Historical, political and military Books

This book is part Chickenhawk and part Exit Wounds … a powerful and timely contribution to a nation’s understanding of what we ask of our service men and women and the debt we owe … Matt Anderson PSM, Director, Australian War...

On 22nd April 1995, more than 4,000 Rwandans were massacred and thousands more injured in a place called Kibeho. Terry Pickard, a seasoned soldier and medic, was one of a 32-strong force of Australian UN peacekeepers present on that terrible Saturday...

In 1999, idealistic 23-year-old Registered Nurse Sharon Bown left her comfortable family life in Tasmania and joined the Royal Australian Air Force with the aim of providing humanitarian aid to the world. Through her 16-year military career she deployed...

They were the best of enemies – dedicated, skilled and deadly. In the night skies above wartime Germany an RAF navigator-air bomber from New Zealand and a Luftwaffe pilot seek out their targets, testing the gap between success and their own destruction...

Power of Balance is the landmark memoir from Dr Kerryn Phelps AM that explores the events and ideas that have inspired her to create change throughout her lifetime. From medicine, media, politics, advocacy and activism, Kerryn has led a remarkable...

This highly revelatory book, based on original research and completely new analysis, presents a compelling new suspect as the most notorious serial killer of all time. Using a different analytical approach, for the first time, Sarah Bax Horton identifies...

’Just brilliant... The book of the Decade.' - Tim FlanneryI found Dad dead on the side of a dirt road. I was sixteen; he was forty-nine.   After Lachlan McIver’s father suffers a sudden, fatal heart attack it sends him into a spiral of grief and...

From one of China's most celebrated and silenced literary authors, Murong Xuecun, Deadly Quiet City is an unforgettable collection of true stories from the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.On 23 January 2020,...

They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends. But when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VIII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between Elizabeth and Margaret was dramatically altered. Forever more, Margaret would...

'Sometimes my mind reaches back beyond the fear and the arid landscapes of war, to memories of childhood that fill me with happiness and laughter.' So begins this searingly honest memoir by Kailash Limbu, a serving Gurka soldier who undertook five tours...

The first joint biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two pivotal figures in Australian history – the colonised and coloniser – and a bold and innovative new portrait of both.Winner of the 2024 ACT Literary Awards, Non-Fiction Shortlisted...

A captivating biography of two famous women whose sons, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt, would change the course of the 20th century—by award-winning historian Charlotte Gray.Born into upper class America in the same year, 1854, Sara Delano...

“Impeccably researched…captivating!” —Elin Hilderbrand * “A well-paced history.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Fascinating…with new details and well-sourced reporting.” —Associated PressNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The intimate, multigenerational...

The incredible account of Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the Australian war nurses who survived the bombing of evacuation ship SS Vyner Brooke in February 1942, and subsequently spent three years in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra.During those perilous...

A rich portrait of a compelling, complex woman who emerged from a sheltered rural childhood into the fraught, often deadly world of the French royal court and Parisian high society—and who would come to rule them both.Married off at sixteen to a...

The Australia Director at Human Rights Watch shares her experiences defending human rights – from human trafficking in Nepal to the 'drug war' in the Philippines to treatment of detainees in Papua New Guinea and in Australia – offering an extremely...

A revelatory portrait of Chekhov during the most extraordinary artistic surge of his life.In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practicing...

You thought you knew the story behind the world’s most notorious rock band…the music, the mayhem…it is the stuff of rock n roll legend, chronicled in the New York Times bestselling book and subsequent Netflix movie, The Dirt. Now, as Nikki Sixx, Tommy...

A brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary about whom Winston Churchill said "few men tried more, gave more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people," and who remains a legendary and controversial figure in his...

A young teen escapes to America from Mao’s China in the early 60s and experiences the consequent culture shock of cruel racism, financial hardships, unexpected freedom, bewildering sexual mores, and the aching rejection and loneliness that so...

* THE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER *‘Even in the darkest of Dickens novels, no family comes across quite as mendacious, grasping and avaricious as the Trumps’ Financial TimesA REVELATORY PORTRAIT OF DONALD J. TRUMP AND THE TOXIC...

A sniper in Haiti faces the repercussions of the shot he never took. A team of SEALs help rescue a kidnapped girl in the Philippines. Army interpreters in Iraq battle their toughest foe: the rats of Saddam’s palace. A soldier on a late-night run...

A vivid and revealing portrait of the royal marriage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip—perfect for fans of the popular Netflix TV series The Crown. When a young Princess Elizabeth met and fell in love with the dashing Naval Lieutenant...

The acclaimed book Oliver Stone called “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance,” JFK and the Unspeakable details not just how the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy was carried out, but WHY it was done…and why...

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, millions of lives changed in an instant.Millions of people were suddenly on the move. In this great flow of people was a reporter from the north of Scotland. Jen Stout left Moscow abruptly, ending up on a border...

One of the most glamorous and successful politicians in Canadian historyIn this masterful and engaging biography, acclaimed journalist Steve Paikin brings to life John Turner (1929-2020), one of the most glamorous and successful politicians in Canadian...

People who met the inevitable with elan, unflappability, dignity, or physical courageWe all have to go sometime, so why not go in a manner that reflects well on your entire life? With humanity, insight, and occasional humour, author Matt Sturrock has...

In these essays, Toynton remembers her migr relatives, some of whom left Germany as soon as Hitler came to power, others only escaped later.While Evelyn Toynton's father became a hard-working, civic-minded American, with a great sense of obligation to...

In this fascinating biography of the Indian revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya (18871954), Ole Birk Laursen uncovers the remarkable transnational networks, movements and activities of India's most important anticolonial anarchist in the twentieth century...

Field marshal and statesman Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951) was the most acclaimed and the most hated Finn of the twentieth century. After three decades of loyal and distinguished service in the Russian Tsarist army, he returned to his homeland in 1917 to...

"Every day, I have lived through the massacre. While our country may forget this history, I cannot." Viola Ford FletcherViola Ford Fletcher's memoirDon't Let Them Bury My Storyvividly recounts the lasting impact of the Tulsa Massacre on her life. As the...

In his memoir, "Combat Missions: Flying the B-24 Liberator Bomber Out of Manduria, Italy, 450th Bomb Group, 720th Squadron, WWII.," Burl Harmon, 78 years later at the age of 97, describes the impact of WWII on him, a 19-year-old from Boone, Iowa. After...

A compelling new picture of one of the most important, complex, and misunderstood figures of our time.The name George Soros is recognized around the world. Universally known for his decades of philanthropy, progressive politics, and investment success,...

The 40th anniversary edition of an American classic: a "minority student" pays the cost of social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation-from his past, his parents, his culture. Exquisitely written, poignant and powerful, unsettling...

The mystery of how an ordinary Minnesota girl came to be, briefly, one of the most wanted domestic terrorists in the United StatesBehind every act of domestic terrorism there is someone's child, an average American whose life took a radical turn for...

St Columba is one of the most important figures in the early history of the British Isles. A native of Donegal and a nobleman of royal ancestry, his outstanding religious career spanned both sides of the Irish Sea. On the Scottish island of Iona he...

The first English-language biography of the de facto ruler of the late Ottoman Empire and architect of the Armenian GenocideTalaat Pasha (1874-1921) led the triumvirate that ruled the late Ottoman Empire during World War I and is arguably the father of...

The story of the great Muslim peacemaker Badshah Khan, who joined Mahatma Gandhi in nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. Khn Abdul Ghaffr Khn (Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan) came from a Pathan society that was steeped in a tradition of blood...

The breathtaking memoir by a member of "Nicky's family," a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport project, My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning...

When Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik party led the first successful workers revolution in history, they were under no illusions that their work was finished with the overthrow of capitalism in Russia. As the fledgling workers' state was gripped by a...

This is the first and only biography of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who became an iconic figure in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan's UN ambassador and the most forceful presence in the administration, outside of the President himself, in shaping the Reagan Doctrine...

Updated with an Epilogue examining new evidence about the actual perpetrators.Using newly declassified information, Dick Russell builds on four decades of painstaking research inOn the Trail of the JFK Assassins, offering one of the most comprehensive...

**Winner, 2022 Atomium Comic Strip Prize**A comprehensive graphic biography of Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the authoritarian president of Turkey.One of the world's most divisive and controversial leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoan has ruled over Turkey as either...

Follow the remarkable journey of a trailblazing American leader, Dr. Antonia Novello, the first woman and the first Hispanic Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Antonia Novellois a vanguard in the United States and Puerto Rico, whose enduring...

When Shirley Chisholm was asked why she would dare run for president, her response was, why not her? Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm rose from being the child of immigrants to the United States to running for the highest office in the land. She was both...

Revered across the globe as an author of compelling novels, journalism, and essays that came to define the twentieth century, George Orwell was anunmatchedpolitical visionary, shining a light on the insidious nature of propaganda. Yet this chronicler of...

Josh Fernandez is a community college professor who finds himself under investigation for "soliciting students for potentially dangerous activities" after starting an antifascist club on campus.As Fernandez spends the year defending his job, he reflects...