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.