History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn't stick their chests out as they crossed the line?In Second Best, Australia's foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they c...

What is a Bloke?What is a Bloke? This is the question that has occupied the greatest minds of the anthropological and sociological worlds for many years. Not in a literal sense, of course, at the base level, the definition of a Bloke is perfectly clear: a Bloke is a human male native to Australia, typically between 150 and 200 centimetres tall, frequently partial to beer and ventilated footwear, who has built a mighty nation from the scraps of colonialism and inapp...

Tales of the strange, unnerving and downright bizarre from one of the weirdest places on EarthFish falling out of the sky, joggers relieving themselves on your doorstep, mysterious monsters constantly springing from the shadows, spooky lights and ill-conceived toast spreads: these are just some of the things you can expect on any given day in our surreal southern land.In 100 Weirdest Tales from Across Australia, comedy writer and accredited weirdness expert Ben Pobjie delve...

From the ghostly black horse of Sutton Forest to the butcher of Adelaide Street, a haunted Brisbane lift to the chilling experiments carried out by Doctor Blood of the North Kapunda Hotel, Australia abounds in spooky stories that are all unnervingly based in fact and tied to real places you can visit or avoid. In 100 Tales from Australia's Most Haunted Places, comedy writer and general scaredy-cat Ben Pobjie communes with the spirit world to send a shiver down your spine. A book best read ...

History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn’t stick their chests out as they crossed the line? In Second Best, Australia’s foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they cope wit...

Australia is a proud country full of proud people, but exactly what are we proud of? Comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie delves deep into Australia’s past and has a good old rummage amongst the nation’s personal effects. With wit, perspicacity and a healthily elastic attitude to historical accuracy, the great saga of Australia is unravelled like an old woolly jumper. For anyone who snoozed through history class at school, this is the book to get you all caught up.

The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph, and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes operated together as a coordinated force.Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Integrated use of tanks, planes, infantry, wireless (and even carrier pige...

**As seen on Foxtel's Logie winning The Good Cop and Channel 7's Homicide with Ron Iddles'A - Assume nothing. B - Believe nothing. C - Check everything.' Ron Iddles**In an incredible twenty-five year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles' conviction rate was 99%. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as 'The Great Man'.Tough, inventive and incorruptible, stoic in the face of senseless horror yet una...

The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated.But who was the real James Cook?This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, scientist, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and naviga...

The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country/continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000-mile race, the Redex Trial. Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite su...

It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English government decided to undertake the unprecedented move of shipping off its convicts to a largely unex...

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins.In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordi...