Fighting ships used to go after each other with broadsides. So, sometimes, did printers.

A broadside print is (usually) a single sheet of paper printed on one side. They can contain all sorts of things -- song texts, news stories, pathetic accounts, political propaganda. Most had a big headline, some sort of woodcut art, and some body text. Their production standards were abysmal, the reliability of what they said even worse. But the people who printed them usually had some idea of what people wanted to hear about. So they give a certain feeling for what is going on in society even when you can't trust a word they say.

Hence this book. It attempts to tell the history of Australia as portrayed by the broadside printers. Sometimes the actual broadside is reproduced, art and all; sometimes the text has been reset, either to be clearer or because the owner would not let author Ingleton do more than transcribe the text. There are many tales of shipwrecks and disasters, tales of bushrangers, a lot of murders, a few songs, a few "News You Can Use" sorts of items ("FATAL EFFECTS of EATING The TOAD FISH: A Warning to All and Sundry"), even a wanted poster, as well as ads for emigrants.

The result is interesting, but it really isn't a history. Ingleton has notes at the end, describing each broadside and its context, but there is nothing to give coherence to the whole. It would probably be better if it were presented as a continuous history with broadsides interspersed.

But what really makes it hard to use as a history is the lack of an index. Given that the titles of the broadsides often don't give a good idea of what they are about, the only way to use this book is to go through it from cover to cover. Which makes it pretty useless as a reference. And the broadside writers really were hacks. Reading the same cliches and references to Horrid Murders over and over and over.... Well, if you like reading police blotters, it might interest you. But, for anyone else, it will probably be very tiring. ( )