The volume takes a historical approach to examine how biography has been used throughout history. It gives readers a real sense of the history of the relationship between history and biography. Useful for historians and students as it looks at different, emerging Schools of biography in the present day, allowing the complexity of the practice in the present day to be easily understood by the reader. It covers a large range of issues that historians have faced over time when using biography - such as used the problems of evidence, the subject matter, the methodological robustness and inclusiveness of biographical practice, pluralism and non-Western biographical principles and representativeness which allows the reader to get a sense of the wide range of issues that are addressed when thinking about history and biography.

The volume takes a historical approach to examine how biography has been used throughout history. It gives readers a real sense of the history of the relationship between history and biography. Useful for historians and students as it looks at different, emerging Schools of biography in the present day, allowing the complexity of the practice in the present day to be easily understood by the reader. It covers a large range of issues that historians have faced over time when using biography - such as used the problems of evidence, the subject matter, the methodological robustness and inclusiveness of biographical practice, pluralism and non-Western biographical principles and representativeness which allows the reader to get a sense of the wide range of issues that are addressed when thinking about history and biography.

Volume 18 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography is the second of two volumes to deal with Australians who died between 1981 and 1990. It includes articles by 560 authors on 670 individuals with surnames from L to Z, recording the lives of Australians whom many of us remember from the recent past. There are explorers, farmers, stockmen, trade union officials, business people, educators, criminals, judges, political activists, librarians, ballet dancers, cameleers, musicians and opera directors, speedway riders, polymaths, philanthropists and professional wrestlers and boxers. The volume includes academics Julius Stone and William Stanner; physicists Leslie Martin, Harry Massey and Ernest Titterton; military leaders Frederick Scherger, John Wilton, John McCauley, the first aboriginal commissioned officer Reg Saunders and war historian Alan Moorehead; feminist Ruby Rich and country women's leader Bertha Smith; surgeon Harry Windsor; Director-General of Education Harold Wyndham; ABC General Manager Charles Moses and a raft of diplomats-John Ryan, Dudley McCarthy, James Plimsoll, Laurence McIntyre, Annabelle Rankin, Alfred Stirling, Mick Shann, Marjorie Smart, Percy Spender and Alan Watt, some of whom became state governors; politicians William McMahon, Billy Sneddon, Enid Lyons, Dorothy Tangney, Lionel Murphy, Thomas Playford, as well as political journalist Alan Reid; Governor General William McKell; artists Fred Williams and Cliff Pugh; patrons of the arts John and Sunday Reed and authors Alan Marshall, Stephen Murray-Smith, Christina Stead, Kylie Tennant and Patrick White. Maintaining the ADB's tradition of scholarship, Volume 18 presents a colourful mosaic of twentieth-century Australia. This host of lives gives a picture of our society, provides insights into the experiences of our people, and illuminates large themes in our recent history-immigration, urbanisation and suburbanisation, war (World War II, Korea, Malaya and Vietnam), material progress, increasing cultural maturity, conservative and progressive politics, conflict and harmony, and a new phase in transnationalism. It also reveals something of the greatness and smallness of which human beings are capable.

In 1981, the French Left came to power with a project to transform society. By 1983, French economic policy underwent a dramatic reversal as the government moved from its reform agenda to an economic orthodoxy that won the accolades of the business press throughout Europe. What brought on this seachange in orientation and political philosophy?

Bringing together some of the most renowned scholars of French politics and society, The Mitterrand Era explores the political effects of policy change. It examines the transformation in the composition, organization, and orientation of the French Left under the presidency of Franois Mitterrand. The essays probe the breakdown of traditional party and union strategies, the constraints of party politics, the challenges of economic policy, the attempts to forge new political discourses, and the new challenges (focused around issues of race, gender, and ecology) for the respectable Left.