Rowan Cahill - Cold War Kid

Name: Rowan Cahill - Cold War Kid
Start: 2026-05-29T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-05-29T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6:30pm Friday 29 May

Rowan Cahill in conversation with Wendy Bacon and Hall Greenland, moderated by Adam Morton.

When Rowan Cahill turned 20, his number was drawn in the conscription ‘death lottery’ and he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. What came next was a choice that would shape the rest of his life: participate in an unjust war or take a stand against conscription and risk being jailed. Cold War Kid: Resisting the Vietnam War is a story about the power of joining with others to rebel, keeping hope alive, and how a good book can change your life.

Join Rowan for the Sydney launch of Cold War Kid: Resisting the Vietnam War at Gleebooks where he will be joined by comrades Wendy Bacon and Hall Greenland for a conversation about the anti-Vietnam war movement, writing Cold War Kid, his life as an historian and activist, and what these experiences mean for contemporary struggles. The conversation will be moderated by political economist Adam Morton.

"Rowan sees the militaristic thread through Australia’s history, the violence this history imposes on us all, and our individual and collective spiritual struggle to overcome it.” - Hannah Forsyth, Historian

Rowan Cahill was conscripted for military service in 1965. He became a Conscientious Objector and prominent in the anti-war and New Left movements of the 1960s and 70s. He has variously worked as a farmhand; as a teacher in technical education, schools, the prison system, universities; as a freelance writer; and for the trade union movement as a publicist, historian, and rank and file activist. His recent books, co-authored with Terry Irving, are Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes (UNSW Press, 2010) and The Barber Who Read History: Essays in Radical History (Bull Ant Press, 2021).

Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist and political activist who has contributed to ABC, SBS, New Matilda, Crikey, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian.

Hall Greenland is a journalist and activist. His most recent book is The Well-Dressed Revolutionary: the Odyssey of Michel Pablo (Resistance Books, 2023)

Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy at University of Sydney. His most recent book is Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2018).