A major Australian university and a great Victorian freeway are named after Sir John Monash, but many people-especially younger generations-know little about him.
Monash was one of Australia's greatest men, and probably the greatest of its soldiers. The son of Jewish immigrants from Prussia, he graduated from the University of Melbourne in three faculties-Arts, Law and Engineering. He was a man of wide-ranging intellect, and especially devoted to literature, music, theatre, languages and Jewish scholarship.
He achieved fame as a soldier-a citizen-soldier-in World War I. His baptism of fire occurred at Gallipoli, and he was almost the only senior allied general to emerge from the agony of the Western Front with his reputation virtually unspotted.
Before the war, Monash pioneered the Australian use of reinforced concrete, then a revolutionary construction material. On his return, he became the first chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, putting his gift for leadership to harnessing Gippsland's huge brown coal deposits. Monash spent his energies lavishly on the public affairs of his native Australia and placed his immense prestige at the service of many great causes.
Geoffrey Serle's award-winning and best-selling biography of John Monash is much more than a military study. It offers a revealing portrait of a confident leader and public figure, and of an intensely inward-dwelling and sensitive private person.
