Clendinnen, the distinguished historian of early Spanish America and award-winning author of Tiger's Eyeand Reading the Holocaust,turns her incomparable eye to the extraordinary events attending the first British settlement in Australia. She offers a fresh reading of reports, letters and journals of British participants to reconstruct the difficult path to friendship and conciliation pursued by Arthur Phillip and the local leader Bennelong; and then traces the painful destruction of that hard-won friendship as profound cultural differences asserted themselves.