The fatal shore

What Hacker News says

1. madjayhawkFeb 2022
   The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. An absolutely brilliant account of the founding of Australia. A review: https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Personal/Books/Hughes-Fatal-Shore/ Questions to think about as you read: Why weren't criminals transported to the Americas instead of to Australia? What if they had been? Do governments ever consider the long range implications of their policies? Were German the only people who practiced government-sponsored barbarism against subsets of their own people?
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2. EdwardWarrenJun 2020
   I'm 78. I do the same. I select problems from Codeforces or Codewars and work on those. I did enter contests for awhile but needed more experience to successfully compete.

   I learned python a few years ago and have experience with several other languages as well. Python is perfect for someone like myself. To me it is a thing of beauty.

   I read a lot - history and biography mainly. Favorites: The Fatal Shore and Empire of the Autumn Moon. Travel 2-3 times a year. Been to Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America as well as all over North America. Favorite place? Singapore.

   Walk 2 miles+ a day.

   Am a top backgammon player on ZooEscape.

   Been married 51 years today and been blessed with 3 great kids.

   Not rich but comfortable. Always been a saver or what my sister calls a cheapskate.

   Am definitely slowing down. Am more cranky. And think the world is going crazy. Other than that life is better than I expected it would be at this age.

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3. thisrodJul 2016
   You should read The Fatal Shore.
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4. idlewordsSep 2015
   A lot of those criminals were people who were transported for trifling offenses like theft. The real driver behind Australian settlement was overpopulation in Britain, not the need to get rid of some hardened criminal class. The Fatal Shore is a good, readable history of this social experiment.

   Note also that this "budding free society" was responsible for horrible atrocities against the native population until fairly recent times.

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5. smackayMar 2013
   For Australian history from 1788 onwards, The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes is an excellent read. It also gives a good insight to British attitudes to criminality, of which traces can still be seen today in government policy, etc.
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6. benjoffeJul 2011
   I read the same story in The Fatal Shore [1] which to my knowledge is a very well researched/factual book on early convict history (though I don't recall the success rate being initially as low as 40%, it was low though).

   [1] http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Shore-Epic-Australias-Founding/d...

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