Anzackery: ‘It’s what the Bogans want’?

The Honest History Book is an edited volume that challenges the imposed dominance of some of the jingoistic peculiarities of the Anzac legend and advocates for a broader understanding of what constitutes ‘Australian history’. In many ways, the volume reads as a version 2.0 of What’s Wrong with Anzac?: it is combat history, castigating some of the uses of the Anzac legend and their consequences. Not least, it calls into question a khaki-oriented national history that has so often excluded women, Indigenous peoples, migrants and, above all, critical thinking. The volume does not question Anzac’s historicity; rather, it asks why it is presently enshrined as the centrepiece of Australia’s national history when other narratives could be used for a similar purpose.