Collection: Adult Non Fiction - History

In the thick of World War II, during the first week of March 1943, Japan made a final, desperate lunge for control of the South West Pacific. In the ensuing Battle of the Bismarck Sea, a force of land-based Australian and American planes attacked a massive convoy of Japanese warships. The odds we...

At what point does the will to survive on the battlefield give way to bloodlust? The battle for Crete was at once the most modern and the most ancient of wars. For a week Australian and New Zealand forces were relentlessly hammered from the skies by the Luftwaffe and pursued across Crete by some ...

"This landmark and compelling book follows the stories of 15,000 Australian prisoners of war from the moment they were released by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Their struggle to rehabilitate themselves and to win compensation and acknowledgement from their own country was just beginni...

The essential guide to geopolitics in the modern Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The Middle East is in crisis. The shocking events of the war in Gaza have rocked the entire region. More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring had raised hopes of a new beginning but instead ushered in ...

On 21 July 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance mission landed along the north-eastern coastline of Papua, it would soon turn into an all-out attempt to capture Port Morseby. This is the powerful story of the three weeks of battle by a small Australian militia force, the 39th Battalion, supporte...

The Battle of Pozieres has reverberated throughout Australia's military history, long regarded as a costly battle that produced little meaningful gain. Pozieres was characterised by the most intense artillery bombardment the Australians had experienced in the war thus far and 'the hell that was P...