The Making of Julia Gillard
Jacqueline Kent
Penguin Viking paperback $32.95
Released 21 September 2009
The Making of Julia Gillard is the first complete biography of Australia’s most powerful woman. Julia Gillard is an exceptional Australian political figure.
The first woman to be deputy prime minister [[ and tipped by many to get the top job in the future – she is admired on both sides of politics as well as by the public. Yet Gillard is not loved by everybody. Her career has been marked by pitched battles with jealous rivals and powerful factions. To conservatives she is still ‘red Julia’; to some on the Left she remains a politician too willing to compromise. She is widely perceived to be ambitious, and yet does she want to be prime minister?
The Making of Julia Gillard tells Gillard’s remarkable story, including her Adelaide childhood, her time as a fiery student activist, her battles to get into Parliament and her relationships with the important men in her political life:
Simon Crean, Kim Beazley, Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd. It also shows a woman whose private life has not always been easy.
In this immensely readable book, acclaimed biographer Jacqueline Kent draws on interviews with Gillard’s friends and foes – and with Gillard herself – to reveal the complexities of a woman whose public appeal is based on her apparent ordinariness.
