This is one of a number of a number of parallel posts recording my reactions to Don Aitkin's What was it all for? The Reshaping of Australia. (Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005). I will add a full list of posts later.
Because the book centres on social change in Australia over fifty or so years, it contains a lot of material on the changing way Australian's think. The use of the Armidale High School leaving certificate class of 1953 as a prism provides a personal element to the story.
Overall, I think that the book illuminates many of the changes that have taken place not just in Australia, but in other countries as well.
