The Rum Rebellion on Australia Day, 1808 was the outcome of the head-on collision between two of the most determined personalities in Australian history. One was Captain William Bligh R.N., Governor of the Penal Colony of New South Wales: the other was John Macarthur, at one time an officer in the infamous New South Wales Corps, and later a very wealthy and influential merchant and pastoralist.

That the penal colony was established on 26 January, 1788 was a direct result of the American War of Independence, for it would thereafter not be possible for people sentenced to penal servitude in Britain to be sent into exile in the Colonies of New England.

The beginnings of the first European settlement in Australia were therefore altogether inauspicious. Those who arrived in the First Fleet were either convicted felons or the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps who were to be their jailers. The King of England and his government were represented in the Colony by the Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N..

In the absence of any free settlers and in particular of anything resembling a merchant class, the officers of the Corps were able to control the distribution of all kinds of commodities, including food, that were brought into the colony.

Of particular historical importnce among those commodities was rum: rum which was so generally sought after in the colony that the Corps officers, by their illegal trafficking, were able to establish it as a de facto currency.In rum, wages were paid, other goods were bought and sold and contractual obligations discharged.

No one profited from this ruinous commerce more than John Macarthur who, by virtue of his dominant personality, became the acknowledged leader and spokesman of the officers as well as others, including some emancipated convicts, engaged in the rum trade.

It was only natural then that, when Governor William Bligh arrived in the colony in August, 1806 under instructions to pursue a policy favourable to the small farmers of the Hawkesbury Valley and unfavourable to the interests of the rum traffickers in Sydney, these latter should look to Macarthur to lead their challenge against the Governor and lawful authority.

In large part the conflict between the rum traffickers and the proper authority of the governor manifested itself in a series of legal actions brought by Macarthur against anyone who seemed to threaten his previously unfettered monopoly, and found expression in formal reports by the Governor to the Colonial Office in London as well as in less formal despatches from Macarthur to influential members of the English aristocracy whom he considered likely to support his cause.

The crisis came on 26 January, 1808, exactly twenty years after the establishment of the settlement in Sydney Cove. On that day, the officers of the Corps led their soldiers - most of them emboldened be liberal quantities of rum - in a march upon the Governor's residence. It was, as Evatt wrote "... an organised attack, not only in military array, but by officers and soldiers with loaded guns, fixed bayonets and all the panoply of war."

Governor Bligh was arrested and supplanted in executive control of the colony by a junta of military officers and John Macarthur.

It is one of the more bitter ironies of Australian history that this treasonous outrage occurred on the very day upon which, every year since Federation in 1901, Australians celebrate their nationhood.

Bligh has been much maligned by popular history both in Australia and elsewhere, and Evatt's book did much to set the record straight. It brought to bear upon the events and relationships narrated the objectivity of analysis and the fair-mindedness one would hope should characterise an author of such eminence. Dr. Evatt has, in addition, performed the estimable service of making otherwise cloudy legal vistas clear and accessible to any interested lay reader.

A distinguished jurist, Dr. Evatt was, at various times, a Justice of the High Court of Australia, Attorney-General and Foreign Minister and, in 1948-49, the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation.

when will come new publish of this book ?

There are many excellent textbooks about Internal Medicine on the market, and I own a lot of them. But the Kelley's book is the one I look up more often. It stands out, since it gives you the broadest and deepest clinical coverage of the internal medicine you can find in a two-volumes textbook. The forthcoming 4th edition, which is scheduled for 8/2000 and will be edited by Humes, will expand furter the coverage, reaching an unprecedented range, at least as can be judged by the anticipated index. For the sake of clarity and completeness, each subspecialty (cardiology, endocrinology and metabolism, and so forth) is divided in three parts: the first group of chapters is devoted to the pathophysiologic foundations, the second to diseases and the third to the diagnosis and treatment. This format is clever, because allow you to study each section separately without being overwhelmed by the astonishing amount of information it contains. A lot of chapters are devoted to the approach to the patient with different symptoms, to the interpretation of instrumental data and to the treatment: they are another distictive feature of the book, making it invaluable. If you are a physician or a serious student searching for an authoritative, encyclopedic textbook with broad pathophysiologic coverage and wide sections about the management of the patient, the Kelley's textbook will not disappoint you. For many of us, it is a must buy. For all, it is a bargain. This textbook is the gold standard as Internal Medicine textbook: it got 5-stars from Doody, and as far as I know, it was the only one awarded with such a high acknowledgement. I agree: five stars.

most comprehensive work ever.an edge over Harrison &Cecil.must buy.

This collection is a travesty indeed. Great poems no doubt, but abysmally read. Furthermore they should have put all the introductions together separate and apart from the poems. It's nice to hear intros the first time around. But who wants to hear the intros everytime you listen to the poems? Sometimes I want to hear just a stream of poetry without any interuptions and this format makes that impossible. It's incredible that such a great concept could be so terribly executed.

I could not get this back to the store for a refund quickly enough. While the poem selection is great and the poem introductions are narrated well, the choice to use "modern poets" as the readers made this compilation utterly unlistenable. The only one that I found acceptable was Anthony Hect--the others were notably bad. In particular, I found Jorie Graham's "readings" to be abysmal. She reads each poem as if it were simply a string of unconnected words, giving equal stress to each, with halting pauses between them, never breaking out of a drowsy monotone. Other readers were not much better.

There are three major flaws in the readings:

1) The readers are no better than the average untrained person, and often much worse. (You've just got to hear them for yourself to appreciate how bad they are.)

2) Successive poems by the same poet are read by different "readers." It's jarring to hear 3 or 4 poems from Poet X, each in a wildly different voice.

3) No regard is given to matching the sex of the poet and reader. In general, it is really annoying to hear your favorite poet read by the wrong sex. In particular, making this mistake on "gender specific" poems (like having a woman read Poe's "Annabel Lee") is unforgivable.

Why is this all so upsetting? Because it is practically impossible to find poetry collections on CD, making this a serious waste of limited resources. If you are looking for a good collection on CD, buy "81 Famous Poems CD" by Audio Partners (ISBN 0-945353-82-0). It's a good collection on two CDs and is read by professionals: Alexander Scourby, Bramwell Fletcher, and Nancy Wickwire. In the meantime, we can only hope that the producers of this collection will eventually come to their senses and re-record the poems with the services of trained professionals.

If you are prepping for the GRE in literature or are trying to gain a basic understanding of literary periods and poets, this audio-collection is a must. It features a brief introduction about each poet's life. It also includes a brief introduction about the theme of each poem. The fact that you have to listen to these introductions before listening to the poem inculcate the poem and aids retention. If literature has turned into a cumbersome and overwhelming task, this collection will not only provide you with a sense of direction but will also make literature far more pleasurable.