Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests.

''Graeme Turner''s writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.'' - Meaghan Morris

''Making it National could be to the 1990s what Richard White''s Inventing Australia was to the 1980s.'' - Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University

Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests.

''Graeme Turner''s writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.'' - Meaghan Morris

''Making it National could be to the 1990s what Richard White''s Inventing Australia was to the 1980s.'' - Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University