It deserves a wide readership. Makers of Miracles must be judged by more scholarly criteria, having begun life as a collection of papers delivered to an academic conference. The main focus is on participants in the federation process whose success appeared to Alfred Deakin 'to have been secured by a series of miracles'. Understanding is enhanced by a number of finely woven biographical sketches including, notably, Jeff Brownrigg's perceptive picture of bureaucrat and 'closet academic' Robert Garran, who was 'always winnowing language, collecting ways of saying things and measuring the quality of prose', and John Williams' probing treatment of Tasmanian electoral reformer Andrew Inglis Clark, every room of whose house displayed a portrait of the Italian republican, Giuseppe Mazzini. Also impressive in this regard is Kay Saunders' daring elucidation of sometime Queensland premier Samuel Griffith's involvement as a reflection of his need to shed his lower middle class, nonconformist Welsh origins by reinventing himself as an aristocratic Anglican.
Some contributions explore completely new ground.
Such is Tessa Milne's meticulously documented, incisively sympathetic picture of pious, teetotaling, Presbyterian farmer Robert McGeoch, a delegate to the Corowa and Bathurst federal conferences. Some revise accepted versions. Thus, Norman Abjorensen presents a cogently structured, persuasive argument showing New South Wales premier George Reid as less erratically inconsistent than is generally allowed. Some proffer interesting speculation that points the way to further research. Geoffrey Bolton suggests that Edmund Barton's role may have been facilitated by his overcoming of an alcohol problem.