Collection: Adult Non Fiction - History & Military

Australia's involvement in the Vietnam Conflict, 1962-72 is examined.

Graham Seal trawls our rich history of cold cases, notorious robberies, shameless frauds and razor gangs to uncover a cast of colourful villains. From the men and women who stepped off the convict ships and continued to ply their trade, to the dark streets of the burgeoning towns and cities over ...

This compelling study examines the remarkable relationship between the Nazis and classical music through the stories of musicians, composers, and conductors across the political spectrum. May 1945. A Soviet military patrol searches Hitler's secret bunker in Berlin. They find bodies, documents, je...

We measure rainfall and radiation, the depths of space and the emptiness of atoms, calories and steps, happiness and pain. But how did measurement become ubiquitous in modern life? When did humanity first take up scales and rulers, and why does this practice hold authority over so many aspects of...

Less than a month after it marched into France in summer 1870, the Prussian army had devastated its opponents, captured Napoleon III and wrecked all assumptions about Europe's pecking order. Other countries looked on in helpless amazement. Pushing aside further French resistance, a new German Emp...

For Service, the great unanswered question is how to reconcile the two vital narratives that underpin the extraordinary but troubled events of 1917. One puts the blame squarely on Tsar Nicholas II and on Alexander Kerensky's provisional government that deposed him. The other is the view from the ...

With the Australian troops crossing of the Kumusi River in mid-November, after pushing the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track, the time had come to face the entrenched Japanese at their beachhead at Gona, Sanananda and Buna. The end of the Kokoda Campaign in mid-November 1942 marked a turning p...

In December 1642, during the Civil War, Parliamentarian troops stormed the magnificent cathedral, intent on destruction. Reaching the presbytery, its beating heart, the soldiers searched out ten beautifully decorated wooden chests resting high up on the stone screens. Those chests contained some ...

Propaganda, pulp fiction, spies and censorship: the fascinating and action-packed story of books in wartime. Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have ...

In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa -- spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 year...