History & Archaeology Books

In this engaging book ,Bernadine Barnes brings together new research to show how Michelangelo's art was seen in its own time. Michelangelo's consideration of his audience changed throughout his career: sometimes he produced work for conventional...

The zombie has shuffled with dead-eyed, remorseless menace from its beginnings in obscure folklore and superstition to become the dominant image of the undead today. In contemporary visions of global apocalypse, such as the...

Double-decker buses, bowler hats, and cricket may be synonymous with British culture, but when it comes to their cuisine, nothing comes to mind faster than fish and chips. Sprinkled with salt and vinegar and often accompanied by mushy peas, fish and...

'Did you keep a list of the words coined by Covid? Wayne Grady did! They're deftly woven into a journal/timeline, taking us through two years of surrealism and limbo.' - Margaret AtwoodThis exploration of the many new terms of...

Contemporary themes: the search for meaning and for spirituality in a secular world; the art of attention; reconciliation with the Catholic Church; the meaning and value of art (and the humanities) in the 21st century, especially art from cultures and...

Nominated for the 2023 Heritage Toronto Book Award Finalist for the 2023 Ottawa Book Award in English Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2023 National Business Book Award The remarkable true story of the rise and fall of one of North America's most...

Shortlisted for the 2023 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby...

A suspenseful, authoritative account of how the battle against a mid-century polio epidemic sparked a revolution in medical care.Americans knew polio as the 'summer plague'. In countries further North, however, the virus arrived later...

Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning. Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world the...

"The powerful origin story of one of Yellowstone's greatest and most famous wolves."-Washington Post"[The Rise of Wolf 8] is a goldmine for information on all aspects of wolf behavior and clearly shows they are clever, smart, and emotional beings...

For readers of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire and Mark Kurlansky's Salt.The story of orchards is a human story. It is also a story of how humans have bent and shaped nature to our tastes and desires for millennia.In Taming Fruit, award-winning...

A definitive biography of an iconic Canadian architect-and a social portraitof the midcentury design world he lived in.Ron Thom came of age in the mid-20th century, just as the modern movement and an impending building boom were about to reshape the...

From the winner of the 2021 Governor General's Award for literature, a revelatory look into an obscured piece of Canadian history: what was then called the Eskimo Identification Tag SystemIn 2001, Dr. Norma Dunning applied to the Nunavut Beneficiary...

When Trains Ruled the Kootenays is the story of how the railways established an extensive and convenient transportation network to haul ore from the mines, move people, and service the communities during the early years of the 20th century in the...

Sydney Harbour has been a defining feature for the people who have lived around it for millennia: a means of communication, a barrier, a resource to be exploited, a site of commerce and trade, and a place of beauty, spirit and meaning.In this sweeping...

The Japanese air raids on Darwin on 19 February 1942 are well known to most Australians, but what happened afterwards?For almost two years the airspace over north-west Australia was routinely infiltrated by Japanese air raids, tallying about 70 in total...

'Given the importance of ability, judgment, leadership and discipline to the effective performance of any military force, the nation faces a serious problem when the public begin to have doubts and politicians start to distrust, the capability of the...

'We are at war with them,' wrote a Tasmanian settler in 1831. 'What we call their crime is what in a white man we should call patriotism.'Australia is dotted with memorials to soldiers who fought in wars overseas. So why are there no official memorials...

**Shortlisted, Magarey Medal in Biography 2024**Bushrangers are Australian legends. Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, Captain Thunderbolt and their bushranging brothers are famous. They're remembered as folk heroes and celebrated for their bravery and their ridicule...

** Shortlisted, 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award **Two Australian scientists played a vital yet largely unknown role in the Allied victory in the Second World War. Almost eight decades later, Wizards of Oz finally tells their story.In this...

We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read...

In the early hours of 26 February 1918, the British hospital ship Glenart Castle steamed into the Bristol Channel, heading for France to pick up wounded men from the killing fields of the Western Front. On board was 32-year-old Australian nurse, Edith...

**Winner, The Danger Awards 2023, People's Choice Awards****Shortlisted, The Danger Awards 2023, Non-fiction**Executioners were once a critical component of the justice system in New South Wales. In an era when judges handed down death sentences...

'I am sir [sure] you will act as human bean', wrote one distressed pensioner to Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1953, pleading for assistance.Robert Menzies received 22,000 letters during his record-breaking 1949-1966 second term as Australian Prime...

'Haven't lost the sand, dust, flies or fleas yet, but have had them for so long now they seem part of us' 12 August 1941, TobrukWhen Tom 'Diver' Derrick enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 5 July 1940, he was a...

** Shortlisted, ACT Book of the Year Award 2022 **On 29 August 2012 Private Robert Poate, Lance Corporal Rick Milosevic and Sapper James Martin were killed during an insider or green on blue attack in Afghanistan. Their killer, a supposed ally, was a...

*Winner of the Nonfiction Award 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature**Winner of the 2019 NSW Premier's History Award: Australian History Prize**Winner of the 2019 Prime Minister's Australian History Prize**Winner of the 2019...

'Most veterans were either alcoholics or workaholics and I fitted into the latter category.' - Chris Cannin (6RAR, 1967; 7RAR, 1967-68)'When I look back and I see what I used to do ... there were a lot of things wrong that I...

** Shortlisted, The 2023 Australian Political Book of the Year Award **Australia's relationship with China is one of the dominant geopolitical stories of our times. The need to understand the tectonic forces of history moving beneath the surface of these...

Australia is a land of symbols. The Southern Cross.The Sydney Opera House. The kangaroo. Vegemite.But what do they actually mean? Where do they come from?Why are some symbols so hotly contested?Does Australia have more than its fair share?Symbols of...

**Shortlisted, NSW Premier's History Awards 2022, Australian History PrizeThe French have been integral to the Australian story since European colonisation. Escaped convicts from New Caledonia, wool buyers from Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, gold-diggers,...

Emu Field is overshadowed by Maralinga, the larger and much more prominent British atomic test site about 193 kilometres to the south. But Emu Field has its own secrets, and the fact that it was largely forgotten makes it more intriguing. Only at Emu...

**Winner, Queensland Literary Awards 2022, Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance**Like many Australians, I looked on with horror as images of a million dead fish swamped the media and consumed the news cycle. I resolved to...

'An incredible testimony to the darkest hours of Australia's queer history and the organisation that helped change everything. A story of devastation, resistance and, ultimately, survival, every Australian should know.' - Benjamin LawFighting For Our...

** Shortlisted, NSW Premier's History Awards 2022, NSW Regional and Community History Prize **** Shortlisted, Les Carlyon Literary Prize 2022 **'In May 1824, what can only be described as a period of all-out, total gudyarra ('war' in the Wiradyuri...

Australia and the Suez Crisis 19501957 focuses on the evolution of Australian policy before, during and after the Suez Crisis. The central theme of the volume is how, in the development of the Australian policy response to that crisis, questions of...

The legacy of war is complex. From the late twentieth century as we moved closer to the centenary of the start of the First World War, Australia was swept by an 'Anzac revival' and a feverish sense of commemoration. In this book, leading historians...

There are few Aboriginal icons in White Australia history.From the explorer to the pioneer, the swagman to the drover's wife, with a few bushrangers for good measure, Europeans play all the leading roles. A rare exception is the redoubtable...

An estimated 40 million people are modern-day slaves, more than ever before in human history.Long after slavery was officially abolished, thepractice not only continues but thrives. Whether they are women inelectronics or apparel sweatshops, children in...

** Longlisted, The Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian History 2024 **An epic story of resistance, suffering and survival. Tongerlongeter resurrects a once-in-a-generation leader all Australians can admire.Australia has no war hero more...

**2019 Nib Military History Prize Finalist ** 'This book shouldbe read by anyone interested in the way myths become accepted as history.' - Peter Edwards, author of Australia and the Vietnam WarWhy everything you thinkyou know about Australia's...

The Snowy: A History tells theextraordinary story of the mostly migrant workforce who built one of theworld's engineering marvels.The Snowy Scheme was an extraordinary engineering feat carried out over twenty-five years from 1949 to 1974 one that drove...

Longlisted for the ICAS Book Prize 2021 - Best Book in the HumanitiesShortlisted for the 2021 Ernest Scott PrizeHighly Commended- Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2021Shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the NSW Premier's...

*Winner of the Australian History Prize in the NSW Premier's History Awards 2020**Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book Award**Shortlisted for the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for History**Shortlisted for the Australian Historical...

Honeysuckle Creek reveals the pivotal role that the tracking station at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra, played in the first moon landing. Andrew Tink gives a gripping account of the role of its director Tom Reid and his colleagues in transmitting some...

World War Noir is an exposition of the old truth that war and crime - and sex, drugs and popular music - go hand in hand.It seems that not even world war could stop crime in Sydney. In fact, World War Noir confirms that war and...

At what point does the will to survive on the battlefield give way to bloodlust?The battle for Crete was at once the most modern and the most ancient of wars. For a week Australian and New Zealand forces were relentlessly hammered from the skies...