Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

The coast and its people help define our identity. Most Australians live in suburbia, but our hearts are elsewhere.From the winner of the ACT Book of the year Award for his first book, The River, comes this celebration of the Australian seascape, from its natural grandeur to the quirky individualism of those who live beside it. It is also the heartfelt and pertinent story of the issues facing our coast today and the resilience of communities at a turning point.

The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect...

From the Birthplace of the Gods in New Zealand, to the Andean home of the Shining People, and the Yucatec temple cities of the People of The Serpent, best-selling author Freddy Silva re-examines the world’s flood traditions and discovers an interconnected web of master seafarers, astronomers and magicians, their monuments and traditions, and a previously unknown island nation where the antediluvian gods lived before it sank.

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men's survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh's escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization.

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, one of America's leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds, paints an unforgettable portrait of ingenuity, courage, and sacrifice.

First there was Girt. Now comes... True Girt. In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep.

The role of the sailor through history should never be underestimated. Over centuries battles were won and new lands discovered and settled by their skills and nerve. Rob Mundle is back on the ocean to tell one of the great stories of an expedition under sail: the extraordinary eight-month, 17-000-nautical mile voyage of the First Fleet. With customary sweep and swell, Mundle puts you alongside 48-year-old Captain Arthur Phillip on the quarterdeck of the Royal Navy escort, HMS Sirius, as he commands his small armada of 11 ships, carrying over 1420 men, women and children, to the other side of the world.

*With a foreword by Sir Peter Jackson* Buckle up, grab a dram, and get ready for another unforgettable wild ride. They're back! Stars of Outlander, Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish are no strangers to the rugged beauty of Scotland. But this time they're setting their sights on a new horizon: New...

Winner of the 2020 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier's History Awards for general history ‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan ‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of...

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been understated in modern retellings of Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the...

The British Admiralty's telegram arrived at Navy Office in Melbourne, the order to go to all-out war. It was coldly succinct: TOTAL GERMANY . The war at sea had begun. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the...

From one of Australia's leading historians, the compelling story of a singular nation still realizing its independence and influence on the global stage As a land associated with extremes—from remote desert terrain to some of the world's deadliest creatures—few countries feel as...

Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti - war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefi eld, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.

The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in Australian history. New York, 1874. Members of the Clan-na-Gael - agitators for Irish freedom from the English yoke - hatch a daring plan to free six Irish political prisoners from the most remote...

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks... Eight months later these heroic, gallant, determined 'Rats of Tobruk' were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of Rommel's never-before defeated Afrika Corps.

From the bestselling author of Kokoda and Gallipoli comes the epic story of Australia's deadliest Vietnam War battle. 4.31 pm: Enemy [on] left flank. Could be serious. 5.01 pm: Enemy ... penetrating both flanks and to north and south. 5.02: Running short of ammo. Require drop through trees. It...

Australia has a unique place in the history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. From the clubs' beginnings in the swinging '60s, their entry into the amphetamine market in the 1970s, through to the 1984 Milperra Massacre that made world headlines, to the Sydney airport brawl between the Hell's Angels and Comancheros and the brutal murder of Anthony Zervas, Outlaw Bikers in Australia tells how these 'one per cent deviants' grew to dominate the recreational drug market and became major players in the international outlaw biker scene.

After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events which have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport, the suspicion of the tall poppy, the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbourne, new and old homelands, the conflicts of war abroad and race at home, the importance of technology, the recognition of our Aboriginal past and Native Title.

The story of the clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they brought to the Australian colony of the 19th century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could take as much as four months. With the arrival of the clipper ships and favourable winds, the journey from England could be done in a little over half this time.