Collection: Adult Non Fiction - History & Military

In the nineteenth century, collectors and museum curators in Europe were fascinated by the antipodean colony of Tasmania. They cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens, including skeletons of the thylacine and the platypus. But they were not just interested in...

Anthropologist, activist and public intellectual, W.E.H. Stanner used his words to change Australia. In his 1968 Boyer Lectures Stanner exposed a 'cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale', regarding the fate of First Nations people, for which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian...

"This book exposes the history and future of the Wagner Group, Russia's notorious and secretive mercenary army, revealing details of their operations never documented before. Jack Margolin traces the Wagner Group from its roots as a battlefield rumour to a private military enterprise tens of thou...

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held...

In this expert guide to the ancient city, Dr Philip Matyszak takes us on a tour of ancient Rome's most fascinating and important sites and locations, revealing the secrets of the beating heart of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Rome itself was never grander or more mag...

For the first time, the First Nations story of Cook's arrival, and what blackfellas want everyone to know about the coming of Europeans. Both 250 years late and extremely timely, this is an account of what First Nations people saw and felt when James Cook navigated their shores in 1770. We know t...

From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides comes an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration - the fateful final journey of Captain James Cook. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook began his third voyage in HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, in Hawa...

An awe-inspiring deep dive into the treasures found on the sea floor and what they reveal about our past. In Wonders in the Deep Mensun Bound, the renowned archaeologist who was Director of Exploration on the team that discovered Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, argues that the history of the ...

In ancient times, the vast area that stretches across what is now modern-day Iraq and Syria saw the rise and fall of epic civilizations who built the foundations of our world today. It was in this region, which we call Mesopotamia, that history was written down for the very first time. With start...

When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his new bleak and barbarous surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of their world was where civilisation ceased to exist. Our fascination with the Greek and Roman world, and the ab...