C. T. Stannage (1944–2012)

Absolutely awesome. This is in some ways a textbook rather than a straightforward history, clocking in at 800 pages with considerable appendices and bibliography. But it's also highly readable, breaking down the history of the great state of Western Australia into historical, political, economic, and social sections. There are diagrams, charts, and stats aplenty.

Naturally some of the chapters are a little specific and thus occasionally dry to the general reader, but this uses what was then the cutting-edge methods of social and statistically-informed history to do a deeper analysis than anyone had to date. It's been almost 45 years since this volume was published, so something new is urgently needed, but in a sense this is unbeatable.… (mehr)