The Awakening: A History of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman

$59.99 AUD

Category: History

A monumental and exhilarating history of European thought, from the fall of Rome in the fifth century AD to the Scientific Revolution thirteen centuries later. The Awakeningtraces the recovery and refashioning of Europe's classical heritage from the ruins of the Roman Empire. The process of preservatio n of surviving texts, fragile at first, was strengthened under the Christian empire founded by Charlemagne in the eighth century; later, during the High Middle Ages, universities were founded and the study of philosophy was revived. Renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought provided the intellectual impetus for the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whose ideas - aesthetic, political and scientific - were disseminated across Europe by the invention of the printing press. Equally momentous was Europe's encounter with the New World, and the resulting maritime supremacy which conferred global reach on Europe's merchants and colonists. Vivid in detail and informed by the latest scholarship, The Awakeningis powered not by the fate of kings or the clash of arms but by deeper currents of thought, inquiry and discovery, which first recover and then surpass the achievements of classical antiquity, and lead the West to the threshold of the Age of Reason. Charles Freeman takes the reader on an enthralling journey, and provides us with a vital key to understanding the world we live in today. ...Show more

Arab Winter A Tragedy by Noah Feldman

$29.99 AUD

Category: History | Series: Princeton ANZ Paperbacks Ser.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceWhy the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrong   The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremi st terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.   Focusing on the Egyptian revolution and counterrevolution, the Syrian civil war, the rise and fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the Tunisian struggle toward Islamic constitutionalism, Feldman provides an original account of the political consequences of the Arab Spring, including the reaffirmation of pan-Arab identity, the devastation of Arab nationalisms, and the death of political Islam with the collapse of ISIS. He also challenges commentators who say that the Arab Spring was never truly transformative, that Arab popular self-determination was a mirage, and even that Arabs or Muslims are less capable of democracy than other peoples.   Above all, The Arab Winter shows that we must not let the tragic outcome of the Arab Spring disguise its inherent human worth. People whose political lives had been determined from the outside tried, and for a time succeeded, in making politics for themselves. That this did not result in constitutional democracy or a better life for most of those affected doesn't mean the effort didn't matter. To the contrary, it matters for history--and it matters for the future. ...Show more

The Golden Maze: a Biography of Prague by Richard Fidler

$39.99 AUD

Category: History

ABC broadcaster and bestselling author of Ghost Empire and Saga Land, Richard Fidler is back with a personally curated history of the magical city that is Prague. In 1989, Richard Fidler was living in London as part of the provocative Australian comedy trio The Doug Anthony All Stars when revolution broke out across Europe. Excited by this galvanising historic, human, moment, he travelled to Prague, where a decrepit police state was being overthrown by crowds of ecstatic citizens. His experience of the Velvet Revolution never let go of him. Thirty years later Fidler returns to Prague to uncover the glorious and grotesque history of Europe's most instagrammed and uncanny city: a jumble of gothic towers, baroque palaces and zig-zag lanes that has survived plagues, pogroms, Nazi terror and Soviet tanks. Founded in the ninth Century, Prague gave the world the golem, the robot, and the world's biggest statue of Stalin, a behemoth that killed almost everyone who touched it. Fidler tells the story of the reclusive emperor who brought the world's most brilliant minds to Prague Castle to uncover the occult secrets of the universe. He explores the Black Palace, the wartime headquarters of the Nazi SS, and he meets victims of the communist secret police. Reaching back into Prague's mythic past, he finds the city's founder, the pagan priestess Libussa who prophesised: I see a city whose glory will touch the stars. Following the story of Prague from its origins in medieval darkness to its uncertain present, Fidler does what he does so well - curates an absolutely engaging and compelling history of a place. You will learn things you never knew, with a tour guide who is erudite, inquisitive, and the best storyteller you could have as your companion.  ...Show more

Book of Wonders: How Euclid's Elements Built the World by Benjamin Wardhaugh

$34.99 AUD

Category: History

Euclid's Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world. In a sweeping history, Benjamin Wardhaugh traces how an ancient Greek text on mathematics – often hailed as the world's first textbook – shaped two thousand years of art, philosophy and literature, as well as science and maths. Thirteen volumes of mathematical definitions, propositions and proofs. Writing in 300 BC, Euclid could not have known his logic would go unsurpassed until the nineteenth century, or that his writings were laying down the very foundations of human knowledge.Wardhaugh blasts the dust from Euclid's legacy to offer not only a vibrant history of mathematics, told through people and invention, but also a broader story of culture. Telling stories from every continent, ranging between Ptolemy and Isaac Newton, Hobbes and Lewis Carrol, this is a history that dives from Ancient Greece to medieval Byzantium, early modern China, Renaissance Italy, the age of European empires, and our world today.How has geometry sat at the beating heart of sculpture, literature, music and thought? How can one unknowable figure of antiquity live through two millennia? ...Show more

Great Expectations: Emigrant Governesses in Colonial Australia by Patricia Clarke

$29.99 AUD

Category: Australian History

Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day by Tom Moore

$45.00 AUD

Category: Military History

At the height of the pandemic, ninety-nine-year-old WWII veteran Captain Tom Moore began walking laps of his garden to raise e1000 for the NHS. By the time of his 100th birthday, he'd reached e32 million and captured the hearts of the nation. In his official autobiography, announced alongside the creati on of the Captain Tom Foundation, he tells us not only of his long life, serving in Burma in the war and racing motorbikes, but also how an old soldier with a can-do, never-give-up attitude inspired a nation to believe anything is possible by reminding us it is never too late. ...Show more

Young Castro - The Making of a Revolutionary by Jonathan M. Hansen

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

This intimate, revisionist portrait of Fidel Castro, showing how an unlikely young Cuban led his country in revolution and transfixed the world, is "sure to become the standard on Castro's early life" (Publishers Weekly).   Until now, biographers have treated Castro's life like prosecutors, scou ring his past for evidence to convict a person they don't like or don't understand. Young Castro challenges us to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hothead to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century.   In this "gripping and edifying narrative...Hansen brings imposing research and notable erudition" (Booklist) to Castro's early life, showing Castro getting his toughness from a father who survived Spain's class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. We see a boy running around that plantation more comfortable playing with the children of his father's laborers than his own classmates at elite boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. We discover a young man who writes flowery love letters from prison and contemplates the meaning of life, a gregarious soul attentive to the needs of strangers but often indifferent to the needs of his own family. These pages show a liberal democrat who admires FDR's New Deal policies and is skeptical of communism, but is also hostile to American imperialism. They show an audacious militant who stages a reckless attack on a military barracks but is canny about building an army of resisters. In short, Young Castro reveals a complex man.   The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro's family and closest confidants. He gained access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and interviewed people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable, and all too human: a man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence. ...Show more

Tiger Battalion 507 - Eyewitness Accounts from Hitler's Regiment by Helmut Schneider; Robert Forczyk

$29.99 AUD

Category: History

'May the army of millions of dead of all nations bear witness to humanity for the hope that future generations may learn to discard war as the best way to resolve their differences.' - Helmut SchneiderThis is the little-known story of Heavy Panzer (Tiger) Battalion 507 told through the recollections of the men who fought with the unit.The book was conceived during a reunion of the '507' at Rohrdorf in 1982, where it was agreed to set up an editorial committee under Helmut Schneider, himself a veteran of the battalion, to search for as many survivors of the unit as possible and gather their reminiscences. The resulting account is a treasure trove of first-hand material, from personal memories, diary entries and letters to leave passes, wartime newspaper cuttings, Wehrmacht bulletins and more than 160 photographs.The account follows the unit from its formation in 1943 and the catastrophic events on the Eastern Front, through battles on the Western Front and engagements against the American 3rd Armoured Division to the confusion of retreat, panic-stricken flight and Soviet captivity in the closing stages of the war. Honest and unflinching, this remarkable collection of autobiographies offers a glimpse into life in Hitler's panzer division and is a stark testimony of a generation that sacrificed its best years to the war.This is the first English-language translation of the work. ...Show more

Crusaders by Dan Jones

$22.99 AUD

Category: History

From the bestselling author of The Templars. 'Voyages, battles, sieges and slaughter: Dan Jones's tumultuous and thrilling history of the crusades is one of the best'SUNDAY TIMES. 'A powerful story brilliantly told. Dan Jones writes with pace, wit and insight'HELEN CASTOR. 'A fresh and vibrant accoun t of a conflict that raged across medieval centuries'JONATHAN PHILLIPS. Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades - the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West. From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle. Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto. PRAISE FOR THE TEMPLARS: 'A fresh, muscular and compelling historyof the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE. 'Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turnerout of the dramatic history of the Templars' PHILIPPA GREGORY. 'The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary sagaof fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. The Templarsis a wonderful book!' BERNARD CORNWELL. 'Told with all Jones's usual verve and panache, this is a dramatic and gripping taleof courage and stupidity, faith and betrayal' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'This is another triumphant talefrom a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' OBSERVER. 'The Templarsis exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS. 'Jones carries the Templars through the crusades with clarity and verve. This is unabashed narrative history, fast-paced and full of incident ... Jones tells their story extremely well' SUNDAY TIMES. ...Show more

Reprehensible: Polite Histories of Bad Behaviour by Mikey Robins

$29.99 AUD

Category: History | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

Rollicking and informative, Reprehensible: Polite Histories of Bad Behaviour is your guide through some of the most shameful behaviour indulged in by humanity's most celebrated figures, as told by Mikey Robins, one of Australia's most beloved comedians. It is often said that we live in era of constant o utrage, but we are definitely not the inventors of outrageousness. Let's be honest, human beings have always been appalling. Not everyone and not all the time, but our history is littered with those whose work and deeds have rendered them . . . reprehensible. Sometimes it's our most esteemed luminaries who behave the worst. In Reprehensible: Polite Histories of Bad Behaviour, Mikey Robins holds the mirror up to everyone, from Popes to politicians, from certified artistic geniuses to scientific and mathematical minds without peer - few emerge without blush or blemish. For instance, what are we to make of Catherine the Great's extensive collection of pornographic furniture, Hans Christian Anderson's too-much-information diary and Karl Marx's epic pub crawls? Or hall-of-fame huckster William McCloundy, who in 1901 actually 'sold' the Brooklyn Bridge to an unsuspecting tourist, and the Pharaoh who covered his slaves in honey to keep flies off his meal? Did you know about the royal ticklers of the Romanov court, and the bizarre coronation rituals of early Welsh kings? (Let's just say that eating a white horse wasn't the weirdest part of the ceremony.) And who else but Mikey could uncover the story of Chrysippus, the Stoic philosopher who laughed himself to death at the sight of a drunk donkey? So sit back and rest your conscience: there will be a host of scoundrels, bounders and reprobates, tales of lust and power aplenty, as we indulge in that sweet spot where history meets outrage, with just a bit of old-school TMZ thrown in for good measure.   ...Show more

The World Aflame by Dan Jones; Marina Amaral

$49.99 AUD

Category: Military History

'Purists argue that colourising black and white photographs is sacrilege, but the world has always been in colour. Truth be told, monochrome is a contrivance. Human experience is always colourful' The Times. The epic, harrowing and world-changing story - in words and colourized images - of global confli ct from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the obliteration of Hiroshima by the dropping of the first atom bomb. The World Aflame will embrace not only the total conflagrations of 1914-18 and 1939-45 and the international tensions, conflicting ideologies and malign economic forces that set them in train, but also the civil wars of the interwar period in Ireland and Spain, wars in Latin America, Britain's imperial travails in such places as Ireland, Somalia and Palestine, and events on the domestic 'fronts' of the belligerent nations. Like The Colour of Time, The World Aflame is a collaboration between the gifted Brazilian artist Marina Amaral, and the leading British historian Dan Jones. Marina has created 200 stunning images, using contemporary photographs as the basis for her full-colour digital renditions. The accompanying narrative anchors each image in its context, weaving them into a vivid account of four decades of conflict that shaped the world we live in today. A fusion of amazing pictures and well-chosen and informative words, The World Aflameoffers a moving - and often terrifying - perspective on the bloodiest century in human history. Reviews for THE COLOUR OF TIME: 'The most breathtakingly colourised black-and-white pictures ever' Daily Mail. 'I have long considered colourisation sacrilege ... after reading this book, I've changed my mind' The Times. '[The Colour of Time] does something simple yet extraordinary. It takes black-and-white photos of historic events and colours them in. The effect is transformative' Daily Telegraph. 'A stunning book ... Quite extraordinary' The Bookseller. 'There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral's photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering Technicolor Oz ... When you see Amaral's coloured portraits, you think: phwoar! ... She changes the way we see a period or a person' Spectator. 'The effect of colour is far more transformative than you might imagine ... [Amaral's] touched-up photographs look even more realistic, and closer to life, than a photograph taken yesterday ... Extraordinary' Mail on Sunday. 'Pictures brought to life as you've never seen them before' Sunday Post. '[Amaral] breathes new life, immediacy and human connection into black-and-white pictures. Even familiar shots are transformed in a breathtaking way ... Even the casual reader leafing through these pages will be stopped in their tracks, connected to people from the past like never before - at last, in living colour' Irish News. 'Jones sketches with wry economy not only the historical context but the purpose of the photograph, from documented reality to shameless propaganda, from official portrait to candid snap ... There is much to enjoy here. As a history book, it acts as a fleeting guide to a tumultuous century. But as an aesthetic experiment it is remarkably successful' Daily Express. 'What also elevates The Colour of Time above regular coffee table fare is the startling vivacity and impact of the photographs chosen, and the concise but focused and gripping texts by Jones, making the book a worthwhile cover-to-cover read as much as it serves as a showcase book to dip into at will' All About History. ...Show more

The Liberation of Paris - How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light by Jean Edward Smith

$27.99 AUD

Category: History

Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the "rousing" (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II--a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction. Following th eir breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine into Germany, ending the war before winter set in. But as they advanced, local forces in Paris began their own liberation, defying the occupying German troops. Charles de Gaulle, the leading figure of the Free French government, urged General Dwight Eisenhower to divert forces to liberate Paris. Eisenhower's advisers recommended otherwise, but Ike wanted to help position de Gaulle to lead France after the war. And both men were concerned about partisan conflict in Paris that could leave the communists in control of the city and the national government. Neither man knew that the German commandant, Dietrich von Choltitz, convinced that the war was lost, schemed to surrender the city to the Allies intact, defying Hitler's orders to leave it a burning ruin. In The Liberation of Paris, Jean Edward Smith puts "one of the most moving moments in the history of the Second World War" (Michael Korda) in context, showing how the decision to free the city came at a heavy price: it slowed the Allied momentum and allowed the Germans to regroup. After the war German generals argued that Eisenhower's decision to enter Paris prolonged the war for another six months. Was Paris worth this price? Smith answers this question in a "brisk new recounting" that is "terse, authoritative, and] unsentimental" (The Washington Post). ...Show more