Australian Military History

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, one of America's leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds, paints an unforgettable portrait of ingenuity, courage, and sacrifice.

It's the beginning of the 21st century. The Cavill family has continued its mission to protect humanity from nuclear self-immolation and to spread the species beyond Earth. But there are continuing complications as Beatrice's twins travel to Mars to spend time with their dying mother and to pick up the reins there at the growing Mars colony. Cavill Industries continues to expand its economic and business scope in an attempt to fund the Martian colony. Late in the decade, the United Kingdom finds itself at war in the South Atlantic against a technologically advanced opponent while the ...

Based on the remarkable true story of Irish convict John Graham, WHITE SPIRIT is an epic historical adventure set in 19th Century Australia. After escaping from the notorious Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Graham finds refuge with the Kabi, a tribe of Aborigines who eventually accept him as one of their own. Attempts to recapture Graham are orchestrated by a variety of contrasting characters working for the all-pervasive British Empire. They include Moreton Bay's tyrannical, opium-addicted commandant Lord Cheetham, the dashing yet warlike Lieutenant Hogan, native tracker Barega and the penal...

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.

The war in Europe is over. The new post-Nazi German leaders have agreed to a second Armistice after their victory over the Soviet Union. There is an uneasy peace now with the major combatants now struggling with massive wartime debts and the need to rebuild their battered economies. But the war in the Pacific continues. Only now, the Japanese are the ones using weapons of mass destruction in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat at the hands of the Allies. China, Australia and England have finally been joined by America in a final push to end the threat of the Japanese imperialists. ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER A magisterial novel of love and war that traces the life of one man from World War II to the present. Available now on Prime Video: Justin Kurzel’s highly anticipated series based on this Booker Prize–winning novel by Richard Flanagan...

One of Library Journal’s 10 Best Books of 2015 Following his acclaimed Atlantic and The Men Who United the States, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this...

Most Australians have heard of the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. Born in England and emigrating to Queensland in 1883 in his early 20s, Morant was a charming but reckless man who established a reputation as a rider, polo player and writer. He submitted ballads to The Bulletin that were published under the name 'The Breaker' and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend.

It’s the 1980’s, the Cavill Family and their multi-national megacorporation have established human settlements on both the Moon and Mars. Their work in space has now significantly overshadowed their still substantial mining, energy, communications, defense and manufacturing operations still on Earth. The Cavills are also the leaders in the development of affordable clean energy on Earth and in space. But while the Cavills have continued to oppose the development of nuclear weapons because they had been the cause of humanity’s demise in Harold Cavill’s original timeline, multiple ...

From its earliest days as an uncertain experiment in the 1950s, the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) has grown into one of the most respected – and sometimes most controversial – military formations in the world. Headquartered at Campbell Barracks in Perth, this small regiment has carried Australia’s banner into jungles, deserts, mountains, and cities across the globe, carving a reputation for daring, precision, and relentless adaptability.

It’s now the 1990’s, Harold Cavill’s children are working to transform their massive corporation’s focus towards space exploration in an effort to make the Mars colony completely self-sufficient and protect humanity's future. This includes nurturing the career of a certain South African emigre to America who had spurred the US space program in the previous timeline. But a shadowy cabal that has struck against the Cavill family before is now working to encourage the most populous Muslim nation on Earth to launch a powerful military strike against Cavill Industries to destroy the ...

The thrilling true tale of Australia's greatest victory in our longest war. The explosive history of the Commandos and the SAS, and Ben Roberts-Smith's VC. The SAS, THE COMMANDOS AND THE MAKING OF A VICTORIA CROSS 'The corporal made a decision that turned him into the most-famous Australian...

Harold Cavill’s children continue their father’s work to try to prevent humanity from destroying itself in this timeline. Their sister Beatrice continues to live in a self-imposed exile on the fledgling colony on Mars while her oldest sister Judith finds love for the first time. The Cavill lunar installation at Shackleford Crater is soon joined by installations from other nations vying for their own footholds in space. America struggles at first through a disastrous progressive administration before Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1976 to lead a dramatic turnaround in the ...

Unlike most other World War II accounts, this work covers the South Pacific operations in detail. The audiobook includes many now-forgotten operations that deserve to be well remembered. Significantly, the official Australian history of World War II correctly observed that Australia's part in the Pacific war is barely mentioned in American histories. This volume finally brings the major Australian contribution to the fore.

“A fast-paced, well-researched…irresistible” (USA TODAY) World War II aviation account of friendship, heroism, and sacrifice that reads like Unbroken meets The Dirty Dozen from the authors of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Heart of Everything That Is. It’s 1942, just after the...

While the Marine Corps island-hopped across the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Saipan to Iwo Jima, the U.S. Army was locked in a grueling, multiyear fight for the jungle island of New Guinea, which in Japanese hands threatened both Australia and the vital supply lines stretching to the United States. Forces under Douglas MacArthur intended to deny the Japanese this opportunity and use New Guinea as a stepping stone on the road back to the Philippines and, beyond it, Japan.

One American soldier called it "a green hell on Earth". Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps - New Guinea was a battleground far more deadly than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the empire's strategy to knock Australia out of the war.

On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu, located at the Southern end of the Palau Islands. Boasting a large airfield from which the Americans could mount bomber campaigns, Peleliu was a strategically essential part of Gen. MacArthur's long-awaited liberation of the Philippines. With the famed 1st Marine Division making the amphibious assault, Pacific High Command was confident that victory would be theirs in just a few days. They were drastically wrong.

Borneo: The Last Campaign tells the story of Operation OBOE, the massive, three-pronged assault on the vast Japanese-held island of Borneo in 1945. It was one of the largest amphibious invasions of the entire war, and a virtually all-Australian operation. Over the final twelve weeks of World War Two, the 1st Australian Army Corps chased down and fought the remnants of the Japanese army over burning oil fields, up languid tropical rivers, along leech-ridden jungle tracks and across endless hills, valleys and ridges.