the ages.
   
   Contrary to what you might think this book is written for everyone. It is based in academia, but the storytelling makes it enjoyable for anyone interested in Aboriginal Culture. Well worth it.

1 comments about The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (Oxford Reference).

1. This is a 'must have' guide for those who are either researching particular Australian writers, works of literature, or important themes.
   
   If, for example, you are trying to find out more about bushrangers in Australian Literature, the comprehensive entry that starts on page 137 will define the term, give some history and provide some examples of literature.
   
   Want to know something about 'The Thorn Birds' by Colleen McCullough? Turn to Page 745. Colleen McCullough is herself the subject of an entry on Page 489.
   
   A great starting point for any author, theme or significant work of literature up to the 1990s.
   
   Jennifer Cameron-Smith

No comments about Richard Spencer: Napoleonic Naval Hero And Australian Pioneer (Staples South West Region Publication Series).

2 comments about There to the Bitter End: Ted Serong in Vietnam.

1. As just another digger I found this book to be most worthy.
   Having been through the training regimes as recommended by Ted Serong in Australia and having the understanding of the type of war we were involved in I could never understand the manner in which the Americans fought the war.
   After reading this book I now understand it to have been a distrust of non American ideas and arrogance of the"we know better" type and impatience, thinking always that bigger is better rather than looking at quality.



2. The Vietnam War, and especially the reasons for its loss, from both military and political standpoints, will continue to be a matter of importance for those who are concerned with the survival of democracies.

   Much has been written on political considerations, but military questions have been more neglected. Hence this book, which examines the role of Brigadier Ted Serong in the conflict, will be of great interest to a variety of readers.

   Anne Blair is a research associate with the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her interest in Serong is well-based. He had a central role in the development of military strategy and tactics, although to a large extent his views conflicted with those ultimately applied by the United States in Vietnam.

   Early during his time in Vietnam, Serong concluded that the American forces were not properly directed, and that the South Vietnamese Army also should have directed its efforts in different ways.

   He was involved in the development of the Police Field Force (PFF), with the aim of destroying the structures of the Vietnamese Communists in rural and mountain areas, and also the networks by which guerrillas obtained weapons, food, information and recruits.

   Serong's concept (which is particularly persuasive in retrospect) was that the PFF would clear areas of Viet Cong influence, thus freeing the South Vietnamese Army (the AVRN) for combat against the North Vietnamese regiments that were operating in the border areas.

   Unfortunately the United States forces showed a lack of patience, and were not prepared to support adequately the gradual advance of the program.

   The PFF was absorbed by other US mission programs in 1966-67, but Serong himself remained invaluable and was consulted constantly by government advisers and by military commanders at the highest level.

   At all times, his perceptions of the strategic position were sound. For example, he was one of the first to appreciate that the 1968 Tet Offensive constituted, contrary to media reports, a militarily disastrous loss by the Communists.

   This book is very valuable. It is well researched. The author had the advantage of numerous conversations with Serong, and her account is expressed carefully, with much detail and appropriate references.

   It is impossible to read it without concluding that Serong is a great Australian, and a great man in any context, a figure of enormous importance whose advice, had it been followed properly, would probably have led to a different result in Vietnam.

   It is therefore a book which, in addition to its general readership, should be studied closely by military strategists and tacticians, and by the various academics, think-tanks and institutes which are so influential in the application of political and military policy.

   - I.C.F. Spry, News Weekly book review, Melbourne, Australia

No comments about The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis (Australian Lives series).

1 comments about Life Among the Scientists: An Anthropological Study of an Australian Scientific Community.

1. This is an ambitious book, written by four researchers at work over five years. The immediate focus is upon the activities of scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne in order to explore the way that these activities are shaped by social, political, financial and intellectual influences.

   Part One, 'The life-world of the Institute', sketches the recent history of ideas in immunology, the field where the Institute gained world renown when its Director, Macfarlane Burnet, shared a Nobel Prize with Sir Peter Medawar. Part Four is written in the same descriptive vein with a broader geographical scope, detailing some of the intellectual and political elements of the worldwide quest to find a vaccine for malaria. Part Two, 'The subjective side of science' includes a chapter on 'The myth of objectivity' which lays the foundation for the major purpose of the whole work - to challenge received views on the philosophy and methodology of science. Part Three, 'The mode of scientific production' closely examines the way that scientists approach their daily tasks, with the central image being the laboratory as a factory to produce data.

   The book operates at several levels, from high journalism and science criticism to the ecology of excellence and the philosophy and methodology of science. As a piece of high quality reporting it is impressive in its scope and depth, though a hostile insider (Leon Wolpert) described it as 'mere' journalism. This unfair because the writers achieve a standard of science writing that will provide a challenge to all comers.

   The major and overwhelming defect of the book is the failure to engage, or even mention, the most robust and fruitful body of ideas in the field. This is a striking example of the phenomenon they describe as 'socially structured forgetting' or 'structural amnesia' (p 101). They have neatly excised Karl Popper's theory of conjecture and refutation from their account of the philosophy and methods of science. But Popper's work surely represents either the orthodox view of scientific method (as accepted by a number of eminent scientists who took their philosophy seriously such as Medawar, Eccles, Monod and Einstein), or a formidable rival to the traditional form of Baconian induction, still championed by David Stove.

   An amazing revelation appeared recently when the senior author wrote a review of the reissue of David Stove's critique of Popper and others. He reported that Popper was the only philosopher of science who was held in any regard by the members of the Institute. This evidence would have refuted their major, though unstated, thesis, that Popper does not count in the real world of science. Apparently that particular evidence was regarded as superfluous when it came to writing up the research. Of course scientists discard data when they think that the experimental apparatus was malfunctioning. In this case it appears that was the scientists were considered to be malfunctioning!

   Life Among the Scientists is located in the tradition of the 'social construction of science', a form of thought that thrives in the intellectual wasteland created by the popular reception of T. S. Kuhn's work on the diffusion of scientific innovations. To their credit the authors fall short of the strong form of relativism that is common in this tradition and this may indicate that their interest in science is strong enough to resist the debilitating effect of their theoretical framework. The popularity of the 'social construction' view and its serious limitations raise two questions. What is going on in academic departments of philosophy and the social sciences to account for their structural amnesia regarding Popper? And is there any way that philosophers or other metascientists can provide assistance to scientists?

   The answer to the first question awaits further anthropological studies, though Bartley throws out some clues in his contribution to In Pursuit of Truth (ed P. Levinson, Humanities Press, 1982). As to the second question, philosophers may have nothing to offer at the tactical level of science where the major requirements are better data and new or revised descriptive theories. However there are times when progress is blocked by problems at a higher (or deeper) strategic level and attention needs to be paid to the unstated assumptions and metaphors that guide the formulation of problems and determine the kind of solutions that are sought. For example the immune reaction by the body to foreign matter was supposed to involve a mechanism of instruction from the invaders to the immune system to produce the appropriate antibodies. Burnet followed a hint from Jerne to demonstrate that the mechanism at work is one of selection among a range of responses generated initially by the immune system. A similar shift of focus, from a mechanism of instruction acting on an essentially passive or reactive organism, to one of selection among trials generated by the organism, has important implications in epistemology and evolutionary theory. Popper has drawn out some of these in his critique of inductive and Lamarckian thinking in his intellectual autobiography, Unended Quest.

   In conclusion, Life Among the Scientists succeeds in some of its objectives despite the problems at its conceptual heart. It is a good read for the most part provided that one is not distracted by the potentially irritating device of the first person narrative. It probably deserves a place in the bookcase (though not on the same shelf) with Medawar's Pluto's Republic, Koestler's The Sleepwalkers and Barzun's Science: The Glorious Entertainment.

No comments about Australian Dictionary of Biography Index: Volumes 1-12 1788-1939 Index (Australian Dictionary of Biography).