This, the first volume of Edward’s project, takes us from the inception of World War II to 1942 – the period immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There followed the US entry into the war, the fall of Singapore, and the confirmation of Curtin’s early prediction that Australia’s fortunes depended on the United States, not Britain, in the Pacific War.

To reach this point, Edwards recapitulates Curtin’s life and political history. We are introduced to his early socialism and activism, journalistic career, election to parliament, the calamitous politics of the Depression (and loss of his own seat in 1931), re-election in 1934 with election to party leadership in 1935, and the tortuous process of rebuilding Labor as a respectable party of government. It is an adroit revelation of character and of intense commitment tempered by learning the art of the possible – and consumes more than half of this volume.

Curtin, a loner at heart, had to adapt markedly in managing Labor’s contending forces (combative radicals versus pragmatists; ambitious opportunists intent on displacing him). There were personal demons to overcome: depressive episodes and the alcoholism that blighted much of his career. There was the strain of balancing the family life that was so important to him with constant travel (from Perth to Canberra) and then the crushing demands of leadership and approaching war. Edwards is adept in using the letters between Curtin and his wife, Elsie, to illuminate their relationship, and to recover Curtin’s own representation of the challenges and fears tormenting him, and the agonies of separation from family support.

However, the book does not really take off until its mid-point, when we get to Edwards’s primary subject – the encroachment on everything else of war. Curtin’s prescience in predicting likely developments in the Pacific, and his fraught negotiations with Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the disposition of Australian forces for the defence of Australia once combat commenced and the prospect of invasion seemed ever more imminent, form the heart of this narrative.

It is here that Edwards shines. His project reminds one of Ken Inglis’s and Alan Gilbert’s admonition: that ‘the future that beckoned or alarmed [historical subjects] was not necessarily our past – what actually happened – but rather a hidden destiny, a precarious vision of probabilities, possibilities and uncertainties’. As Edwards takes us through the minutiae of Curtin’s strenuous attempts to assert Australia’s interests, to bring elements of the AIF back from Europe to defend Australia and to gain a US commitment in the Pacific theatre, against Churchill’s ruthless commitment to the European war and Roosevelt’s relative inattention to Britain’s dominions – until Japanese aggression forced his hand – we are compelled to appreciate Curtin’s confrontation with a hidden destiny, subject to a most precarious vision of probabilities, possibilities, and uncertainties.

Without resorting to hagiography or polemics, Edwards persuades us not only of the courage and tenacity with which Curtin fought his corner, but also displays a sure sense of the complexities, anxieties, failures, and nuances of the deliberative processes and relationship building this entailed. To achieve this with gripping anecdotes in accessible prose will make it an indispensable book for those who have read nothing else on Curtin.

John Curtin’s War also justifies our attention to Edwards’s interpretation, despite competing accounts that cover almost exactly the same ground. It is nonetheless striking that Edwards – widely read in every other respect – makes no reference to works that most closely parallel his own, such as David Day’s equally lengthy, rigorously researched and detailed The Politics of War: Australia at war 1939–45, from Churchill to MacArthur (2003). Arguably, new books and articles of recent years have superseded Day. While Edwards trawls much the same archives as his predecessor, clearly he makes his own choices and reaches his own conclusions. Nonetheless, this may take abstaining from debate with others a little too far, and the assiduous reader will find comparative treatment of the same events in these two books (for instance, the cable wars between Curtin and Churchill) thought-provoking.

A limitation of Edwards’s concentration upon the military imperatives, and especially upon Curtin’s relationships with allied leaders and generals, is that it leads at times to sketchy coverage of essential domestic politics. Edwards notes, for example, that instances of Curtin’s absence from certain crucial War Cabinet meetings (due to a return to Perth, and episodic illness) probably contributed to poor outcomes, but does not offer sufficient detail of how he handled colleagues when he was there.

While astute in capturing Curtin’s reliance on the influential Secretary of Defence Coordination, Fred Shedden, Edwards pays less attention to others. In his account, there were just five important players: Churchill, Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur (US commander in the Pacific), General Thomas Blamey (commander of Australian forces), and Shedden. This leads to an underestimation of one of Curtin’s conspicuous skills: his capacity to exercise distributed leadership at home, to give difficult colleagues hard jobs (Eddie Ward, Labour and National Service, for instance), which limited their time and capacity for general criticism while drawing his closest allies – officials as well as politicians (Ben Chifley, especially) – ever closer as participants in key decisions. Chifley’s significance as an emotional support in the hardest times is underplayed.

Edwards accords Curtin ‘some kind of moral authority’, difficult to define but undeniable, yet there are many accounts from his colleagues that illuminate just how it was acquired: recognised integrity; the knowledge of how hard and agonisingly Curtin worked on outcomes; courage and resolve when a course was decided; notwithstanding ambition, a steady commitment to the cause rather than self-aggrandisement; and a capacity for decision allied with personal humility. The manner in which this loner and worrier generated enormous regard on all sides is an object lesson for contemporary leaders.