Whitlam PM, a biography

Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1973 [1st edition]; 120 x 190 mm, 246 pp. Hard Cover - VG, with a very slight lean and pages age-toned as expected, in a VG dustwrapper with a [previous owner?] surname in light pen on the front. Now scarce in any edition, this is overall a pristine copy of this landmark biography in the original hard cover first edition. From the dustwrapper: ""Mr Oakes, a journalist with the Melbourne Sun has made himself somewhat of an authority on this curious man, the Prime Minister."" B. M. Snedden. A man of unshakeable principle who walks with destiny or an erudite opportunist ? The greatest Prime Minister since Curtin or an impractical visionary? In this, the first comprehensive biography of Whitlam, journalist and author Laurie Oakes examines the background and career of the man who has become Australia's most controversial Prime Minister since Federation; the sensitive, gangling schoolboy with a flair for classical parody - and a total ineptitude in arithmetic; the arrogant, articulate student and consummate college man who dazzled his contemporaries and narrowly avoided horse-whipping; the RAF navigator who conquered his distaste for mathematics but not his air-sickness; the brilliant young lawyer, tenacious and pedantic; the ambitious politician who consciously and successfully set out to become a man of the people, who was denounced by his colleagues as a 'silvertail' and a self-seeker but who emerged triumphant from the faction fighting and personal confrontations of the sixties to lead his party out of the politicial wilderness and into office for the first time in twenty-three years Perceptive, lucid and informed, WHITLAM PM is the first significant contribution to an understanding of the man whose philosophies and actions are shaping Australia's future.