Volume LIV Number 3
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Books
Plainer than John Howard
They Called Him Old Smoothie: John Joseph Cahill, by Peter Golding; Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009, 484 pages, $49.95.
Charisma, turbulence and the ability to create drama ensure attention in politics and history. Few Australian politicians have attracted more interest and have had more written about them than Jack Lang, Premier of New South Wales for five years in the 1920s and 1930s and Paul Keating’s mentor. But Lang was a controversial rather than particularly successful government leader.
By contrast, John Joseph (“Joe”) Cahill, Premier from 1952 until his sudden death in office in 1959, was a quiet achiever. It is no surprise, then, that it has taken fifty years for a biography to appear.
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