What does Australia’ s military history reveal about us? In Beyond the Broken Years – fifty years after Bill Gammage’ s acclaimed The Broken Years was published – provocative military historian Peter Stanley argues why it’ s vital for Australians to understand how our military past has been created, by whom, how and with what consequences. Stanley explores military history and the storytellers – from historians Charles Bean, Henry Reynolds, Joan Beaumont and David Horner to ‘ ’ Storians’ Peter FitzSimons and Les Carlyon – and grapples with what it means to write military history, its different approaches, the rise of popular writers and much more. He asks readers to consider a genre that plays a central role in the Australian identity, but many take for granted.