I'm new to Git. Starting work on any project seems to start with a "git clone". But this seems to take a long time - much longer than the equivalent "svn checkout". Is this because the entire history of the project since the dawn of time is being copied? Is it possible to skip the history, and just get the latest files (but retain repository information, allowing future pulls etc).
No, it's not possible. If you want to participate in a repository's history, you must have the entire history to build from. While it does take a bit longer than an SVN checkout, it's still quite fast unless you're doing it over a slow connection and/or have a really huge project.