Geography and economics have been more important to Australian history than politics. The ‘tyranny of distance’ shows itself in Aboriginal culture, Western settlement and economic development, foreign relations, and so on. They have often been interrelated, as in the development of export products (notably wool and mining) or the influence of drought. Owing to scarcity of labor, working conditions and labor law have been advanced, leading to egalitarianism (equality of outcomes) and also devotion to sport (as outside leisure). Black-white relations, obviously one-sided and sometimes fraught, are not more significant than the latter 20th-century influx of Asian peoples, which supplemented steadily decreasing European migration. Crisply written.