Upheaval - How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond

$24.99 AUD

Category: History

In his landmark international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now in the third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis. Diamond’s analysis of the ways i n which half a dozen modern countries that he knows well – Finland, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, Germany and Australia – have coped with crises, is shot through with reflections on the fragility of democracy. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Exhibiting the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics and anthropology that marks all Diamond's work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet. ...Show more

The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon by David Grann

$19.99 AUD

Category: History

**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER** 'A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure'JOHN GRISHAM The story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World Fawcett was among the last of a legendary br eed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers plunged into the jungle, trying to find evidence of Fawcett's party or Z. Some died from disease and starvation; others simply disappeared. In this spellbinding true tale of lethal obsession, David Grann retraces the footsteps of Fawcett and his followers as he unravels one of the greatest mysteries of exploration. 'A wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration' Sunday Times 'Marvellous ... An engrossing book whose protagonist could out-think Indiana Jones' Daily Telegraph 'The best story in the world, told perfectly' Evening Standard 'A fascinating and brilliant book' Malcolm Gladwell ...Show more

The Irish Diaspora - Tales of Emigrants and Empire by Turtle Bunbury

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

The compelling story of the great Irish pioneers who left their homeland and in the process profoundly influenced their adoptive countries. From the first voyages of Saint Brendan in the early sixth century, an estimated 10 million people have left the Irish shores for other countries, and today, more t han 80 million people worldwide claim Irish descent. In the centuries after the fall of Rome, Irish missionaries carried the word of the Christian God throughout Europe, while soldiers and mariners from across the land ventured overseas in all directions. The advent of the British Empire ignited a slow but extraordinary exodus from Ireland. These "Wild Geese" who opted to live outside of the Protestant state took their chances in the Spanish and French empires, as well as in the fledgling New World. These immigrants played an important role wherever they went: rising to high political and military positions in France and Spain, impacting the foundation of the United States, and fighting in the Civil War that followed it nearly eighty years later. Other Irish would come to the fore in business, science, engineering, and the arts, while some were destined for infamy as mobsters and gunslingers. Historian Turtle Bunbury explores the lives of these men and women, great and otherwise, whose pioneering journeys beyond the Irish shore have played a profound role in world history and have left their indelible mark far beyond Ireland. Throughout The Irish Diaspora, Bunbury takes these overlooked events and characters and weaves them into an entertaining, and often surprising, history of the Irish abroad. ...Show more

Set the Night on Fire - L. A. in the Sixties by Mike Davis; Jon Wiener

$24.99 AUD

Category: History

A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the '60s.Los Angeles in the '60s was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to th e Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of "Asian American" as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women's movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of LA in the '60s, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors' storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis' award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose. ...Show more

Stone Men - The Palestinians Who Built Israel by Andrew Ross

$0.00 AUD

Category: History

Palestinian "stone men," using some of the best limestone in the world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built almost every state in the Middle East except one of their own. Andrew Ross's gracefully written story of this fascinating ancient craft shows how the stones and labor of h istoric Palestine have been used to build Israel-in the process, constructing "facts on the ground"-even while the industry is central to the Palestinians' resistance to the Occupation. The hands that built Israel's houses, schools, offices, and even its walls have been Palestinian. This book asks how this record of labor and achievement should be recognized. Book jacket. ...Show more

A People Betrayed

$24.99 AUD

Category: History

Ravenna - Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin

$26.99 AUD

Category: History

'Magisterial - an outstanding book that shines a bright light one of the most important, interesting and under-studied cities in European history. A masterpiece.' Peter Frankopan 'A wonderful new history of the Mediterranean from the fifth to eighth centuries through a lens focussed on Ravenna, gracefu lly and clearly written, which reconceptualises what was 'East' and what was 'West'.' Caroline Goodson 'A masterwork by one of our greatest historians of Byzantium and early Christianity. Judith Herrin tells a story that is at once gripping and authoritative and full of wonderful detail about every element in the life of Ravenna. Impossible to put down.' David Freedberg ...Show more

The Hitler Conspiracies - The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination by Richard J. Evans

$22.99 AUD

Category: History

The renowned historian of the Third Reich takes on the conspiracy theories surrounding Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, in a vital history book for the 'post-truth' age The idea that nothing happens by chance in history, that nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight, that everything that occurs i s the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating everything from behind the scenes is as old as history itself. But conspiracy theories are becoming more popular and more widespread in the twenty-first century. Nowhere have they become more obvious than in revisionist accounts of the history of the Third Reich. Long-discredited conspiracy theories have taken on a new lease of life, given credence by claims of freshly discovered evidence and novel angles of investigation. This book takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common. This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times. ...Show more

Semut: The Untold Story of a Secret Australian Operation in WWII Borneo by Christine Helliwell

$34.99 AUD

Category: History

This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII.March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of B orneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII. Anthropologist Christine Helliwell has called on her years of first-hand knowledge of Borneo, interviewed more than one hundred Dayak people and all the remaining Semut operatives, and consulted thousands of military and other documents to piece together this astonishing story. Focusing on two of Borneo's great rivers - the Baram and Rejang - the book provides a detailed military history of Semut II's and Semut III's brutal guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, and reveals the decisive but long-overlooked Dayak role in the operation.But this is no ordinary history. Helliwell captures vividly the terrors of the jungle environment into which the operatives are plunged. And she takes us into the lives and cavernous longhouses of the Dayaks on whom their survival depends. The result is a truly unique account of the meeting of two very different cultures amidst the savagery of the Pacific War. ...Show more

The Pathfinders - The Greatest Untold Story of the Air War Against the Nazis by Will Iredale

$35.00 AUD

Category: History

Dark low-level raids, dodging anti-aircraft flak to make pinpoint-accurate drops - the incredible story of ordinary men and women who took to the skies to mark bomb targets inside Hitler's Germany The Pathfinders were the crack team that transformed the hit rate in the RAF's Bomber Command from 24% in August 1942 to an incredible 95% hit rate by 1945. They transformed Bomber Command - the only part of the Allied war effort capable of attacking the heart of Nazi Germany - from an impotent division on the cusp of disintegration in 1942 to a force capable of razing whole German cities to the ground, inspiring fear in Hitler's senior command and helping the Allies deliver decisive victory in World War II. With exclusive interviews with remaining survivors, personal diaries, previously classified records and never-before seen photographs, The Pathfinders brings to life the characters of the airmen and women -- many barely out of their teens - who took to the skies in iconic British aircraft such as the Lancaster and the Mosquito, facing almost unimaginable levels of violence from enemy fighter planes to strike the heart of the Nazi war machine. ...Show more

Lancaster: The Forging of a Very British Legend by John Nichol

$22.99 AUD

Category: History

'The epic story of an iconic aircraft and the breathtaking courage of those who flew her' Andy McNab, bestselling author of Bravo Two Zero 'Compelling, thrilling and rooted in quite extraordinary human drama' James Holland, author of Normandy 44 From John Nichol, the Sunday Times bestselling author of S pitfire, comes a passionate and profoundly moving tribute to the Lancaster bomber, its heroic crews and the men and women who kept her airborne during the country's greatest hour of need. 'The Avro Lancaster is an aviation icon; revered, romanticised, loved. Without her, and the bravery of those who flew her, the freedom we enjoy today would not exist.' Sir Arthur Harris, the controversial chief of Royal Air Force Bomber Command, described the Lancaster as his 'shining sword' and the 'greatest single factor in winning the war'. RAF bomber squadrons carried out offensive operations from the first day of the Second World War until the very last, more than five and a half years later. They flew nearly 300,000 sorties and dropped around a million tons of explosives, as well as life-saving supplies. Over 10,000 of their aircraft never returned. Of the 7,377 Lancasters built during the conflict, more than half were lost to enemy action or training accidents. The human cost was staggering. Of the 125,000 men who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed and another 8,400 were wounded. Some 10,000 survived being shot down, only to become prisoners of war. In simple, brutal terms, Harris's aircrew had only a 40 per cent chance of surviving the war unscathed. Former RAF Tornado Navigator, Gulf War veteran and bestselling author John Nichol now tells the inspiring and moving story of this legendary aircraft that took the fight deep into the heart of Nazi Germany. ...Show more

The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present by Ralph Hope

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

"By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. During forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Overnight, almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed. This is the story of what they did next.Former FBI Agent Ralph Hope uses critical insider knowledge and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks whether we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many don't want spoken.The Grey Men comes as an urgent warning from the past at a time when governments the world over are building an unprecedented network of surveillance over their citizens." ...Show more