Ned Kelly's tin helmet looms large over Australia's bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Morgan who set out to write his name in blood on history's ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging's greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery?

In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear.