About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group

ISBN-10038551459X

ISBN-139780385514590

eBay Product ID (ePID)12038247215

Product Key Features

Book TitleCommonwealth of Thieves : the Improbable Birth of Australia

Number of Pages400 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicGeneral, Penology, Australia & New Zealand

Publication Year2006

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, History

AuthorThomas Keneally

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.3 in

Item Weight24.9 Oz

Item Length9.5 in

Item Width6.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2006-044470

Dewey Edition22

TitleLeadingA

ReviewsPraise for Thomas Keneally "In the style of the best historians [Keneally] allows the intrinsic power of the tales he tells and the people who populate his pages to draw the reader into a fully elaborated universe." -New York Times "Keneally has all the gifts of a great storyteller: a curious eye, a clear voice, worldly knowledge and an innocent, inexhaustible heart." -San Francisco Chronicle "Keneally is joyfully inquisitiveâ€¦.He enters naturally and sympathetically into the hearts of his protagonists-his own prose takes on the flavour of the period he invokes." -Times Literary Supplement "Keneally's atmospheric and descriptive powers are formidable." -Boston Globe "Keneally has a gift for heroic stories." -Washington Post

Dewey Decimal994.02

SynopsisIt was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English government decided to undertake the unprecedented move of shipping off its convicts to a largely unexplored landmass at the other end of the world. Using the personal journals and documents that were kept during this expedition, historian/novelist Thomas Keneally re-creates the grueling overseas voyage, a hellish, suffocating journey that claimed the lives of many convicts. Miraculously, the fleet reached the shores of what was then called New South Wales in 1788, and after much trial and error, the crew managed to set up a rudimentary yet vibrant settlement. As governor of the colony, Phillip took on the challenges of dealing with unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, a bewildered, sometimes hostile native population, as well as such serious matters as food shortages and disease. Moving beyond Phillip, Keneally offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines, who both aided and opposed Phillip, and of the settlers, including convicts who were determined to overcome their pasts and begin anew. With the authority of a renowned historian and the narrative grace of a brilliant novelist, Thomas Keneally offers an insider's perspective into the dramatic saga of the birth of a vibrant society in an unfamiliar land.A Commonwealth of Thievesimmerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up colorful scenes of the joy and heartbreak, the thrills and hardships that characterized those first four improbable years. The result is a lively and engrossing work of history, as well as a tale of redemption for the thousands of convicts who started new lives thousands of miles from their homes.

LC Classification NumberDU99.K46 2006