Book Review

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 174 words from this article are provided below; about 331 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney. By Grace Karskens. (Carlton, Aust.: Melbourne University Press, 1997. xx, 304 pp. $34.95, isbn 0-522-84722-6.)

Grace Karskens, an Australian archaeologist and historian, has meticulously reconstructed the social history of a fascinating and distinctive neighborhood of Sydney—the small waterfront community known as the Rocks. Originally settled by the very first shiploads of convicts from Britain in the 1780s, the Rocks quickly became "a streetless neighborhood of jumbled houses" rising up from the shore of Sydney Cove, providing housing and work for successive waves of newcomers up to 1830. A hilly topography of sandstone outcrops kept the neighborhood irregular and inhospitable for middle-class housing or large-scale commercial building, and continued poverty ensured the nonreplacement of many original if dilapidated structures. As a result, the Rocks today forms the core of Sydney's renovated historic district, a tourist attraction housing restaurants and gift shops. But Karskens peels back the surface to show how it used to be, over the many decades when transported convicts and their families lived there. . . .

There are about 331 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.