This is a review of a book which deserves a wide audience. Jeff Sparrow has chosen to write a short history of Marxism in Australia, in the form of a biography of one of its more colourful characters, Guido Barrachi: bohemian, womanizer and lifelong communist militant. Born in 1887 into a solidly bourgeois background, the son of famous astronomer Pierro Barrachi, Guido attended the elite Melbourne Grammar School, before moving onto the equally elite Melbourne University. Unlike many young men from a similar background, who flirt with radical politics in their youth only to settle into a surly conservatism in their middle years, Barrachi’s politics moved in an increasingly radical direction.