These papers, each by a notable Australian scholar, offer several approaches to the Australian experience, past, present, and future. The authors come from different disciplines, but what they have in common is their familiarity with the United States, and their experience in interpreting their homeland to an American audience.

As they discuss poetry and politics, nationalism and feminism, Aboriginal society and urbanization, they also explore a common theme: the emergence of a distinctive Australian entity, and the contribution to it - positive, negative, direct and indirect - of the United States.