'. . . Brune's book is a timely reminder that despite the warmest alliances, nations sometimes have to stand up and save themselves.' - The Weekend Australian Financial Review'. . . A Bastard of a Place undeniably ranks as the best book ever written about the Aussie battles in Papua . . . Very highly recommended, and certainly one of the best books of the year.' - Bill Stone, Stone + Stone Second World War Books websiteIn 1942 and early 1943 Papua New Guin...

The definitive story of the Australian campaign in Southeast Asia during World War II from one of Australia's leading military writers.'No man has the command of words needed for conveying.the courage and the cowardice; the loyalty and the treachery; the dedication and the dereliction; the strengths and the frailties; the kindness and the brutality; the integrity and depravity; the magnificence and the enormities of men, as revealed by and to those fated to pass th...

The definitive account of the Australians on the Kokoda Trail - a story told through the eyes of the Australians who fought there, many of whom have now passed away.The Kokoda Trail is part of Australian military folklore.During July to September 1942 the Japanese set about the capture of Port Moresby by an overland crossing of the Owen Stanley Range, and a landing in Milne Bay. To oppose a force of 10,000 crack Japanese troops on the Kokoda Trail, the Alli...

The biography of Lieutenant Ralph Honner, one of Australia's best-known soldiers from World War 2.We Band of Brothers is the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Honner, one of Australia's great World War II battalion commanders.Honner fought as a junior officer in the first and triumphant North African battles of Bardia, Tobruk and Derna. He then took part in the heartbreaking and disastrous campaigns in Greece and Crete where he was one of the last ...

The AIF and the Hundred DaysBattlefields such as Gallipoli, Fromelles, Pozières, Bullecourt and Passchendaele are burnt into the Australian Great War psyche. Unfortunately the sheer guts, fortitude and sacrifice of the diggers in those battles had often been wasted by poor leadership and planning. From an Australian perspective, such sacrifice engendered bitterness and frustration, which resulted in an emergent sense of Australian nationalism. The AIF now sought a unification of its...

Between 1946 and 1966 large numbers of displaced persons (DPs) came to Australia to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe.Peter Brune’s latest work had its genesis in more than 40 interviews he conducted with DPs in the period 2001—2022. He spoke to migrants from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Hungary.Inspired by their resilience, their enterprise and their determination to ma...

Ralph Honner: Kokoda Hero is the story of one of Australia's great World War II battalion commanders.Honner fought as a junior officer in the first and triumphant North African battles of Bardia, Tobruk and Derna. He then took part in the heartbreaking and disastrous campaigns in Greece and Crete where he was one of the last Australians to be evacuated by submarine-three months after Crete's fall.But it was during 1942, at Isurava on the Kokoda Trail and at the Jap...

Chester Wilmot (19111954) was a renowned Australian war correspondent, broadcaster, journalist and writer. Covering the first triumphant North African battles of Bardia, Tobruk and Derna, the heartbreaking disaster of the Greek Campaign, the epic struggle along the famed Kokoda Track, the momentous amphibious invasion at Normandy and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany, his voice stood above all others during BBC and ABC broadcasts throughout WWII.Following the war he continued rep...

On Paths of Ash is an extraordinary Australian World War II story. Robert and Jack Holman were working-class brothers who found themselves in three of the most horrific experiences of the war. They were interned in Changi prisoner-of-war camp, from where they became prison labourers on the infamous Burma Railway. From there they went as slaves to the coalmines of Japan, close enough to Nagasaki to see the mushroom cloud when the atomic bomb was dropped.This is Robert Holma...

In 1942 radar expert Jack Nissenthall volunteered for a suicidal mission to join a combat team who were making a surprise landing at Dieppe in occupied France. His assignment was to penetrate a German radar station on a cliff above “Green Beach”. Because Nissenthall knew the secrets of British and US radar technology, he was awarded a personal bodyguard of sharpshooters. Their orders were to protect him, but in the event of possible capture lo kill him. .His choice was to succeed or die. T...

'We make and we break.'They were the forward scouts, the mine clearers, the bridge builders and the tunnel rats. They were frequently not just on the front line, but right at the sharp end of the action. They were the legendary Aussie sappers, the army engineers, who were literally everywhere in the fighting against the Vietcong.This special breed of soldier lived hard and played hard. They were there at the beginning of the war. They were also among the last to le...

Why does the dominant partner in any sexual relationship usually sleep on the side of the bed nearest the door? Is there a direct relationship between the length of hemlines and the state of the national economy? Are odd numbers evil? And why do drivers with hats drive 40 kilometres per hour slower than those without?These are the big questions of life, and it takes a brave man to tackle them. The Italian versus Australian theory of traffic lights; who gets the spare armrest betwee...