Stuart Macintyre was an eminent figure within the world of Australian history scholarship for 45 years. This collection of essays and responses revisits and extends this extraordinary life of achievement and engagement. Leading scholars write here of Macintyre's contribution to understanding radicalism and communism, postwar reconstruction, education and civics, universities, liberalism, historiography and the history wars. They also tell us about collegiality and friendship. The practice of history writing and telling has long been central to the narrative of the nation in Australia. The Work of History connects us to that past. It raises the question of what comes next, and re-values Macintyre's contribution, serving both as a snapshot of the state of the historian's art, and an introduction to those who come more recently to this highly contested field.

Sian Supski is a cultural sociologist who works as a journeywoman researcher. She has written two books, A Proper Foundation: A History of the Lotteries Commission of Western Australia and It was Another Skin: The Kitchen in 1950s Western Australia. She is an editor of Thesis Eleven. Sian was a visiting scholar at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in 2015 and is affiliated with Sichuan University, PRC. Peter Beilharz is Professor of Critical Theory at Sichuan University, PRC, and is affiliated with Yale, Leeds, La Trobe and Curtin universities. He founded the international journal, Thesis Eleven in 1980. He has published thirty books, most recently Circling Marx (2020) and Intimacy in Postmodern Times: A Friendship with Zygmunt Bauman (2020). Peter is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.