The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War by Giles Milton
Category: History
'Terrific' Anthony Horowitz From internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton comes the remarkable true story of the Allies' secret mission to wartime Moscow. In the summer of 1941, as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin's forces faced a catastrophic defeat which would make the Allies' liber ...Show more
Killing for Country: A Family Story: Winner of the 2024 Indie Book of the Year Award by David Marr
Category: History
A gripping reckoning with the bloody history of Australia's frontier wars. David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result - a soul-searching Australian history. This is a richly detailed sa ...Show more
The Rescue: The True Story of the SAS Mission to Save Hostages from the Taliban by Andy McNab
Category: Military
The story of the SAS and Navy SEALs' attempts to save a group of NGO workers held hostage by the Taliban in 2012 in Northern Afghanistan. Andy McNab draws on classified sources and his own personal insight into the inner-workings of the special forces to tell the story of the rescue mission. The thrilli ...Show more
The Chipilly Six: Unsung Heroes of the Great War by Lucas Jordan
Category: Military
On 9 August 1918, on high ground overlooking the Somme River, an entire British Army Corps is held up by German machine gunners. The battle has raged for 30 hours and more than 2000 Englishmen have fallen, for no gain.Meanwhile, two Australian sergeants, Jack Hayes and Harold Andrews, go absent without ...Show more
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester
Category: History
From the bestselling author Simon Winchester, a human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it back. In 1889, thousands of hopeful people raced southward from the Kansas state line and westward from the Arkansas boundary to stake claims ...Show more
A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps by Jonn Elledge
Category: History
People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By ...Show more
Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester
Category: History | Reading Level: very good
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2018 Bestselling author Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see as far as the moon and as close as the Higgs boson. Precision is the key to everything. It is an in ...Show more
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Civilisation to Independence by Zeinab Badawi
Category: History
Zeinab Badawi, award-winning broadcaster and President of SOAS, tells an epic story of the oldest inhabited continent in the world from an African perspective, for fans of William Dalrymple, David Olusoga and Peter Frankopan.*Selected as a book to look out for in 2024 by the Guardian*Everyone is origina ...Show more
Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 by Antony Beevor
Category: History
'The book is a masterpiece' The Spectator'A gripping narrative history of one of the most complex episodes in modern Russian history' Sunday Times'Antony Beevor's Russia is a masterpiece of history' Daily TelegraphBetween 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse o ...Show more
By Sea & Stars: The story of the First Fleet by Trent Dalton
Category: History
Dazzling, poetic and vivid storytelling from one of Australia's greatest writers, which tells the bloody, brutal and enthralling story of the epic journey of the First Fleet. Originally published as a multi-part serial in The Australian, By Sea and Stars tells the story of the epic voyage which led to t ...Show more
Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory
Category: History
One of our foremost historical novelists, Philippa Gregory, makes history. We have fallen into the belief that women were absent from great events, and ineffectual in normal times. Through a radical reframing of the conventional eras of our history, Normal Women tells the story of our nation - not w ...Show more