Laha Massacre of Australian prisoners of war. The brutality and apparent pointlessness of Laurie's death resonated in the Walker family over the next two generations. The book also explores the lives of two other uncles whose lives were affected by the war. One served in 467 squadron of the RAAF with Bomber Command and another with the 2/43rd Battalion in North Africa, New Guinea and Borneo. A further poignant episode is Walker's gentle description of his mother's decline into dementia and subsequent death. Despite these tragedies the book's premise is one of joy and optimism. This is achieved through the author's wit and good-natured humour in the face of misfortune. A single example in the first chapter sets the tone of the book. When his ophthalmologist told him that he was now "legally blind", his immediate response was to ask if it was possible for him to be "illegally blind" instead. Critical response Not Dark Yet received an extensive and positive critical response. Kerryn Goldsworthy in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that Not Dark Yet was an "intriguing and engaging book... made even more readable by Walker's personality, which comes across as modest, funny and wry as he tells (his) stories. He's stoic but realistic about his precarious physical state and mildly self-reproaching for having, as a professional historian, undervalued the idea of family history for so long...the book exerts the same powerful grip on the reader as the family chronicles and sagas of good 19th-century fiction and has the same kind of deep, complicated, personal appeal." Professor Tom Griffiths of the Australian National University described the book as “a charismatic and enigmatic work... curious, wry, poignant and sweet”. It combined elements of, "a memoir, a family history, a cultural history of modern Australia, a study of memory, legend and storytelling, an investigation of national character, a local and regional study, a reflection on history and the historian’s craft, an auto-ethnography". Jennifer Levasseur in The Australian found Walker to be "a delightful, witty guide who balances thorough research with banter. While his memoir moves through some of the darkest moments of contemporary and personal history, including World War II atrocities and mental breakdowns, he maintains a fluid, easy style that combines empathy with cheekiness". Andrew Moore writing in Labour History discovered interconnections between Walker's family history and his long term academic interests. The stories told in Not Dark Yet emphasised