Australian Military History

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.

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy...weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories."

Want to know what Vietnam was really like? A 3-Volume BOX SET with 200 veteran interviews, 688 Photos, 1,236 pages, and 4.6 Stars on 2,270 Amazon Reviews for the individual books, at half price! Real stories told by real people in their own words, men and women, caught up in an all too real war. From the Delta to the DMZ, come walk in their boots. If you were there, you'll understand. If you weren't, grab a copy and you will, because they’re like Doritos. Try a few and you won't be able to stop. The Vietnam War dominated my generation and affected so many lives in so many different ways. ...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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. ...

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...

In 1932, Australia faced an enemy it did not know how to defeat. The enemy did not carry weapons. It did not wear uniforms. It did not negotiate. It walked on long legs, moved in scattered groups, and refused to behave like anything a modern army had trained for. The War Australia Lost to Birds tells the true story of one of the most astonishing and uncomfortable episodes in modern history: the moment a national government authorized military force against a population of emus—and failed. In the years following World War I, Australia was under immense strain. Returning soldiers were given...

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...

“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.

In November 1943, while on war patrol in the Makassar Strait, the USS Billfish submarine was spotted by the Japanese, who launched a vicious depth-charge attack. Explosions wracked the sub for 15 straight hours. With his senior officers incapacitated, diving officer Charlie Rush boldly assumed command and led key members of the crew in a heroic effort to keep their ship intact as they tried to escape.

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 ...

Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the...

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.

A fascinating look at a neglected Allied front in the Southern hemisphere, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942 follows its successful predecessors as a captivating historical document of a pivotal era in history.

From the author of Pacific Payback comes the gripping true story of the Cactus Air Force and how this rugged crew of dive bombers helped save Guadalcanal and won the war. November 1942: Japanese and American forces have been fighting for control of Guadalcanal, a small but pivotal island in Japan's expansion through the South Pacific.