This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war – a barely known episode of unimaginable horror. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2700 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo. For decades after the Second World War, the Australian and British governments would refuse to divulge the truth of what happened here, for fear of traumatising...

This is a comprehensive yet concise and accessible introduction to the history, role, activities and future challenges facing NATO. Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, author Jennifer Medcalf guides listeners through the complex structure of this organisation. Despite predictions of its imminent demise, NATO is in fact more prominent than ever in international affairs, and this introduction will prove essential not only for the general listener, but also for the growing numbers of ...

′Nobody is more disturbed,′ said President Truman, three days after the destruction of Nagasaki in 1945, ′over the use of the atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language [the Japanese] seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.′...

CEW Bean's wartime reports and photographs mythologised the Australian soldier and helped spawn the notion that the Anzacs achieved something nation-defining on the shores of Gallipoli and the battlefields of western Europe. In his quest to get the truth, Bean often faced death beside the Diggers in the trenches of Gallipoli and the Western Front – and saw more combat than many. But did Bean tell Australia the whole story of what he knew? In this fresh new biography Ross Coulthart explores...

Packed with fascinating facts and insight, this book will fuel dinner party debate, and provide listeners with the science and politics behind the world’s most controversial resource. Without oil, there would be no globalisation, no plastic, little transport, and a global political landscape that few would recognise. It is the lifeblood of the modern world, and humanity’s dependence upon it looks set to continue for decades to come. In this captivating audiobook, Vaclav Smil explains all m...

It’s early 1918, and after four brutal years, the fate of the Great War hangs in the balance. On the one hand, the fact that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks have seized power in Russia – immediately suing for peace with Germany – means that no fewer than one million of the Kaiser’s soldiers can now be transferred from there to the Western Front. On the other, now that America has entered the war, it means that two million American soldiers are also on their way, to tip the scales of war ...

Bill Hosking looks back at his career as a criminal barrister in a candid account of his time at the bar. He tells the true story behind some of his most famous cases, including the Hilton bombings, ‘Toecutter’ Jimmy Driscoll’s attempt to avoid prison time and the Anita Cobby trial. At Bill’s side we also meet some larger-than-life characters, such as Carl Synnerdhal, a professional bank robber who successfully convinced everyone he was blind and hoodwinked the system, as well as adversari...

They are young, they are tough and they were the forward scouts in Australia's war against the Taliban. This is the story of the sappers, the Army engineers in Afghanistan who learnt their skills from the original Australian Tunnel Rats of the Vietnam War. Like their compatriots in Vietnam, the Tunnel Rats of Afghanistan have rutted out the enemy from deep inside their caves and hideouts, have defused thousands of improvised explosive devices (the booby traps and landmines of this most rec...

'During the term of the Rudd and Gillard governments, criticism of the Labor Party became a national pastime.' So writes Mark Latham, a one-time leader of the party and still its most perceptive – and fiercest – critic. In Quarterly Essay 49, Latham argues that the time has come to go beyond criticism to solutions. In that spirit, he offers a timely assessment of the future for Labor. He examines the key challenges: the union nexus, the Keating settlement, a real education revolution, a ne...

'Listen to me,' my mother says. 'They've let off an atom bomb today. Right here in W.A. Atom bombs worry the blazes out of me, and I want you at home.' In the sleepy and conservative 1950s, the British began a series of nuclear tests in the Montebello archipelago off the west coast of Australia. Even today, few people know about the three huge atom bombs that were detonated there, but they lodged in the consciousness of the young Robert Drewe and would linger with him for years to come. In...

Once there was a wilderness: Australia's frontier, a dangerous and unforgiving place where outlaws ruled the roads and killers were hailed as heroes. It was here, in 1838, that one man's uncompromising sense of justice changed history and shocked the world. Denny Day was a vicar's son from Ireland. A member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, as a young man Day joined the British Army before resigning to seek his fortune in New South Wales. There he accepted the most challenging role in the y...

Phillip Schuler, a handsome young journalist from the Melbourne Age, covered the Gallipoli campaign alongside Charles Bean. His bravery was legendary. His dispatches were evocative and compassionate. He captured the heroism and horror for Australian newspaper readers in ways the meticulous yet dry prose of Bean never could. Gallipoli would also propel Schuler on a collision course with his former friend and Age colleague Keith Murdoch, who made his name lobbying against the campaign after ...