Cities in a Sunburnt Country

Margaret Cook is an environmental historian, author of A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods (2019) and co-editor (with Scott McKinnon) of Disasters in Australia and New Zealand (2020). She was the recipient of the John and Ruth Kerr Medal of Distinction in History (2020). Lionel Frost is the author of The New Urban Frontier: Urbanisation and City-Building in Australasia and the American West (1991), winner of the Dyos Prize in Urban History (1994), and a contributor to the Cambridge History of Australia (2013), Cambridge World History (2015), and Cambridge Economic History of Australia (2015). Andrea Gaynor is Professor of History and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at The University of Western Australia. An environmental historian, she seeks to use the contextualising and narrative power of history to support transitions to more just and sustainable societies. Jenny Gregory AM FRHS is Emeritus Professor of History at The University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on urban history, primarily town planning and heritage. Her books include City of Light: A History of Perth since the 1950s (2003) and, as Editor-in-Chief, the Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia (2009). Ruth A. Morgan is an environmental historian, whose prize-winning work on the histories of water and climate has been generously funded by the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a Lead Author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report. Martin Shanahan is Professor of Economic and Business History at the University of South Australia and Elof Hansson Visiting Professor in International Business and Trade at Gothenburg University, Sweden. A recipient of the Butlin Prize in Economic History, he has also written on wealth and income distribution, international cartels and water markets. Peter Spearritt is Emeritus Professor in History at The University of Queensland and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His books include Sydney's Century (2000), Where History Happened: The Hidden Past of Australia's Towns and Places (2018), and, as co-author, The Twentieth-Century Historic Thematic Framework (2021).

'Drawing on a rich set of evidence and expertise, this book provides a fascinating account of how water has shaped the five largest cities in the driest inhabited continent on Earth. This is a beautifully written and important book that reveals new insights into our pasts and possible futures.' Emily O'Gorman, Macquarie University

• 1. Prologue; 2. Living water; 3. Domesticating water; 4. Keeping up; 5. Transforming homes; 6. Watering suburbia; 7. Crises of confidence; 8. Twenty-first century Australian cities; 9. Epilogue.