Bongiorno attended Parade College in Bundoora from 1981 to 1986 and was a contemporary of future Greens leader, Richard Di Natale.
[5][6] McLennnan is a curator and historian who received her PhD from ANU in 1998 and has since worked for the National Centre of Biography, specialising in Victorian history.
"[12] Bongiorno, who is a republican, has expressed doubt about Australia becoming a republic under the reign of King Charles III: "I don't see any easy road ahead.
On the other hand, there are many republicans - some very well-placed in terms of access to public platforms - who believe popular election will undermine or even undo parliamentary democracy.
I remain to be convinced they can be almost a quarter of a century on... [There is a] tradition whereby politicians proclaim the republic inevitable while always finding reasons to put it off until the week after never".
"[15] Of Anthony Albanese himself, Bongiorno disputes his image as an outsider, writing that he was in fact a "very modern species: the student politician who came to parliament via a career as a political staffer and party official.
[23][24][25] Bongiorno's fourth book, The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia was described by The Australian as "meaty and entertaining" and by The Age as a "rattling account, quick-cut and filmic, of contrasting, often overlapping, events: high and low culture, the big moments nestling in the finer long-forgotten detail".
Author Tom Keneally described it as an "elegantly written and imaginative recounting of the time", historian Clare Wright as having "narrative flair and an eagle-eye for vulgar detail", while conservative columnist Gerard Henderson labelled it a "one-sided dumb history".