Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation

Judith Mackrell

$32.99 $29.70

This is a gripping biography of six extraordinary women who, in their very different ways, epitomise the decade they came of age - the 1920s. Glamorized, mythologized and demonized - the women of the 1920s prefigured the 1960s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived. Flappers is in part a biography of that restless generation: starting with its first fashionable acts of rebellion just before the Great War, and continuing through to the end of the decade when the Wall Street crash signal led another cataclysmic world change. It focuses on six women who between them exemplified the range and daring of that generation's spirit. Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka were far from typical flappers. Although they danced the Charleston, wore fashionable clothes and partied with the rest of their peers, they made themselves prominent among the artists, icons, and heroines of their age. Talented, reckless and willful, with personalities that transcended their class and background, they rewrote their destinies in remarkable, entertaining and tragic ways. And between them they blazed the trail of the New Woman around the world.

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

Sarah Churchwell

$29.99 $27.00

Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting readers across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922, and Careless People carefully reconstructs the crucial months during which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald returned to New York in the autumn of 1922 - the parties, the drunken weekends at Great Neck, Long Island, the drives back into the city to the jazz clubs and speakeasies, the casual intersection of high society and organized crime, and the growth of celebrity culture of which the Fitzgeralds themselves were the epitome. And for the first time it returns to the story of Gatsby and the high-profile murder that provided a crucial inspiration for Fitzgerald's tale. With wit and insight, Sarah Churchwell traces the genesis of a masterpiece, discovering where fiction comes from, and how it takes shape in the mind of a genius. Blending biography and history with lost and forgotten newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival material, Careless People is the biography of a book, telling the extraordinary tale of how F. Scott Fitzgerald created a classic and in the process discovered modern America.

The Misogyny Factor

Anne Summers

$19.99 $18.00

In 2012, Anne Summers gave two landmark speeches about women in Australia, attracting more than 120,000 visits to her website. Within weeks of their delivery Prime Minister Julia Gillards own speech about misogyny and sexism went viral and was celebrated around the world. Summers makes the case that Australia, the land of the fair go, still hasnt figured out how to make equality between men and women work. She shows how uncomfortable we are with the idea of women with political and financial power, let alone the reality. Summers dismisses the idea that we should celebrate progress for women as opposed to outright success. She shows what success will look like.

The Year It All Fell Down

Bob Ellis

$29.99 $27.00

In 2011, history was made and the future broken. One of our most incisive and eloquent observers, Bob Ellis has reviewed the occurrences of 2011 and found it to be a year as important as 1848. He and his collaborators, Damian Spruce and Stephen Ramsey, refresh and repopulate our memories with enormous events already half-forgotten, revealing their coherence and resonance. From the Arab Spring to the London riots and Occupy Wall Street; from the Christchurch earthquake and the Fukushima meltdown to the possible discovery of the Higgs-Boson 'God' particle; from the shooting of US Senator Gabby Giffords to her vote on the bill that saved America's economy; from Assange fighting extradition to the Murdoch empire on trial; from the last hours of Kim Jong-il and Vaclav Havel to the Breivik massacre in Norway and the executions of Gaddafi and bin Laden – the year 2011 was portentously charged. The shockwaves from these events – and more – continue to reverberate through the corridors of power and even the foundations of the planet.

Where is Dr Leichhardt? The Greatest Mystery in Australian History

Darrell Lewis

$39.95 $35.95

The vast deserts of Outback Australia hold many secrets, but there’s one great mystery which stands out among all others – the mystery of the lost Leichhardt expedition.

In April 1848 Ludwig Leichhardt and six other men set out westward from the Queensland frontier, heading for Swan River settlement in Western Australia. They never arrived. Somewhere in the immensity of the Outback, then almost completely unknown to Europeans, the entire expedition disappeared.

For more than 160 years, supposed clues to the fate of the expedition have been discovered – human skeletons, old guns and rock paintings, Aboriginal stories of white men being massacred or perishing of thirst, trees marked ‘L’, or old wagon tracks beyond the frontier. Official and private expeditions have followed up leads, but nothing conclusive has been found. This book draws together and summarises all the search expeditions and the claimed 'Leichhardt' relics, and assesses the validity of the claimed relics and the various theories proposed – all of the attempts to answer the perplexing question: Where is Dr Leichhardt?

The Baby Farmers: A Chilling Tale of Missing Babies, Shameful Secrets and Murder in 19th Century Australia

Annie Cossins

$29.99 $27.00

In October 1892, a one-month-old baby boy was found buried in the backyard of Sarah and John Makin, two wretchedly poor baby farmers in inner Sydney. In the weeks that followed, 12 more babies were found buried in the backyards of other houses in which the Makins had lived. This resulted in the most infamous trial in Australian legal history, and exposed a shocking underworld of desperate mothers, drugged and starving babies, and a black market in the sale and murder of children. Annie Cossins pieces together a dramatic and tragic tale with larger-than-life characters: theatrical Sarah Makin, her smooth-talking husband John, her disloyal daughter, Clarice, diligent Constable James Joyce with curious domestic arrangements of his own, and a network of baby farmers stretching across the city. It's a glimpse into a society that preferred to turn a blind eye to the fate of its most vulnerable members, only a century ago.

Rescue at 2100 Hours: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Escape of the Pacific War

Tom Trumble

$29.99 $27.00

February 1942. The Japanese invasion of Timor has begun and attempts to evacuate a group of 29 Australian airmen, charged with keeping an airfield operational until the last moment, are thwarted. Under the leadership of Bryan Rofe, a 24-year-old meteorological officer, the airmen make for remote jungle along the northwest coast. All attempts to rescue the group fail. Malaria-ravaged and starving, these men are taken to the limits of their endurance for 58 days. When a 300-strong Japanese patrol is sent to hunt them down all hope seems lost, until they receive a strange signal from sea – an American submarine has been dispatched to their position. With the Japanese closing in, only courage will keep them alive. Using diaries of the airmen and wartime records, Rofe's grandson Tom Trumble brings to life one of the greatest stories of survival and escape of the Second World War. From the young man who stepped up to bring his men home and the Japanese soldier sent to hunt down the Australians, to the American submarine captain and the Timorese fisherman who saved them, this is an insight into the extraordinary things that happen to ordinary men in war.

1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War

Charles Emmerson

$44.00 $39.60

In this illuminating history, Charles Emmerson liberates the world of 1913 from this prelude to war narrative and explores it as it was. Traveling from Europe's capitals to Bombay, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Winnipeg, Los Angeles, Peking, and beyond, Emmerson restores 1913 to contemporary freshness and illuminates a world more integrated and internationalized than we recall. A truly global economy had emerged for the first time, underpinned by the gold standard. New railroads, shipping routes, and cables made the world smaller. The first Model T-Ford drove off an assembly line. The Young Turks challenged the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. Mass migration was fundamentally reshaping the globe's human geography. Full of fascinating characters, stories, and insights, 1913 brings a lost world vividly back to life, with provocative implications for how we understand history and ourselves.

Project Republic: Plans and Arguments For a New Australia

Benjamin T. Jones , Mark McKenna

$29.99 $27.00

It's time for some straight talking about Australia's future as a republic. A republic is the key to our national renewal: we need a head of state who shares a genuine affinity with our country rather than an outdated historical link. We can love the Queen - and be excited about the royal baby - yet still decide to make it on our own. Australians today have a chance to decide what we want our country to be, and for a home-grown head of state to lend an Australian dignity to the highest office in our land. Project Republic unites a diverse range of Australian voices to offer a fresh perspective on why Australia must become a republic - and how we get there from here. Contributors include Larissa Behrendt, John Hirst, Thomas Keneally, Helen Irving, Julian Morrow, John Warhurst and Joy McCann.

Why Labor Should Savour Its Greens: A Platform for Progressive Politics

Brad Orgill

$24.95 $22.45

Former investment banker and economist Brad Orgill believes that Australia is suffering from a crisis of confidence. Globalisation, deregulation, and privatisation have delivered economic growth and enhanced consumption for the past 20 years, but the after-effects of the 2007-08 financial crisis, rising inequality, job insecurity, and increased corporate power over voters and employees are eroding our sense of democracy. Meanwhile, with an election looming, the future of progressive politics nationwide is deeply uncertain. The Australian Labor Party and the Greens are splitting the left-of-centre vote - the major party driven rightwards by an increasingly conservative swinging voter, and the minor party holding firm on vital but controversial issues. In Why Labor Should Savour Its Greens, Brad Orgill reviews the Greens' major economic, social, and environmental policies, and argues that progressive voters, and the nation as a whole, deserve an aligned ALP-Greens platform incorporating the best elements of each. With a $500 billion annual combined government spend at stake - not to mention the future of our social fabric and our very planet - this is a time for visionary thinking, not old divisions and counter-productive rivalries.

The Conspiracy of Silence Queensland's Frontier Killing Times

Timothy Bottoms , Raymond Evans

$32.99 $29.70

The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. From the first penal settlement at Moreton Bay in 1824, as white pastoralists moved into new parts of country, violence invariably followed. Tens of thousands of Aboriginals were killed on the Queensland frontier alone. Europeans were killed too, but in much smaller numbers. The cover up began from the start: the authorities in Sydney and Brisbane didn't want to know, the Native Police did their deadly work without hindrance, and the pastoralists had every reason to keep it to themselves. Even today, what we know about the killing times is swept aside again and again in favour of the pioneer myth. Conspiracy of Silence is the first systematic account of frontier violence in Queensland. Following in the tracks of the pastoralists as they moved into new lands across the state in the 19th century, Timothy Bottoms identifies massacres, poisonings and other incidents, including many that no-one has documented in print before. He explores the colonial mindset and explains how the brutal dispossession of Aboriginal landowners continued over decades.

And Man Created God: Kings, Cults and Conquests at the Time of Jesus

Selina O'Grady

$22.99 $20.70

At the time of Jesus's birth, the world was in ferment. Across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia - societies rife with gods and messiahs, priests and warriors - the old certainties of family, village and tribe were being overturned. Religion was becoming the source of order and stability. And Man Created God takes the reader on a dazzling journey across the empires of the ancient world to reveal how emperors and kings manipulated religion to consolidate their power. In Rome, Augustus was deified by his brilliant spin doctors; in what is now Sudan, the warrior queen Amanirenas exploited her godlike status to inspire her armies to face, and defeat, Rome; while in China, the usurper Wang Mang won and lost the throne over his obsession with Confucianism. In this riveting account of the interplay of faith and power, Selina O'Grady answers the most urgent question of all: how did the tiny Jesus cult triumph over more popular religions - the goddess Isis, the miracle worker Apollonius, even the cult of Augustus - to become the world's dominant faith?

The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam

G. W. Bowersock

$29.95 $26.95

Just prior to the rise of Islam, in the sixth century AD, southern Arabia was embroiled in a holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs. The Jewish kingdom, composed of ethnic Arabs who had converted to Judaism more than a century before, had launched a bloody pogrom against Christians in the region. The ruler of Ethiopia, who claimed descent from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and even was rumored to possess an object no less venerable than the Ark of the Covenant, aspired both to protect the persecuted Christians and to restore Ethiopian control in the Arabian Peninsula. Though little known today, this was an international war that involved both the Byzantine Empire, who had established Christian churches in Ethiopia beginning in the fourth century, and the Sasanian Empire in Persia, who supported the Jews in a proxy war with Byzantium. Our knowledge of these events derives mostly from an inscribed throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis seen and meticulously described by a Christian merchant known as Cosmos in the sixth century. Trying to decipher and understand this monument takes us directly into religious conflicts that occupied the nations on both sides of the Red Sea in late antiquity. Using the writings of Cosmas and archaeological evidence from the period, historian G. W. Bowersock offers a narrative account of this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The extraordinary story told in Throne of Adulis provides an important and much neglected background for the rise of Islam as well as the collapse of the Persian Empire before the Byzantines.

A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid

John Romer

$22.99 $20.70

How, over a thousand years, did a culture of semi-itinerant farmers create the rich, vivid, world of ancient Egypt, culminating with the Great Pyramid? In this extraordinary book John Romer draws on a lifetime of research to tell one of the greatest human stories. Showing how archaeological evidence has allowed this long-vanished civilization to gradually re-appear from under the sand, and the changing interpretations to which its breathtaking but enigmatic remains have been subjected, Romer reveals what these highly idiosyncratic objects have to tell us. The result is an engrossing detective story, as we discover what we really know of Nile civilization - and where the record remains silent. Whether he is writing about the smallest necklace bead or the most grandly elaborate royal tomb, Romer conveys a remarkable sense of a people like ourselves, and yet in so many ways eerily different.

Red Nile: A Biography of the World's Greatest River

Robert Twigger

$49.99 $45.00

From his back garden Robert Twigger can see kingfishers swooping and crocodiles emerging from the grey-green expanse of the Nile. Never ending, as wide as a lake in places, the Nile continually snakes its way north to the sea. It's a river steeped in history, and as Twigger searches for its source and probes its ancient, biblical and more contemporary existence, he uncovers the Nile's bloody, murderous past. In reality, the colour most associated with the churning waters of the Nile is blood red. Whether tracking Cleopatra's great journey up the river by boat with Caesar, investigating the attacks of the Nile crocodile (the deadliest creature on earth), exploring the context of Agatha Christie's DEATH ON THE NILE or that of the assassination of President Sadat, Twigger's history of the river is both hugely atmospheric, definitive and incredibly violent.

All The King's Men: The British Redcoat in the Era of Sword and Musket

Saul David

$24.99 $22.50

In the tradition of Richard Holmes' Redcoat and for readers of Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Andrew Roberts, Saul David's All the King's Men: The British Soldier from the Restoration to Waterloo is a thrilling history of the British soldier from Charles II to Waterloo, when Britain became the military superpower of the day. Between 1660 and 1815 British supremacy on foreign soil was near total. Central to this success was the humble redcoat soldier who showed heroism in battle and stoicism in peace, despite appalling treatment. This is their story: of brutal discipline and inedible food, of loyalty and low pay, of barracks and battlefield - of victory, defeat, life and death.

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England: How Our Ancestors Lived Two Centuries Ago

Roy Adkins , Lesley Adkins

$39.99 $36.00

Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking for love. Yet the comfortable, tranquil country that she brilliantly devised is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. For twenty-nine of Jane Austen's forty-one years, the country was embroiled in war. Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England of that time. Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray fascinating aspects of the daily lives of ordinary people, from forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this book eavesdrops on the daily chore of fetching water, the horror of ghosts and witches, Saint Monday, bull baiting, sedan chairs, highwaymen, the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets and the horrors of surgery without anaesthetics. Giving a voice to these forgotten people and revealing how they worked, played and struggled to survive, Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England is an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining.

The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England

Dan Jones

$19.99 $18.00

This brilliant new book explores the lives of eight generations of the greatest kings and queens that this country has ever seen, and the worst. The Plantagenets - their story is the story of Britain. England's greatest royal dynasty, the Plantagenets, ruled over England through eight generations of kings. Their remarkable reign saw England emerge from the Dark Ages to become a highly organised kingdom that spanned a vast expanse of Europe. Plantagenet rule saw the establishment of laws and creation of artworks, monuments and tombs which survive to this day, and continue to speak of their sophistication, brutality and secrets. Dan Jones brings you a new vision of this battle-scarred history. From the Crusades, to King John's humbling over Magna Carta and the tragic reign of the last Plantagenet, Richard II - this is a blow-by-blow account of England's most thrilling age.

The Loves of the Artists: Art and Passion in the Renaissance

Jonathan Jones

$39.99 $36.00

A sweeping, epic history of the Renaissance artists, seen through the lens of something that perhaps occupied their thoughts and influenced their art the most…sex. Taking Donatello's provocative reinvention of the nude as his starting point, Jonathan shows how the story of the Renaissance is the story of a sexual revolution. The great artists of the 15th and 16th century were not just visionaries, but lovers. Jonathan argues that the famous nudes of Michelangelo and Titian are not abstract images of ideal beauty, but erotic expressions of love and desire; and that in order to understand the Renaissance, we have to understand the sex lives of the men and women who defined it - men like Raphael, who obsessively painted his lover La Fornarina in the nude, Michelangelo, who made beautiful drawings of naked male bodies to present to the young man he adored, and Rembrandt, whose bedroom portraits of Hendrickje Stoffels are the frankest expressions of love anywhere in art. Sweeping from its origins in Florence in the mid-15th century to its culmination in the work of Rubens and Rembrandt in the 17th, The Loves of the Artists shows that the Renaissance invented eroticism as we know it, and that the new ways of thinking about sex it engendered are crucial to understanding not only art but European culture as a whole.

The Spanish Armada

Robert Hutchinson

$45.00 $40.50

After the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, Protestant England was beset by the hostile Catholic powers of Europe - not least Spain. In October 1585 King Philip II of Spain declared his intention to destroy Protestant England and began preparing invasion plans, leading to an intense intelligence war between the two countries, culminating in the dramatic sea battles of 1588. Robert Hutchinson's tautly written book is the first to examine this battle for intelligence, and uses everything from contemporary eye-witness accounts to papers held by the national archives in Spain and the UK to recount the dramatic battle that raged up the English Channel. Contrary to popular theory, the Armada was not defeated by superior English forces - in fact, Elizabeth I's parsimony meant that her ships had no munitions left by the time the Armada had fought its way up to the south coast of England. In reality it was a combination of inclement weather and bad luck that landed the killer blow on the Spanish forces, and of the 125 Spanish ships that set sail against England, only 60 limped home - the rest sunk or wrecked with barely a shot fired.

Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World

Michael Fullilove

$29.99 $27.00

In the dark days between Hitler's invasion of Poland and the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of highly unorthodox emissaries dispatched to Europe by President Franklin D. Roosevelt paved the way for America's entry into the war. Sumner Welles, the buttoned-down diplomat eventually ruined by his sexual misdemeanours, met with Mussolini, Hitler and Chamberlain. William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, war hero and future spymaster, visited an isolated United Kingdom to determine whether it could hold out against the Nazis. Harry Hopkins, frail social worker and New Dealer, became an unlikely confidant of Churchill and Stalin. Averell Harriman, banker and railroad heir, ran the massive aid program out of London, where he romanced Churchill's daughter-in-law. Wendell Willkie, the charismatic former Republican presidential candidate, raised British morale and helped FDR to win over wary Americans to the cause. Together, they shaped the future of America, the Second World War, and the modern world. Michael Fullilove restores Roosevelt's unlikely envoys to their proper place in history. Rendezvous with Destiny is stirring and important history, written with the pace of a thriller.

Human Game: Hunting the Great Escape Murderers

Simon Read

$35.00 $31.50

In March 1944, 76 Allied officers tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III. Of the 73 captured, 50 were shot by direct order of Hitler. This is the story of how a British Bobby from Blackpool, Frank McKenna, was sent to post-war Germany on the express orders from Churchill to bring the Gestapo murderers to justice. In a quest that ranges from the devastated, bombed out cities of Europe to the horrors of the concentrations camps, McKenna is relentless in his pursuit. This is a gripping read set in the aftermath of World War II.

The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler

Laurence Rees

$19.95 $17.95

Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader - fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to debate political issues - and yet he commanded enormous support. So how was it possible that Hitler became such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the important question at the core of Laurence Rees' new book. The Holocaust, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the outbreak of the Second World War - all these cataclysmic events and more can be laid at Hitler's door. Hitler was a war criminal arguably without precedent in the history of the world. Yet, as many who knew him confirm, Hitler was still able to exert a powerful influence over the people who encountered him. In this fascinating book to accompany his new BBC series, the acclaimed historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal, and reveals the role Hitler's supposed 'charisma' played in his success. Rees' previous work has explored the inner workings of the Nazi state in The Nazis: A Warning from History and the crimes they committed in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.

Cricket's Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in Ten Matches

Simon Hughes

$32.99 $29.70

Simon Hughes tells the stories of ten extraordinary Ashes encounters, drawn from every period of Test match history. With an innovative and distinctive approach Hughes selects each match as a narrative spine packed with thrillingly evocative detail, alongside the issues, controversies, heroes and villains of each match. With both fascinating analysis of ten unforgettable Test matches and fast-paced history of 135 years of cricket's fiercest rivalry, this is the perfect way for cricket lovers to prepare for the ten-match feast of Ashes cricket that begins in Nottingham in July 2013 and ends in Sydney in January 2014.

Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

William J. Bernstein

$32.99 $29.70

Bernstein chronicles the development of the technology of human communication, or media, starting with the birth of writing thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. In Sumer, and then Egypt, this revolutionary tool allowed rulers to extend their control far and wide, giving rise to the world's first empires. When Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy's first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. In Rome, it helped spell the downfall of Empire. As Bernstein illustrates, new communication technologies - from the clay tablet to the radio - have all had a profound effect on human society. But it's not just the technologies themselves that have changed the world, it's access to them. Medieval scriptoria and vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, but it was only when the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg's printing press drove down the cost of books by some 97% that the dynamite of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution brought the telegraph and the steam driven printing press, allowing information to move faster than ever before and to reach an even larger audience. But along with radio and television, these new technologies were more easily exploited by the powerful, as seen in Germany, the Soviet Union, even Rwanda, where radio incited genocide. With the rise of carbon duplicates (Russian samizdat), photocopying (the Pentagon Papers), and the internet and mobile phones (the Arab Spring), access has again spread and the world is both more connected, and more free, than ever before.

A History of the World

Andrew Marr

$19.99 $18.00

Our understanding of world history is changing, as new discoveries are made on all the continents and old prejudices are being challenged. In this truly global journey Andrew Marr revisits some of the traditional epic stories, from classical Greece and Rome to the rise of Napoleon, but surrounds them with less familiar material, from Peru to the Ukraine, China to the Caribbean. He looks at cultures that have failed and vanished, as well as the origins of today's superpowers, and finds surprising echoes and parallels across vast distances and epochs. This is a book about the great change-makers of history and their times, people such as Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Galileo and Mao, but it is also a book about us. For 'the better we understand how rulers lose touch with reality, or why revolutions produce dictators more often than they produce happiness, or why some parts of the world are richer than others, the easier it is to understand our own times.' Fresh, exciting and vividly readable, this is popular history at its very best.

The Mammoth Book of Combat: Reports from the Frontline

Jon E. Lewis

$12.99 $11.70

Over a hundred eyewitness accounts of the reality of combat from some of the finest writers of the last century and our own. Lucid, vivid, complex images of conflict, from Walt Whitman on the American Civil War to contemporary reporting from Afghanistan. The collection includes Martha Gellhorn on the Battle of the Bulge, Michael Herr at Khe Sanh, David Rohde's and Anthony Shadid's Pulitzer-winning accounts of Bosnia and Iraq respectively, Christina Lamb's famous account of being under fire from the Taliban, Robert Fisk on being attacked in Afghanistan, and Nicholas Tomalin's 'The General Goes Zapping Charlie Kong' (one of the inspirations for Apocalypse Now) among many other pieces of exceptional war reporting.

History's Greatest Mysteries

Bill Price

$29.99 $27.00

History's Greatest Mysteries delves into the grey areas to examine the imponderable and sometimes unlikely stories of actual events and real people. From the gruesome murders committed by Jack the Ripper to the whereabouts of Lord Lucan, and from the loss of an entire continent to the case of a missing racehorse, we take a canter through history in an effort to shed a little light on to questions which, in all honesty, are never going to yield definitive answers. Some of the stories related in the following pages are deadly serious, some rather less so. There are cases of determined individuals who have struggled against the odds in an attempt to unravel the truth, while in others people have not let the facts get in the way and have made up any old nonsense by way of an explanation. Sometimes the answer to the riddle is tantalisingly just out of reach. More often it defies any sensible or rational approach - which hasn't stopped some people from trying. But, in the end, it is exactly this sense of mystery, of the unknown and the unknowable, which attracts us to these unfinished stories in the first place. After all, a world in which everything is transparent and nothing remains uncertain would be a very dull place to live indeed.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Rick Atkinson

$55.00 $49.50

<p>The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II<p>It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most dramatic story of all--the titanic battle for Western Europe.<p>D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich--all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory.<p>With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson's accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West.

In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

$38.95 $35.05

In Spies We Trust reveals the full story of the Anglo-American intelligence relationship - ranging from the deceits of World War I to the mendacities of 9/11 - for the first time. Why did we ever start trusting spies? It all started a hundred years ago. First we put our faith in them to help win wars, then we turned against the bloodshed and expense, and asked our spies instead to deliver peace and security. By the end of World War II, Britain and America were cooperating effectively to that end. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, the 'special intelligence relationship' contributed to national and international security in what was an Anglo-American century. But from the 1960s this 'special relationship' went into decline. Britain weakened, American attitudes changed, and the fall of the Soviet Union dissolved the fear that bound London and Washington together. A series of intelligence scandals along the way further eroded public confidence. Yet even in these years, the US offered its old intelligence partner a vital gift: congressional attempts to oversee the CIA in the 1970s encouraged subsequent moves towards more open government in Britain and beyond. So which way do we look now? And what are the alternatives to the British-American intelligence relationship that held sway in the West for so much of the twentieth century? Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones shows that there are a number - the most promising of which, astonishingly, remain largely unknown to the Anglophone world.

The Lancaster Manual 1943

Gordon Wilson

$22.99 $20.70

How to fly, navigate, drop bombs and man the turrets of the legendary bomber using the manuals and instructions supplied by the RAF during the Second World War. An amazing array of leaflets, books and manuals were issued by the Air Ministry during the Second World War to aid pilots and crew flying the Lancaster bomber, and here for the first time they are collated into a single book. An introduction is supplied by expert aviation historian (and ex-military pilot) Gordon Wilson. Other sections within include information on the engineering of the Lancaster, the bomber crews, navigation, bomb-aiming, night operations and the famous Dam Buster raids.

Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches

Paul Ham

$34.95 $31.45

The untold story of the Sandakan Death Marches of the Second World War. This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war u a barely known episode of unimaginable horror. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2500 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo. For decades after the Second World War, the Australian and British governments would refuse to divulge the truth of what happened there, for fear of traumatising the families of the victims and enraging the people. The prisoners were broken, beaten, worked to death, thrown into bamboo cages on the slightest pretext, starved and subjected to tortures so ingenious and hideous that none survived the onslaught with their minds intact, and only an incredibly resilient few managed to withstand the pain without yielding to the hated Kempei-tai, the Japanese military police. But this was only the beginning of the nightmare. In late 1944, Allied aircraft were attacking the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jesselton. To escape the bombardment, the Japanese resolved to abandon the Sandakan Prison Camp and move 250 miles inland to Ranau, taking the prisoners with them as slave labour, carriers and draught horses. Their journey became known as the Sandakan Death Marches. Of the 1000-plus prisoners sent on the Death Marches, only six u all of them Australians u survived. This important and harrowing book narrates the full story of Sandakan, as told through the experiences of many of the participants. Paul Ham has interviewed the families of survivors and the deceased, in Australia, Britain and Borneo, and consulted thousands of court documents in an effort to piece together exactly what happened to the people who suffered and died in British North Borneo, and who was responsible.

Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov

Geoffrey Roberts

$24.99 $22.50

Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that brought down the Nazi regime. He was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin and it was he who took the German surrender. He led the huge victory parade in Red Square, riding a white horse, and in doing so, dangerously provoking Stalin's envy. His post-war career was equally eventful - Zhukov found himself sacked and banished twice, and wrongfully accused of disloyalty. However, he remains one of the most decorated officers in the history of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Since his death in 1974, Zhukov has increasingly been seen as the indispensable military leader of the Second World War, surpassing Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur in his military brilliance and ferocity. Making use of hundreds of documents from Russian military archives, as well as unpublished versions of Zhukov's memoirs, Geoffrey Roberts fashions a remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose personality was as fascinating as it was contradictory. Tough, decisive, strong-willed and brutal as a soldier, in his private life he was charming and gentle. Zhukov's relations with Stalin's other generals were often prickly and fraught with rivalry, but he was the only one among them to stand up to the Soviet dictator. Piercing the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult, Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up around Zhukov's life, to deliver fresh insights into the marshal's relations with Stalin, Khrushchev and Eisenhower. A highly regarded historian of Soviet Russia, Roberts has fashioned the definitive biography of this seminal 20th-century figure.

Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Why it Has to Change

Jonathan Fenby

$19.99 $18.00

This is a comprehensively updated account of where China stands today, covering the generational change in the leadership completed in March 2013, the Bo Xilai scandal and the changing course of the world's second largest economy and the last major state ruled by a Communist Party. Named as a book of the year by the Guardian, the Financial Times and Bloombery Business Week, it lays out the reality behind the spectacular statistics and explains why China has to change if it is to maintain its development and avoid major internal problems China's importance as an increasingly significant global force is a phenomenon of our times, but the world's most heavily populated nation has a history of catastrophe and tragedy, tyranny and repression, abject poverty, unfair business practice and corruption - and now faces environmental degradation and a demographic time bomb. In this compelling and lucid account based on years of research and first-hand experience, Jonathan Fenby links together the myriad features of today's China. He delivers a unique and coherent picture of its essence and evolution and contemplates its future - both alone and connected to the world around it. 'A bestselling examination of modern China by an experienced and fluent commentator' - Financial Times

A Brief History of the House of Windsor: The Making of a Modern Monarchy

Michael Paterson

$14.99 $13.50

The British monarchy may be over a thousand years old, but the House of Windsor dates only from 1917, when, in the middle of the First World War that was to see the demise of the major thrones of continental Europe, it rebranded itself from the distinctly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the homely and familiar Windsor. By redefining its loyalties to identify with its people and country rather than the princes, kings and emperors of Europe to whom it was related by birth and marriage, it set the monarchy on the path of adaptation, making itself relevant and allowing it to survive. Since then, the fine line trodden by the House of Windsor between ancient and modern, grandeur and thrift, splendour and informality, remoteness and accessibility, and influence and neutrality has left it more secure and its appeal more universal today than ever.

Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979

Dominic Sandbrook

$24.99 $22.50

Dominic Sandbrook's magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain - the book behind the major BB2 series The Seventies . The late 1970s were Britain's years of strife and the good life. They saw inflation, riots, the peak of trade union power - and also the birth of home computers, the rise of the ready meal and the triumph of a Grantham grocer's daughter who would change everything. Dominic Sandbrook recreates this extraordinary period in all its chaos and contradiction, revealing it as a turning point in our recent history, where, in everything from families and schools to punk and Doctor Who, the future of the nation was being decided.

The Trojan War

Eric H. Cline

$13.95 $12.55

Homer's tale of the abduction of Helen to Troy and the ten-year war to bring her back to Greece has fascinated mankind for centuries since he related it in The Iliad and The Odyssey. More recently, it has given rise to countless scholarly articles and books, extensive archaeological excavations, epic movies, television documentaries, stage plays, art and sculpture, even souvenirs and collectibles. However, while the ancients themselves thought that the Trojan War took place and was a pivotal event in world history, scholars during the Middle Ages and into the modern era derided it as a piece of fiction. This book investigates two major questions: did the Trojan War take place and, if so, where? It ultimately demonstrates that a war or wars in the vicinity of Troy probably did take place in some way, shape, or form during the Late Bronze Age, thereby forming the nucleus of the story that was handed down orally for centuries until put into essentially final form by Homer. However, Cline suggests that although a Trojan War (or wars) probably did take place, it was not fought because of Helen's abduction; there were far more compelling economic and political motives for conflict more than 3,000 years ago. Aside from Homer, the book examines various classical literary sources: the Epic Cycle, a saga found at the Hittite capital of Hattusas, treatments of the story by the playwrights of classical Greece, and alternative versions or continuations of the saga such as Virgil's Aeneid, which add detail but frequently contradict the original story. Cline also surveys archaeological attempts to document the Trojan War through excavations at Hissarlik, Turkey, especially the work of Heinrich Schliemann and his successors Wilhelm Dorpfeld, Carl Blegen, and Manfred Korfmann.

The Picts: A History

Tim Clarkson

$22.99 $20.70

Pictish history is recorded only in fragments presented by writers whose lords and masters were often bitter enemies of the Picts. Here, the various fragments are drawn together to tell the story of this mysterious people from their emergence in Roman times to their eventual disappearance. The Picts were an ancient nation who ruled most of northern and eastern Scotland during the Dark Ages. Despite their importance in Scottish history they remain shrouded in an aura of myth and misconception. In the ninth century they were absorbed by the kingdom of the Scots and lost their unique identity, their language and their vibrant artistic culture. The Pictish nation seemingly vanished, leaving few traces but many unanswered questions. The most puzzling of these questions surround the great monuments that still survive in the landscape of modern Scotland: standing stones decorated with incredible skill and covered with enigmatic symbols. These stones are the vivid memorials of a powerful and gifted people who have bequeathed no chronicles to tell their story, no sagas to describe the deed of their kings and heroes.

The Silk Road

James A. Millward

$13.95 $12.55

The phrase silk road evokes vivid images: of merchants leading camel caravans over deserts and steppes to trade exotic goods in the bazaars of glittering Oriental cities, of pilgrims braving bandits and frozen mountain passes to gather scriptures and spread their faith across continental expanses. Beyond the exotica, however, this VSI will be a sketch of the historical background against which the silk road flourished, and an essay on the significance of old-world intercultural exchange to Eurasian and world history generally. On the one hand, Millward treats the silk road broadly, as a metonym for the cross-fertilizing communication between peoples across the Eurasian continent since at least the Neolithic era. On the other, he highlights specific examples of goods and ideas exchanged between the Mediterranean, Persian, Indian, and Chinese regions, along with the significance of these exchanges. While including silks, spices, travelers' tales of colorful locales, the main focus of the book is to outline the dynamics of Central Eurasian history that promoted silk road interactions, especially the role of nomad empires; and to highlight the importance of the biological, technological, artistic, intellectual, and religious interchanges across the continent. Millward shows that these exchanges had a profound effect on the old world that was akin to, if not yet on the scale of, modern globalization. Millward also considers some of the more abstract contemporary uses to which the silk road concept has been put. It is, of course, a popular marketing device for boutiques, museums, restaurants, and tour operators from Venice to Kyoto. More than that, however, the silk road has ideological connotations, used sometimes to soften the face of Chinese expansion in Central Asia, or, in the US culture wars, as a challenge to the clash of civilizations understanding of intersocietal relations. Finally, while it has often been argued that the silk road declined or closed after the collapse of the Mongol empire or the opening of direct maritime communications from Europe to Asia, Millard disputes this view, showing how silk road phenomena continued through the early modern and modern expansion of Russian and Chinese states across Central Asia.

Samurai War Stories: Teachings and Tales of Samurai Warfare

Anthony Cummins , Yoshie Minami

$27.99 $25.20

Enter the world of seventeenth-century Japanese warfare and the warrior elite, the Samurai. Samurai War Stories: Teachings and Tales of Samurai Warfare is a collection of three major texts, published in an English translation for the first time. These works include writings on three distinct military strata: the Samurai; the Ashigaru or foot soldier; and women in war. Including guidelines, tactics, commentaries and advice written by Samurai of the period, as well as intricate illustrations. Narratives of actual battles and sieges are included in the texts, such as the famous Battle of Sekigahara. This collection is an invaluable resource that sheds new light on the world of the legendary Japanese warrior.

Organise, Educate, Control: The Amwu in Australia 1852-2012

Andrew Reeves , Andrew Dettmer

$29.95 $26.95

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, or AMWU, today a large and complex organisation, can trace its origins to the earliest years of Australian trade unionism and the first meeting of Sydney’s Amalgamated Society of Engineers, held in 1852 on the immigrant vessel Frances Walker in Sydney Harbour. This book presents the achievements of the union since the 1850s, but does not shy away from challenges to that history or from controversies past and present. Contributors detail the industrial influence of the AMWU since the middle of the nineteenth century, discuss the importance of union banners and their place in industrial and political campaigning, and relate stories of memorable people, movements and campaigns. Laurie Carmichael stresses the significance of the shorter hours movement of the 1970s and 80s. Australia Reconstructed, one of the most important – and neglected – union documents of the late twentieth century, is revisited; the politics of union amalgamation, analysed; and the continuing pressures on women as union delegates and leaders, revealed. Reeves and Dettmer have compiled, not a comprehensive chronological history, but a volume that draws out the rich human flavour of this union, and suggests its deep and complex connections with the society of which it is part.

The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection

Thomas de Wesselow

$22.99 $20.70

The Sign by Thomas de Wesselow finally solves Christianity's greatest mystery. The thinking man's Dan Brown . (Sunday Times). How did Christianity really begin? In this powerful and controversial book, art historian Thomas de Wesselow reveals that the answer to this puzzle lies in one of the most mysterious images in the world - the Shroud of Turin. Re-examining the Shroud and New Testament texts, he argues that the traditional Christian view - that the apostles were inspired by seeing Jesus raised from the dead - is a profound misconception. Using scientific, archaeological and historical evidence, The Sign demonstrates that the Shroud is the actual burial-cloth of Jesus. That haunting image - which is a natural stain - holds the key to the greatest mystery in human history. This astonishing book will appeal to readers around the world and is a must for fans of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Inferno by Dan Brown and Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity. Very intriguing . (Mail on Sunday). A fascinating account of the Shroud as an image . (BBC History Magazine). Thorough, well-researched and fair-minded. Persuasive ...much more than just an addition to the canon of Shroud literature . (Irish Times). Thomas de Wesselow earned his MA and PhD at London's Courtauld Institute, researching the controversial Guidoriccio fresco in Siena, before becoming a Scholar at the British School in Rome where he worked on another of the great mysteries of Italian art history, the Assisi Problem. He has written on a number of famous Renaissance pictures whose meanings have hitherto defied analysis, including Botticelli's Primavera and Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. Since 2007 he has been researching this book full-time. He is 40 years old and he lives in Cambridge.

The Dam Busters

Martin Bowman

$26.99 $24.30

Guy Gibson's 617 Squadron was founded for one reason only - Operation Chastise - the raid on the Ruhr dams. Using Barnes Wallis' revolutionary bouncing bomb, the hand-picked crews trained day and night over British reservoirs, perfecting the techniques required to deliver the new weapon to its target. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, three waves of modified Lancasters took off and headed for the industrial heartland of Germany and a series of daring raids on the various dams providing water and electricity to the heart of the Nazi war machine. Of the three main targets - the Mohne, Sorpe and Eder dams - two were destroyed, causing chaos downstream. The Mohne dam succumbed after five Upkeep bouncing bombs had hit it. It took three bombs to destroy the Eder dam but the Sorpe dam remained almost intact. Despite the losses in men and aircraft, the raid was a huge success. 617 Squadron went on to become one of the premier squadrons in Bomber Command, and destroyed the Tirpitz using another of Wallis' bombs - the Tallboy, a 12,000lb 'earthquake' bomb. Made into a film starring Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, their raid on the Ruhr dams has become the stuff of legend. This is the story of the Dam Busters.

Operation Suicide: The Remarkable Story of the Cockleshell Raid

Robert Lyman

$19.99 $18.00

At nightfall on December 7 1942, twelve British canoeists arrived by submarine off the coast of France, tasked with infiltrating the dockyards of Bordeaux, and wreaking havoc with the German shipping they found there. Manning fragile 'cockles' through the turbulent waters of the Bay of Biscay, and making an assault on a port bristling with German soldiers ordered to execute any Allied Commando they captured, their prospects looked bleak. It was fully expected that all would die in the attempt. Featuring a cast of characters ranging from Blondie Hasler, the ingenious and courageous leader of the raid, to the Comtesse de Milleville, who risked outrageous danger as she ran a secret resistance network, Operation Suicide is an enthralling account of one of WWII's most iconic missions.

Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline

Edward Luce

$24.99 $22.50

On its present course, the US faces a world of rising new countries that will compete with it ever more fiecely as its own power is declining. In order to slow and improve this steady leakage of power, the US must change course internationally, economically and domestically. It must also restructure to remain the world's most competitive economy. And it must address quality of life issues and fairness at home. But American politics is broken - competing forces and interests have led to stasis. With change so tough, where now for a country where the middle classes are suffering as they have never suffered before, the pensions crisis is growing, the deficit out of sight, and radicalism waiting in the wings?

Ninja

John Man

$19.95 $17.95

The Ninjas today are the stuff of myth and legend in comics, film and electronic games. But once they were real, the medieval equivalent of the SAS: spies, saboteurs, assassins. In their secrecy, under-cover skills and determination to survive, they were the opposite of the overt, self destructive samurai. Could they fly? Make themselves invisible? Of course not. It was just that their skills gave them a magical aura. As a result, martial artists and story-tellers have turned them into fantasy creatures, from James Bond to Mutant Turtles. In Ninja John Man goes in search of the truth. In a journey to the heartland of the ninjas, he takes us from their origins over 1,000 years ago, through their heyday in the civil wars that ended with Japan's unification in 1600. But that was not the end of the ninja ethos. That re-emerged in World War Two as a little-known counterpart to Japanese militarism. Ninja ways live on in the real 'last of the ninjas', Hiroo Onoda, who held out in the Philippine jungle for 30 years.

Baedeker's Guide to Great Britain, 1937

Karl Baedeker

$19.95 $17.95

A comprehensive travel guide to England, Wales and Scotland in the interwar period, this edition is distinguished for its reported association with the Luftwaffe attacks known as the 'Baedeker Blitz' in 1942, during which Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury in particular were targeted. It also includes hints for travellers, English etiquette and 'must-see' places and events.

The End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis

Catherine Steel

$47.95 $43.15

This title deals with a crucial and turbulent century for the Roman Republic. By 146, Rome had established itself as the leading Mediterranean power. Over the next century, it consolidated its power into an immense territorial empire. At the same time, the internal balance of power shifted dramatically, as a narrow ruling elite was challenged first by the rest of Italy, and then by military commanders, a process which culminated in the civil war between Pompeii and Caesar and the re-establishment of monarchy. Catherine Steel tells the history of this crucial and turbulent century, focussing on the issues of freedom, honour, power, greed and ambition, and the cherished but abused institutions of the Republic which were central to events then and which have preoccupied historians ever since. It traces the processes of change which transformed Rome from a republic to a monarchy. It explores a period of political crisis in relation to its military and cultural dynamism. It analyses the political culture of the Roman Republic as a dynamic and evolving system which reflected changes in citizenship and in the ruling elite. It is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates and academics working on the history of Rome and the Roman Republic.

Richard III

David Baldwin

$22.99 $20.70

The only biography to include the findings of the archaeological dig in the Leicester car park. Not many people would claim to be saints, or alternatively, consider themselves entirely without redeeming qualities. Some are unquestionably worse than others, but few have been held in greater infamy than Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Duke of Gloucester and, later still, King Richard III. Richard's character has been besmirched as often as it has been defended, and the arguments between his detractors and supporters still rage after several centuries. Was he a ruthless hunchback who butchered his way to the throne, a paragon of virtue who became a victim of Tudor propaganda, or (as seems more likely) something in between? Some would argue that a true biography is impossible because the letters and other personal documents required for this purpose are simply not available; but David Baldwin has overcome this by an in-depth study of his dealings with his contemporaries. The fundamental question he has answered is 'what was Richard III really like'. Consists of 81 illustrations, 57 of which are in colour.

Anne Neville: Richard III's Tragic Queen

Amy Licence

$34.99 $31.50

Shakespeare's enduring image of Richard III's queen is one of bitterness and sorrow. Anne curses the killer of her husband and father, before succumbing to his marriage proposal, bringing to herself a terrible legacy of grief and suffering an untimely death. Was Anne a passive victim? Did she really jump into bed with the enemy? Myths aside, who was the real Anne? As the Kingmaker's daughter, she played a key role in his schemes for the throne. Brought up in the expectation of a glorious marriage, she was not the passive manipulated pawn of romantic legend; in fact, she was a pragmatist and a survivor, whose courage and endurance were repeatedly pushed to the limit. Her first marriage, to the young Lancastrian, Prince Edward, should have brought her riches and a throne, but when she returned to England to claim her right, she found herself fatherless and widowed. Her second marriage, to her childhood friend Richard of Gloucester, proved to be a successful and peaceful union. Then, in the spring of 1483, everything changed. Anne found herself catapulted into the public eye and sitting on the throne beside Richard. The circumstances of their reign put an unprecedented pressure on their marriage; amid rumours of affairs and divorce, Anne died mysteriously, during an eclipse of the sun, just weeks before Richard's death on the battlefield. This fascinating and elusive woman is shrouded in controversy and unanswered questions. Amy Licence reassesses the long-standing myths about Anne's role, her health and her marriages, to present a new view of the Kingmaker's daughter.

The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost: From Ancient Greece to Iraq

Victor Davis Hanson

$35.00 $31.50

Leading military historian Victor Davis Hanson returns to non-fiction in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals who single-handedly saved their nations from defeat in war. War is rarely a predictable enterprise--it is a mess of luck, chance, and incalculable variables. Today's sure winner can easily become tomorrow's doomed loser. Sudden, sharp changes in fortune can reverse the course of war.These intractable circumstances are sometimes mastered by leaders of genius--asked at the eleventh hour to save a hopeless conflict, created by others, often unpopular with politics and the public. These savior generals often come from outside the established power structure, employ radical strategies, and flame out quickly. Their careers often end in controversy. But their dramatic feats of leadership are vital slices of history--not merely as stirring military narrative, but as lessons on the dynamic nature of consensus, leadership, and destiny.

The Dam Busters: An Operational History of Barnes Wallis' Bombs

Stephen Flower

$59.99 $54.00

Barnes Wallis was the most famous inventor and designer of the Second World War. Thanks to the film and book of The Dam Busters, he is still a household name today. His story is not just of the 'bouncing' bombs that destroyed the Mohne and Eder dams but also of the other devices he invented, from the Wellington bomber to the Upkeep, Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs that this book is about. Wallis was one of the most prolific inventors of armaments during the war, and his Highball, Upkeep and Tallboy bombs, as well as the truly massive Grand Slam earthquake bombs, helped to destroy such highprofile targets as the Bielefeld viaduct and led to the eventual sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz. His bombs were only eclipsed in destructive power by the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Stephen Flower's interest in Barnes Wallis' bombs and the men who dropped them on Nazi-occupied Europe began when he worked at Brooklands, home of Vickers, which built the Wellington, and where Wallis had his design office.

Letters from the Front

Dorothy Gilding

$49.95 $44.95

Letters from the Front is an authentic account of World War One through the eyes of an ordinary soldier, the story of one man. It seeks to add to our national consciousness of the immeasurable value and sacrifice of all those who have served our country, and our damaged heroes who survived, without in any way glorifying war. Jim McConnell takes us with him to Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux and the Somme Canal to gain another glimpse of the events that symbolise courage, comradeship and sacrifice, and that cost Australia a generation. As a first-person narrative, it strives to preserve the authenticity of the time and place in which these events occurred; to simply tell the story without twenty-first century judgements, embellishments or condemnations. Much of the story comes directly from this important primary source of actual diary notes. This is a valuable contribution to our World War One literature because so little was passed on in the generations that followed. It also teaches us how to live well in an imperfect world. Jim McConnell saw people as people, and treated them accordingly, willing to fight and quick to forgive. He then made the most of the life he was left with in post-war Australia.

Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witn

Richard Belzer, David Wayne , David Wayne

$32.95 $29.65

Richard Belzer and David Wayne are back to set the record straight after Dead Wrong; this time they're going to uncover the truth about the many witness deaths tied to the JFK assassination. For decades, government pundits have dismissed these coincidental deaths, even regarding them as myths as urban legends. Like most people, Richard and David were initially unsure about what to make of these 'coincidences'. After all, events don't consult the odds prior to happening; they simply happen. Then someone comes along later and figures out what the odds of it happening were. Some of the deaths seemed purely coincidental; heart attacks, hunting accidents. Others clearly seemed noteworthy; witnesses who did seem to know something and did seem to die mysteriously.Hit List is a fair examination of the evidence of each case, leading to (necessarily) different conclusions. The findings were absolutely staggering; as some cases were clearly linked to a clean-up operation after the murder of President Kennedy, while others were the result of 'other forces'. The impeccable research and writing of Richard Belzer and David Wayne show that if the government is trying to hide anything, they're the duo who will uncover it.

Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War

Dakota Meyer , Bing West

$25.95 $23.35

In September of 2009, several hundred Taliban ambushed a company of Afghan soldiers and their Marine advisors. The enemy had the company pinned down, with only one exposed road leading in and out of the village. Twenty-one-year-old Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer disobeyed his commanding officer and took command. Without reinforcements or artillery support, he charged forward down the only road five times under withering fire. He killed a dozen Taliban and rescued 18 Afghans and Americans. The company finally rallied and the enemy pulled back. When the story finally became known, Dakota was awarded the Medal of Honor, the United States highest honour. Yet the story of that day remains mired in controversy even now. For a man to charge into fire once requires grit; to do so five times is beyond comprehension. Dakota's performance was the greatest act of courage in the war, because he repeated it and repeated it. In this fast-paced narrative of non-stop action, we hear the story from Dakota's own perspective, and come to know our narrator as a true American hero: a young man raised on a cattle farm in Kentucky with uncompromising morals and a fierce determination to do what's right.

This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-In America's Gilded Capital

Mark Leibovich

$29.99 $27.00

One of the nation's most acclaimed journalists, The New York Times's Mark Leibovich, presents a blistering, penetrating, jaw-dropping - and often hysterical - look at Washington's incestuous media industrial complex.

The great thing about Washington is no matter how many elections you lose, how many times you're indicted, how many scandals you've been tainted by, well, the great thing is you can always eat lunch in that town again. What keeps the permanent government spinning on its carousel is the freedom of shamelessness, and that mother's milk of politics, cash.

In Mark Leibovich's remarkable look at the way things really work in D.C., a funeral for a beloved television star becomes the perfect networking platform, a disgraced political aide can emerge with more power than his boss, campaign losers befriend their vanquishers (and make more money than ever!), conflict of interest is a term lost in translation, political reporters are fetishised and worshipped for their ability to get one's name in print, and, well - we're all really friends, aren't we?

What Julia Phillips did for Hollywood, Timothy Crouse did for journalists, and Michael Lewis did for Wall Street, Mark Leibovich does for our nation's capital.

Northern Ireland: The Reluctant Peace

Feargal Cochrane

$45.00 $40.50

In this thoughtful and engaging book, Feargal Cochrane looks at Northern Ireland's Troubles from the late 1960s to the present day. He explains why, a decade and a half after the peace process ended in political agreement in 1998, sectarian attitudes and violence continue to plague Northern Ireland today. Former members of the IRA now sit alongside their unionist adversaries in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but the region's attitudes have been slow to change and recent years have even seen an upsurge in violence on both sides. In this book, Cochrane, who grew up a Catholic in Belfast in the '70s and '80s, explores how divisions between Catholics and Protestants became so entrenched, and reviews the thirty years of political violence in Northern Ireland - which killed over 3,500 people - leading up to the peace agreement. The book asks whether the peace process has actually delivered for the citizens of Northern Ireland, and what more needs to be done to enhance the current reluctant peace.

Nelson: The Sword of Albion

John Sugden

$65.00 $58.50

In this epic biography of history's most celebrated naval commander, acclaimed historian John Sugden separates fact from myth to offer a powerful portrait of the hero of Trafalgar.As was true of the Sugden's riveting account of Horatio Nelson's early years ( Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 2005), this comprehensive life of Lord Nelson is built from largely overlooked primary documents, letters, and diaries that reach across two centuries to invite us to share Nelson's multifaceted life.

This book offers the sweep and intimacy of first-rate historical fiction--revealing the interior lives, for example, of Lord Nelson's wife, Fanny and family and the caring and more passionate Emma, Lady Hamilton, who nursed the war-weary hero back to health in Naples and London after his brilliant victory over the Spanish fleet at Cape St. Vincent in 1797 and the stunning defeat at Tenerife that cost Nelson his right arm.Today's reader comes to understand that every obstacle in Nelson's path was attacked head-on with an Achilles-like ferocity and resolve. Yet his life was no steady upward trajectory; it was instead plagued by injuries and debt for the commoner admiral in a society dominated by lineage and property. As Sugden points out, His life was a mission with the essence of a tour de force, hurrying toward a bloody climax that would change the fate of empires.

Royal Exiles: from Richard the Lionheart to Charles II

Iain Soden

$39.99 $36.00

'I know there are but few steps between the prisons and graves of princes' Charles I The experience of exile and captivity, usually in war, was not uncommon for medieval kings and princes. Many knew the joy of survival followed by the frustration of being caged; some tried to govern from exile; others adapted and took advantage of a temporary release from duty; most canvassed allies and very few gave up hope. This book chronicles the experiences of capture, flight, captivity or exile as they languished far from home and the highs and lows of their attempts to regain a life to which they could relate. From Richard the Lionheart in 1192 to Charles II in 1651, a succession of England's kings and princes were forced to flee into exile or endure captivity at home or abroad, as were foreign royalty in English hands. Even kings can be pawns in the great game of international diplomacy. Royal lineage brought privilege but also great danger. Those who suffered in this way lived periods of great frustration and of edge-of-the-seat uncertainty, surrounded by spies and guards, governing or simply relating to the outside world in secret or by smuggled letter. Negotiations for their release, when possible, were often half-hearted and subject to conflicting agendas. Returns could be torrid affairs and often involved force of arms. Some were broken by their experiences. Others came back with tales of adventure and derring-do. Most were forgotten or wrapped in layers of propaganda, put in the shade by their subsequent successful reigns or their ignominious end. It is a story of privileged lives rendered helpless, and of keeping a flame of hope alive.

Unusual Suspects: Pitt's Reign of Alarm and the Lost Generation of the 1790s

Kenneth R. Johnston

$38.95 $35.05

Robespierre's Reign of Terror spawned an evil little twin in William Pitt the Younger's Reign of Alarm, 1792-1798. Terror begat Alarm. Many lives and careers were ruined in Britain as a result of the alarmist regime Pitt set up to suppress domestic dissent while waging his disastrous wars against republican France. Liberal young writers and intellectuals whose enthusiasm for the American and French revolutions raised hopes for Parliamentary reform at home saw their prospects blasted. Over a hundred trials for treason or sedition (more than ever before or since in British history) were staged against 'the usual suspects' - that is, political activists. But other, informal, vigilante means were used against the 'unusual suspects' of this book: jobs lost, contracts abrogated, engagements broken off, fellowships terminated, inheritances denied, and so on and on. As in the McCarthy era in 1950s America, blacklisting and rumor-mongering did as much damage as legal repression. Dozens of 'almost famous' writers saw their promising careers nipped in the bud: people like Helen Maria Williams, James Montgomery, William Frend, Gilbert Wakefield, John Thelwall, Joseph Priestley, Dr. Thomas Beddoes, Francis Wrangham and many others. Unusual Suspects tells the stories of some representative figures from this largely 'lost' generation, restoring their voices to nationalistic historical accounts that have drowned them in triumphal celebrations of the rise of English Romanticism and England's ultimate victory over Napoleon. Their stories are compared with similar experiences of the first Romantic generation: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Burns, and Blake. Wordsworth famously said of this decade, 'bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!' These young people did not find it so-and neither, when we look more closely, did Wordsworth.

Victoria's Madmen: Revolution and Alienation

Clive Bloom

$39.95 $35.95

Victoria's Madmen tells the stories of a host of figures who came to exemplify a contradictory history of the Victorian age: not one of Dickensian London and smoking factories, but one of little known revolutionaries and radicals. Clive Bloom mixes extraordinary marginal voices with famous - and infamous - figures, from messiahs like Richard Brothers and Octavia 'Daughter of God'; writers such as Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton; revolutionaries and radicals like Karl Marx, Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw and Oswald Mosley; madmen like Richard Dadd and Jack the Ripper; orientalists and guerrilla fighters such as T. E. Lawrence; worshippers of Pan such as Arthur Machen, Kenneth Graham and J.M. Barrie, as well as the Latvian anarchists who killed three policemen in the East End of London. This is the story of those who were outcasts by temperament and choice; the non-conformists of the age. Clive Bloom's readable account of the dark underbelly of Victoria's Britain perfectly captures the unrest bubbling under the surface of strait-laced society.

William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire

Perry Gauci

$49.95 $44.95

This first-ever biography of William Beckford provides a unique look at eighteenth-century British history from the perspective of the colonies. Even in his own time, Beckford was seen as a metaphor for the dramatic changes occurring during this era. He was born in 1709 into a family of wealthy sugar planters living in Jamaica, when the colonies were still peripheral to Britain. By the time he died in 1770, the colonies loomed large and were considered the source of Britain's growing global power. Beckford grew his fortune in Jamaica, but he spent most of his adult life in London, where he was elected Lord Mayor twice. As one of the few politicians to have experienced imperial growing pains on both sides of the Atlantic, his life offers a riveting look at how the expanding empire challenged existing political, social, and cultural norms.

David Jones: 175 Years

Helen O'Neill

$59.99 $54.00

Everyone, it seems, has a story about David Jones. This iconic department store began in 1838 when maverick retailer David Jones threw open the doors of his first shop in Sydney. One hundred and seventy-five years later the business that bears his name has stores across the country. David Jones is synonymous with style and progress. It champions top designers, brought French high fashion to post-war Australia with Dior and Balmain, and has pioneered many advances in retail from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Featuring stunning fashion images and treasures from the stores archives, this remarkable book also includes photographs from Max Dupains private collection and original sketches by Norman Hartnell, dressmaker to the Queen. In David Jones: 175 years Helen ONeill uncovers countless secrets and hidden lives to reveal the extraordinary story of a shopping destination like no other.

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