1. Introduction; 2. Dancing with strangers; 3. Meeting the informants; 4. Governor Arthur Phillip; 5. Captain John Hunter; 6. Surgeon-General John White; 7. Judge-Advocate David Collins; 8. Watkin Tench, Captain-Lieutenant of Marines; 9. Settling in; 10. What the Australians saw; 11. Arabanoo; 12. Enter Baneelon; 13. Spearing the Governor; 14. 'Coming In'; 15. House guests; 16. British sexual politics; 17. Australian sexual politics; 18. Boat trip to Rose Hill; 19. Headhunt; 20. On disciple; 21. Potato thieves; 22. Expedition; 23. Crime and punishment: Boladeree; 24. Barangaroo; 25. Tench goes home; 26. Phillip goes home; 27. Collins goes home; 28. Collins reconsiders; 29. Baneelon returned; 30. Bungaree; 31. Enter Mrs Charles Meredith; 32. Epilogue.

In January 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who would be their new neighbors. Dancing with Strangers tells the story of what happened between the first British settlers of Australia and the people they found living there. Inga Clendinnen offers a fresh reading of the earliest written sources, the reports, letters, and journals of the first British settlers in Australia. It reconstructs the difficult path to friendship and conciliation pursued by Arthur Phillip and the local leader 'Bennelong' (Baneelon); and then traces the painful destruction of that hard-won friendship. A distinguished and award-winning historian of the Spanish encounters with Aztec and Maya indians of sixteenth-century America, Clendinnen's analysis of early cultural interactions in Australia touches broader themes of recent historical debates: the perception of the Other, the meanings of culture, and the nature of colonialism and imperialism.

Inga Clendinnen is a distinguished historian of the Spanish encounters with Aztec and Maya indians of sixteenth-century America. Her Reading the Holocaust was named a New York Times best book of the year and awarded the NSW Premier's General History Award in 1999. Clendinnen's ABC Boyer Lectures, True Stories, were published in 2000, as was her award-winning memoir, Tiger's Eye. In 2003 Dancing With Strangers attracted wide critical acclaim. Her latest book is Agamemnon's Kiss: Selected Essays.