Collection: -History

The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills is the first major study of Aboriginal associations with the Burke and Wills expedition of 1860-61. A main theme of the book is the contrast between the skills, perceptions and knowledge of the Indigenous people and those of the new arrivals, and the extent...

Early Europeans saw Victoria and its rolling grasslands as Australia felix-happy south land-a prize left for them by God. For its original inhabitants, their Country was home and life, not to be relinquished without a fierce struggle. Richard Broome tells the story of the impact of European ideas...

The measurement of time has always been essential to human civilization, from early Roman sundials to the advent of GPS. But while we have one eye on the time every day, are we aware of the power clocks have given governments, military leaders and business owners, and how they have shaped our liv...

When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he was about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history? Abroad in Japan charts a decade of liv...

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from th...

"...recreates an era when Castlemaine was poised precariously between a mining camp and a settled town." --back cover.

This text untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's ...

Unique in Melbourne's history, Acland Street has been the home, playground and business address for millionaires and paupers, members of parliament, creators of the culture, sex workers, criminals, migrants from Europe and Asia and the most staid and most 'out there' people in the city. It was th...

"In this insightful travelogue, geopolitical expert Robert Kaplan turns his perceptive eye to the Adriatic Sea, a region that has always been a crossroads in trade, culture, and ideas. Kaplan undertakes a journey through Italy and the Balkan countries lining the Adriatic to reveal much more to th...

The East India Company was the largest commercial enterprise in British history, yet its roots in Tudor England are often overlooked. The Tudor revolution in commerce led ambitious merchants to search for new forms of investment, not least in risky overseas enterprises-and for these "adventurers"...