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The Premier of New South Wales, the Hon Mike Baird MP has announced the shortlist for the 2015 NSW Premier’s History Awards.

Eight judges considered 180 entries across the six prize categories.

The Premier commented: “these Awards are a celebration of the diversity and excellence in historical practice in Australia and the importance of historians in marking and understanding our nation’s past.” 

NSW Premier’s History Awards shortlist (in alphabetical order)

 

Australian History Prize ($15,000)

  • The Bush, Don Watson (Penguin Books Australia)
  • The Europeans in Australia, Volume 3: Nation, Alan Atkinson (NewSouth Books)
  • Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World, Tim Low (Penguin Books Australia) 
 
Australian First World War History Prize (commemorative medallion)
  •  Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography, Carolyn Holbrook (NewSouth Books)
  • Homefront Hostilities: The First World War and Domestic Violence, Elizabeth Nelson (Australian Scholarly Publishing)
  • The Lost Legions of Fromelles: The true story of the most dramatic battle in Australia’s history, Peter Barton (Allen & Unwin)
 
General History Prize ($15,000)
  • Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt’s America, Ian Tyrrell (University of Chicago Press)
  • Intolerant Bodies: A Short History of Autoimmunity, Warwick Anderson & Ian R Mackay (John Hopkins University Press)
  • Wild man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutan, Robert Cribb, Helen Gilbert & Helen Tiffin (University of Hawai’i Press)
 
NSW Community and Regional History Prize ($15,000)
  • Leisure Space: The Transformation of Sydney 1945-1970, Judith O’Callaghan and Paul Hogben (NewSouth Publishing)
  • The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress: An Environmental History, Cameron Muir (CSIRO Publishing – Earthscan from Routledge)
  • The Luck of the Irish: How a shipload of convicts survived the wreck of the Hive to make a new life in Australia, Babette Smith (Allen & Unwin)
 
Young People’s History Prize ($15,000)
  • A-Z of Convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, Simon Bernard (Text Publishing)
  • Lennie the Legend: Solo to Sydney by Pony, Stephanie Owen Reeder (NLA Publishing)
  • My Gallipoli, Ruth Starke & Robert Hannaford (Penguin Books Australia)
 
Multimedia History Prize ($15,000)
  • A History of Forgetting: from Shellshock to PTSD, Lorena Allam & Timothy Nicastri (ABC Radio National)
  • Brilliant Creatures, Dan Goldberg & Margie Bryant (Mint Pictures)
  • The  Dalfram Dispute from 1938: Pig Iron Bob, Sandra Pires (Why Documentaries)

     

The winners of the 2015 Awards will be announced and NSW History Week will be launched at a presentation and cocktail reception held at the State Library of NSW on Friday 4 September 2015.

Members of the public are welcome to attend the event. Tickets: $45/40 each.

Bookings are essential, please follow this link