A sweet and sensible social history of Perth from 1950 to the start of the 2000s. Jenny Gregory is the writer of several commissioned histories related to Western Australia, but this is a cut above the rest. Although clearly commissioned by the Council or the Government, this is an independent work that seeks to discover the social and economic changes that overwhelmed the most isolated city in the world, changes that took it from an outpost with a population in the mid-100s of thousands to a 2 million metropolis fuelled by mining money and tourism.

Gregory's book sits consciously as a sequel to the pioneering work of CT Stannage in his "The People of Perth" and his broader history of Western Australia, and sits alongside Geoffrey Bolton's general history which covers the later 20th century from a political standpoint. Well worth it, with a great array of pictures too. ( )