" Since its first publication by Melbourne University Press Australia s Home has been in constant demand. The author summarizes his story, from 1788 to 1960, as a material triumph and an aesthetic calamity'. Readers have thoroughly enjoyed the combination of informative detail and quiet humour, and the architectural features of a house, a street, or a suburb, which have up until now been simply different, gain an added interest and significance. People read Australia s Home for pure pleasure as an eventful illuminating story. Householders read it to see their house and streetscapes afresh through Boyd s eyes, their own vision both criticized and enriched by his. Architects and planners read it to agonize with Boyd over built forms and townscapes . . . But the book is most remarkable of all as history, a great bit of poaching by an architect-journalist who never claimed to write history at all. "