Form/Genre: History

Tales of the strange, unnerving and downright bizarre from one of the weirdest places on EarthFish falling out of the sky, joggers relieving themselves on your doorstep, mysterious monsters constantly springing from the shadows, spooky lights and ill-conceived toast spreads: these are just some o...

This shift does not happen overnight, from one day to the next; instead, the world vibrates for a number of years. People try to find their way back to homes that are no longer there, or on to an uncertain future across the sea. Some run from their deeds, and most get away. Among the millions in ...

This book debunks one of the hardiest clichés in Australian history: that the 1950s was a dull decade, when the nation seemed only interested in a quiet life, a cup of tea, and a weekend drive. The truth is that, by the time the ’60s came around, Australia was already expanding its outlook — poli...

Ariel Leve and Robin Morgan's oral history 1963: The Year of the Revolution is the first book to recount the kinetic story of the twelve months that witnessed a demographic power shift—the rise of the Youth Quake movement, a cultural transformation through music, fashion, politics, and the arts. ...

Clark gives a gripping account of the flying aces - Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), Mick Mannock, Rene Fonck, Georges Guynemer, Albert Ball - whose life expectancy was measured in days: they were forbidden to carry parachutes; they lived in dread of being shot down in flames.

Have we ever taken our fair share of refugees? Have our past responses been motivated by humanitarian concerns or economic self-interest? Is the influx of ‘boat people’ over the last fifteen years really unprecedented?In this eloquent and informative book, historian Klaus Neumann examines both go...

In the winter of 1944--1945, Hitler sought to divide Allied forces in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium. He deployed more than 400,000 troops in one of the last major German offensives of the war, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, in a desperate attempt t...

Mary Celeste, the infamous "ghost ship" found sailing alone without a soul aboard, in the mid-Atlantic in 1872; Vrouw Maria, a perfectly preserved Dutch cargo ship of 1771, discovered on the bottom of the Baltic Ocean packed with cargo, including crates of long-lost Old Masters belonging to Empre...

This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

In 2004 Garth Callender, a junior cavalry officer, was deployed to Iraq. He quickly found his feet leading convoys of armoured vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and into the desert beyond. But one morning his crew was targeted in a roadside bomb attack. Garth became Australia’s first seriou...

In the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) Emily Hobhouse championed the cause of the women and children herded into camps by Kitchener’s army. By 1914, a confirmed pacifist, she felt passionately that civilians suffered more than combatants. Throughout the war she was anxious for a negotiated peace. Her ...

The #1 New York Times bestseller and the true story behind the film: A rugby team resorts to the unthinkable after a plane crash in the Andes.Spirits were high when the Fairchild F-227 took off from Mendoza, Argentina, and headed for Santiago, Chile. On board were forty-five people, including an ...

My family may have been all mixed up, but I discovered a love and a resilience that ran deeper than any of us could have imagined.When Jason Om was just twelve, he witnessed his mother die of a heart attack. No one else was home and he blamed himself for her death. So begins this unflinching memo...

Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community's code of silen...

The great power shift from traditional media to social networks is happening right now. This boom means that, for millions of us, our first exposure to information about the world comes from our friends, not news media. But social networks don't do news the old-fashioned way. Because we share sto...

Fuelled by curiosity and wanderlust, reporter Doug Hendrie travels to the edges of our world to find the most unexpected – and bizarre – examples of cultural mash-ups, from the StarCraft videogame superstars of South Korea to the Clash-loving punks of Indonesia.A whirlwind world tour through surp...

At the time of his tragic death in February 2013, former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the top sniper in U.S. military history, was finishing one of the most exciting missions of his life: a remarkable book that retold American history through the lens of a hand-selected list of firearms. Kyle masterfull...

Some have called him "Lawrence of Afghanistan." To the Pashtun tribesmen he is "Commander Jim," leader of the "bearded ones." He is Pulitzer Prize–nominated war correspondentand Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant, one of the most charismatic and controversial U.S. commanders of modern memory, a m...

Tim Flannery takes us on an enthralling journey through some of the most diverse and spectacular environments on Earth. He includes accounts of discovering, naming and sometimes eating new mammal species; being thwarted or aided by local customs; and historic scientific expeditions.

‘At last we know how the Great War sounded.’Professor Peter Stanley, joint winner of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History Imagine Australian life back in the first decade of the 20th century, when playing the piano, singing, performing or reciting poetry were all staples of fami...