American journeys with Don Watson
Date
2008
Authors
Watson, Don
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Recording, oral
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Don Watson talks about his recently published travel book, American journeys which investigates the meaning of the United States: its confidence, its religion, its heroes, its violence, and its material obsessions. The things that make America great are also its greatest flaws. Not long after 9/11 Don Watson wrote a Quarterly Essay about Australia’s relationship with the US. Called Rabbit Syndrome, it provoked huge debate -unsurprisingly, given that America is Australia’s most important ally. But America is just about everyone’s most important ally. So what is it that has made the US so extraordinarily successful? Why do we love it so much yet clearly loathe it at the same time? How can it be so dynamic yet so neglectful of its own citizens, such a land of freedom and oppression all at once?
Don Watson is a Melbourne-based freelance writer with a PhD from Monash University. He has been a speechwriter for former Victorian Premier, John Cain, and has also served as speechwriter and adviser to former Prime Minister, Paul Keating until Keating’s defeat in the 1996 election.
Talk recorded at the University of Adelaide, Bragg Lecture Theatre, Thursday 6 March 2008, at a free public event hosted by the Friends of the University of Adelaide Library.
Don Watson is a Melbourne-based freelance writer with a PhD from Monash University. He has been a speechwriter for former Victorian Premier, John Cain, and has also served as speechwriter and adviser to former Prime Minister, Paul Keating until Keating’s defeat in the 1996 election.
Talk recorded at the University of Adelaide, Bragg Lecture Theatre, Thursday 6 March 2008, at a free public event hosted by the Friends of the University of Adelaide Library.