Peter Stanley is one of Australia's most distinguished scholars of military history.
An immensely prolific researcher and author, he has published over two dozen
books on various aspects of experiences of war, ranging from coverage of the home
front, the front line, the propaganda campaigns, through to the myths and legends
that form in the aftermath of conflict. Stanley's latest work, The Crying Years:
Australia's Great War, builds on this exemplary record by presenting public
audiences with a rich and engaging visual history of the Australian experience of
the First World War. In an expert blending of the visual with the textual, Stanley
has smoothly weaved his narrative of the war through a collection of visual items
from the National Library of Australia's holdings. The great strength of The Crying
Years is that readers are simultaneously engaged in Stanley's writing and
immersed in the feeling of the period via historical photographs, recruitment
materials, maps, cartoons, and ephemera of the era, with a small number of
selected textual sources such as diaries, letters and newspaper reports.