Books by Adam Wakeling

Why the Enlightenment Matters

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2023

For all the challenges we face in the modern world, those of us in first world democracies live lives which have seemed miraculous to our forebears of a few centuries ago. With modern medical science, we can easily treat injuries and illnesses which used to be fatal. We have plentiful food, rights to freedom of speech and religion, access to public education, and can vote for our leaders. We still have a long way to go to free ourselves of injustice, poverty and want, but no human societies have ever gone further.

Why the Enlightenment Matters goes back to the seventeenth century to explore how we broke out of old ways of thinking to move towards the scientific method, industrial revolution, liberal democracy, and human rights. Looking back, it’s easy to see these developments as inevitable. In reality, huge barriers stood in the path of progress.

Today, with the world grappling with the rise of new forms of authoritarianism and the re-emergence of old ones, it is more important than ever to understand what makes our societies successful. And, from that, how we can confidently face the threats of the future.

Stern Justice

Penguin, 2018

While the Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War are infamous, as are the atrocities committed by Japan in that conflict, few now remember the trials that prosecuted Japanese personnel for those crimes. Stern Justice recovers this forgotten story in a gripping, powerfully written history of an event that saw Australia emerge as a player on the stage of international law.

The Last Fifty Miles

Penguin, 2016

The Last Fifty Miles is the riveting account of how, when it mattered most, Australia stood up to play a critical role in one of the most decisive victories of World War One. Told with immediacy, lyricism and a clear-eyed focus by a brilliant new talent in history writing, it relives an extraordinary, neglected chapter of Australia's past.

A House of Commons For a Den of Thieves

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2020

In 1788, Great Britain founded a colony in Australia to swallow up its criminals. And swallow them it did – more than 160,000 men and women were transported to the Australian colonies over eight decades. Remarkably, these colonies swiftly developed into robust and innovative democracies. The 1856 Victorian election was the first in the world where voters took a government-printed ballot paper, took it into a private voting booth to fill it out, then put it in a ballot box. And Australians have kept this democratic model ever since. A House of Commons for a Den of Thieves is the story of how the citizens of these colonies threw off the stigma of their criminal origins and asserted their rights. Not only against imperial authorities in London but also those wealthy and powerful men in the colonies themselves who distrusted the idea of mass democracy. And through their success, they created a lasting democratic tradition that their descendants have expanded and built on up until the present day.