Second Best by Ben Pobjie

$32.99 AUD

Category: History

   History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the men and women of the past who reached for gold but grasped only morale-sapping silver? Australia’s second-best comedy historian Ben Pobjie celebrates the fascinating stories of those pipped at the post of greatness – f rom Buzz Aldrin following footsteps on the moon, to the woman not credited with discovering DNA because she had two X chromosomes, and Australia’s second Prime Minister whose name everyone keeps forgetting. Second Best shines a light on those plucky men and women who, through no fault of their own – or at least only a little bit of fault of their own – didn’t quite get there before everyone else, but did get there before almost everyone else. ...Show more

Sea Shepherd: 40 Years by David Hance

$75.00 AUD

Category: History

Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Its mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species. Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was formally incorporated in the United States in 1981 in the state of Oregon. Previous to this, the idea of Sea Shepherd was formed when Captain Paul Watson founded the Earth Force Society in 1977 in Vancouver BC, Canada. The original mandate of both organizations was marine mammal protection and conservation with an immediate goal of shutting down illegal whaling and sealing operations, but Sea Shepherd later expanded its mission to include all marine wildlife. In 1978, with financial support from Cleveland Amory of the Fund for Animals, the Society purchased its first ship (a British sea trawler Westella) and renamed it the Sea Shepherd. Its first mission was to sail to the ice floes of Eastern Canada to interfere with the annual killing of baby harp seals known as whitecoats. In the same year, the Sea Shepherd hunted down and rammed the notorious prolific pirate whaler the Sierra in a Portugal harbor ending its infamous career as the scourge of the seas. Since those early days, Sea Shepherd has embarked on over 200 voyages covering many of the world's oceans and defending and saving defenseless marine life all along the way. This is its story. ...Show more

in pursuit of civility

$33.07 AUD

Category: History

Convict-Era Port Arthur: Misery of the Deepest Dye by David W. Cameron

$34.99 AUD

Category: History

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthurfocuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a signif icant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead; and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines. Convict-era Port Arthurwill for the first time provide a comprehensive history of Port Arthur, its horrors and its changing role over a fifty-year period. In gripping detail, using the experiences and words of the convicts, soldiers and administrators who spent time there, David W. Cameron brings to life these deeply miserable days. ...Show more

The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu: The Race to Reach the Fabled City and the Fantastic Effort to Save its Past by Charlie English

$32.99 AUD

Category: History | Reading Level: very good

Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name "Timbuktu" long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it it has become inseparable. ...Show more

The Lost Boys: The untold stories of the under-age soldiers who fought in the First World War (HB) by Paul Byrnes

$45.00 AUD

Category: History

INDIE AWARD WINNER 2020They were just boys. And they were to face the horrors of a war more diabolical than any of them could have imagined. This is their story. Hundreds of Australian and New Zealander boys enlisted in the First World War, some as young as 13. No one knows how many went to war, but at least 150 Australians did not come back. Their names are on the Roll of Honour, the record of war dead at the War Memorial in Canberra. Most died on the Western Front, in France and Belgium. They took part in every major battle in which the ANZACs fought - from Fromelles in July 1916, to the liberation of Villers-Bretonneux in 1918. Many died in the first wave at Gallipoli or at Lone Pine in August 1915. Why did they go and who allowed this to happen? We can only understand how if we look through their eyes and walk in their shoes. In The Lost Boys, their stories will be told for the first time. ...Show more

Templars - Rise & Fall of God's Holy War by Dan Jones

$19.99 AUD

Category: History | Reading Level: very good

The Knights Templarwere the wealthiest, most powerful - and most secretive - of the militaryorders that flourished in the crusading era. Their story - encompassing as it does the greatest international conflict of the Middle Ages, a network of international finance, a swift rise in wealthand influence f ollowed by a bloody and humiliating fall- has left a comet's tail of mysterythat continues to fascinate and inspire historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists. ...Show more

The Splendid and the Vile : A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Bombing of London by Erik Larson

$34.99 AUD

Category: History

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz "A bravura performance by one of America's greatest storytellers."--NPR NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2020 BY The Washington Post * HuffPost * The Seattle Times * Lit Hub * The Week * PopSugar On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments.   The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together. ...Show more

Great Diaries: The World's Greatest Diaries, Notebooks, and Letters Explored and Explained by DK

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

Travel back in time and witness both everyday life and great moments in history in this fascinating compilation of diaries through the ages. Great Diariestraces the history of the diary in all its forms, from ancient times to the present day. It brings together historical and literary diaries, artists' sketchbooks, explorers' journals, and scientists' notebooks. Discover what is was life to build a pyramid, sail the seas with Magellan, travel into the heart of Africa, or serve on the Western Front. Find out how writers and artists planned their masterpieces and how scientists developed their groundbreaking theories. Great Diariesexplores the world's greatest diaries and notebooks, including those of Samuel Pepys, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, and Anne Frank. Stunning images of the original diaries and journals are complemented by key extracts and close-ups of important details. Feature boxes provide additional biographical information and set the works in their cultural and historical context. Essential reading for everyone who is passionate about history and literature, Great Diariesprovides an intimate insight into the lives and thoughts of some of the most interesting people of the last two thousand years. ...Show more

Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised. For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind. ...Show more

Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944 by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: History | Reading Level: very good

The Sunday Times #1 Bestseller The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad 'Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War . . . his fans will love it' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard 'The eye for telling detail whi ch we have come to expect from Antony Beevor. . . this time, though, he turns his brilliance as a military historian to a subject not just of defeat, but dunderhead stupidity' Daily Mail On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war. The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war. 'In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character' - Ben Macintyre, The Times 'Superb book, tirelessly researched and beautifully written' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'Complete mastery of both the story and the sources' - Keith Lowe, Literary Review 'Another masterwork from the most feted military historian of our time' - Jay Elwes, Prospect Magazine 'The analysis he has produced of the disaster is forensic' - Giles Milton, Sunday Times 'He is a master of his craft . . . we have here a definitive account' - Piers Paul Read, The Tablet ...Show more

The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

$32.99 AUD

Category: History | Reading Level: near fine

'An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.' - Paul Theroux. Siberia's story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos - grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, and humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos travelled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers and exiles. That stately instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. But this is Siberia, where people can endure the worst of the world -- and where music reveals a deep humanity in the last place on earth you would expect to find it. 'A masterpiece of modern travel literature with words that sing from its pages. A definitive exploration of Russia's wild east.' - Levison Wood ...Show more