Readings Recommends: History
Australia and Appeasement: Imperial Foreign Policy and the Origins of World War II
$39.95 – Hardback / I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
Examines Australia's role in Britain's policy of appeasement from the time Hitler came to power in 1933 through to the declaration of war on 3rd September 1939. Focusing on five leading figures in the Australian governments of the... Buy or find out more→
Engineers of the Soul: In the Footsteps of Stalin's Writers
$19.95 – Paperback / Vintage
Tells the story of two journeys - one literal, one imaginary - through contemporary Russia and through Soviet-era literature. Buy or find out more→
Of the People, by the People: A New History of Democracy
$45.00 – Hardback / Vintage
Democracy, when viewed from above, has always been a fickle master; from below it is a powerful but fragile friend. This book tells the stories of the different democracies that have come into existence during the past two and... Buy or find out more→
A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided
$27.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
'Riveting . . . the reader is swept along . . . one can hardly overestimate the brilliance of Foreman's conception . . . a shimmering tapestry' JAY PARINI, GUARDIAN A World on Fire tells, with extraordinary sweep, one of... Buy or find out more→
Rome: A Cultural History
$50.00 – Hardback / Orion Publishing Co
The founding of Rome is shrouded in legend, but current archaeological evidence supports the theory that Rome grew from pastoral settlements and coalesced into a city in the 8th century BC. It developed into the capital of the... Buy or find out more→
City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire
$34.95 – Hardback / Faber and Faber
A magisterial work of gripping history, City of Fortune tells the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest power in the Mediterranean - an epic five-hundred-year voyage that encompassed crusade and... Buy or find out more→
Death in the City of Light: The True Story of the Serial Killer Who Terrorised Wartime Paris
$33.00 – Paperback / Little, Brown Book Group
DEATH IN THE CITY OF LIGHT is the true story of the hunt for Marcel Petiot, a respectable physician by day, who turned out to be a brutal serial killer by night in Nazi-occupied Paris. Petiot was charged with 27 grisly murders,... Buy or find out more→
The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century
$22.99 – Paperback / Simon & Schuster
From the end of the Baroque age and the death of Bach in 1750 to the rise of Hitler in 1933, Germany was transformed from a poor relation among western nations into a dominant intellectual and cultural force more influential... Buy or find out more→
Times Complete History Of The World
$30.00 – Paperback / HarperCollins Publishers
The ultimate work of historical reference Buy or find out more→
Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train
$34.95 – Hardback / WW Norton & Co
"I'd rather go to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James."-Peter Prescott, Newsweek In one of the most inventive travel books in years, Ina Caro invites readers on twenty-five one-day train trips that... Buy or find out more→
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
$17.95 – Hardback / Penguin Books Ltd
As in his earlier celebrated books Europe: a history and The Isles, Norman Davies aims to subvert our established view of what seems familiar, and urges us to look and think again. This stimulating surprising book, full of... Buy or find out more→
The Promise of Iceland
$24.95 – Paperback / University of Queensland Press
Born from a secret liaison between a British mother and an Icelandic father, Kari Gislason was the subject of a promise - a promise elicited from his father to not reveal his identity. The Icelandic city of Reykjavik, where Kari... Buy or find out more→
The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662
$32.95 – Hardback / Oxford University Press
When it was first produced, The Book of Common Prayer provoked riots and rebellion, and it was banned before being translated into a host of global languages and adopted as the basis for worship. This edition presents the work... Buy or find out more→
A Short History of Christianity
$45.00 – Hardback / Penguin Books Australia
For 200 years, Christianity has had a varying but immense influence on world history. Who better, then, than Geoffrey Blainey, author of the best-selling Short History of the World and one of Australia's most accomplished... Buy or find out more→
The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios
$39.95 – Hardback / Palgrave Macmillan
The first edition of Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio, published in 1623, is one of the most valuable books in the world and has historically proven to be an attractive target for thieves. Of the 160 First Folios... Buy or find out more→
Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History
$35.00 – Hardback / Allen & Unwin
Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History is a beautifully illustrated book that uncovers the fascinating stories of creatures great and small. These are the animals that have played a central role in the evolution of... Buy or find out more→
Mad Dog William Cyril Moxley And The Moorebank Killings
$39.95 – Hardback / UNSW Press
William Cyril Moxley was hanged at Sydney's Long Bay Gaol in 1932 - the first execution in New South Wales for eight years. His crime was the brutal rape and murder of 21-year-old Dorothy Ruth Denzel and the vicious beating and... Buy or find out more→
A History of Tasmania
$39.95 – Paperback / Cambridge University Press
James Fenton (1820–1901) was born in Ireland and emigrated to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) with his family in 1833. He became a pioneer settler in an area on the Forth River and published this history of the... Buy or find out more→
Burke & Wills: the Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition
$59.95 – Hardback / CSIRO Publishing
This book challenges the common assumption that little or nothing of scientific value was achieved during the Burke and Wills expedition. The Royal Society of Victoria initiated the Victorian Exploring Expedition as a serious... Buy or find out more→
Leningrad: Tragedy of a City Under Siege, 1941-44
$49.99 – Hardback / Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
The siege of Leningrad is one of the great stories of extraordinary and heroic endurance in World War II On 8 September 1941, eleven short weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on... Buy or find out more→
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
$19.95 – Paperback / Vintage
In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes starved, shot and gassed fourteen million people in a zone of death between Berlin and Moscow. This book offers an investigation of... Buy or find out more→
Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements
$34.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
A Guardian and Daily Telegraph 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' Buy or find out more→
Hitler's Hangman: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich
$39.95 – Hardback / Yale University Press
Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security... Buy or find out more→
Jerusalem Jerusalem How The Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World
$35.00 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Carroll's urgent, masterly Jerusalem, Jerusalem uncovers the ways in which the ancient city became, unlike any other in the world, an incendiary fantasy of a city. Buy or find out more→
When Money Dies: The Nightmare Of The Weimar Hyper-inflation
$29.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
In 1923, German currency became effectively worthless: the exchange rate in December of that year was one US dollar to 4200 trillion marks. The Weimar Republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars,... Buy or find out more→
Bligh: Master Mariner
$35.00 – Paperback / Hachette Australia
From ship's boy to vice-admiral, discover how much more there was to Captain Bligh than his infamous bad temper. Rob Mundle's Bligh puts you at the heart of a great nautical life. It's a story that embraces the romance of the sea,... Buy or find out more→
The Gold Rush: The Fever That Forever Changed Australia
$19.95 – Paperback / Random House Australia
David Hill relates the extraordinary people and staggering events of Australia's great gold-rush years. From the mid- to late-1800s, people from all corners of the globe and all walks of life, including two future prime... Buy or find out more→
The Godfather Was a Girl: Real People Who Inspired Famous and Infamous Characters
$24.95 – Paperback / Hardie Grant Books
Eamon Evans has collected over 400 extraordinary and entertaining examples of the real-life people who inspired some of our most famous fictional characters from books, movies and television. Buy or find out more→
Mary Boleyn: 'The Great and Infamous Whore'
$32.95 – Paperback / Vintage
Mary Boleyn is remembered by posterity as a 'great and infamous whore'. She was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. This title explodes... Buy or find out more→
The Korean War
$35.00 – Paperback / Pan Macmillan Australia
The Korean War has never really ended. Although a ceasefire agreement was reached in 1953 after three years of savage warfare, the conflict continues to simmer just below the surface, threatening at any moment to break into... Buy or find out more→
Venetian Navigators: The Voyages of the Zen Brothers to the Far North
$35.00 – Hardback / Faber and Faber
Andrea di Robilant, author of A Venetian Affair, investigates the story of the Zen brothers, the fourteenth-century merchant navigators whose fabled voyage to the North Atlantic made history. In the 14th century, Nicolo... Buy or find out more→
Jerusalem: The Biography
$49.99 – Hardback / Orion Publishing Co
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilisations. From King David to Barack... Buy or find out more→
Fire and Song: The Story of Luis De Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition
$29.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
It is1596 and in Mexico the Inquisition is at its most efficient. A young man trembles in his cell as he prays for salvation, torn between the Christianity he was schooled in and his ancestral faith. What heresies will the Holy... Buy or find out more→
The Arabs: A History
$26.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
The history of the Arab world is a story of colonization, war and resistance but also rich creativity, encompassing a diverse area from Morocco to Iraq. Eugene Rogan's acclaimed book traces five hundred years of tumultuous... Buy or find out more→
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
$29.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
A history of the French Revolution, this book gives an account of the first few years of the great Revolution in France, and of the decades that led up to it. Buy or find out more→
Bligh in Australia: A New Appraisal of William Bligh and the Rum Rebellion
$24.95 – Paperback / Business & Professional Publishing
This fascinating account of early Australia focuses on Governor William Bligh (famous as the captain of "Mutiny On the Bounty" fame). The Rum Rebellion has, for generations, been told to school children as one of the better... Buy or find out more→
Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
$32.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and... Buy or find out more→
Them And Us
$35.00 – Paperback / Little, Brown Book Group
* An incisive look at how our society has fragmented into inequality and how to address this most crucial blight on our times Buy or find out more→
The Idea of Justice
$26.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Ltd
Is justice an ideal, forever beyond our grasp, or something that may actually guide our practical decisions and enhance our lives? This title presents an alternative approach to mainstream theories of justice which, despite their... Buy or find out more→
From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-line Dispatches from the Advertising War
$25.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
It was a meeting of the agency's top people to find an advertising theme for Panasonic, a major new Japanese electronics firm. Suddenly the new $50,000-a-year creative supervisor leapt to his feet in a frenzy of simulated... Buy or find out more→
Flight Of The Intellectuals
$29.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
It created a worldwide furore when Tariq Ramadan was barred from US entry to accept a prestigious appointment at Notre Dame University. In a gripping portrait, Paul Berman details Ramadan's disturbing ties to radical Islam, and... Buy or find out more→
Shortest History Of Europe
$19.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
Chinese civilisation was for a long period more advanced than European. Yet it was in Europe that steady economic growth first occurred and then the Industrial Revolution. And it was in Europe that representative government and... Buy or find out more→
Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia - 1788-1868
$34.95 – Paperback / Murdoch Books
This is the first narrative history that brings together the stories of the political prisoners sent as convicts to Australia from all over Britain and parts of her Empire, spanning the early days of the penal settlement at... Buy or find out more→