Australian War Classics (Various)

Australian War Classics 

Various

Blurb: Four timeless accounts

We Were the Rats - Lawson Glassop

Glassop compellingly captures all the fear, bravery and determination of the so-called 'Rats of Tobruk' - the Australian soldiers who found themselves under protracted siege on the North African coast. We Were the Rats is a novel that paints a quintessential portrait of the fiercely independent and intrinsically larrikin Aussie Digger.

Desert Siege - Chester Wilmot

Tobruk, like Gallipoli, holds a special place in Australia's war annals. Wilmot's gripping account of how the Australian Imperial Force helped hold the besieged coastal fortress against the superior might of the Germans is based on personal observation, official documents, and eyewitness accounts - from both sides.

Behind Bamboo - Rohan D. Rivett

Rivett's saga of life as a Japanese prisoner of war, including the hell of his days on the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway, is brutal in its honesty, haunting in its realism and alive with the Australian POW's indomitable will to survive.

The Ridge and the River - T.A.G. Hungerford

Hungerford's tautly written novel, based on  his own experiences as a commando on Bougainville, recreates the ordeal of face-to-face confrontation with the enemy - and the unassailable Aussie humour and the triumph of sheer guts over the constant fear and group tensions intrinsic to jungle warfare.

ISBN: 0734305222 (Hardback)

Year: 1944 / 1946 / 1952

Publisher: Claremont

Pages: 1243 (Fiction / Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Dymocks

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Australian War Memorial

4. TV Series dealing with Australian's at War

5. Photos of Australian War Graves

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

Blurb: He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.

Following one soldier's journey from naive recruit to hardened survivor, The Red Badge of Courage is a vivid and powerfully psychological take on the American Civil War. Fighting for the Union army, Henry Fleming is thrown into a bloody war where the harsh realities and horrors of battle quickly become evident. Fearful, occasionally vain, but always viewing the war with honest eyes, Henry eventually comes to thrive as a soldier in combat and it is with a new conscience and outlook that he matures into manhood. 

ISBN: 9780007902200 (Paperback)

Year: 1895

Publisher: Collins Classics

Pages: 188 (Fiction)

Links

1. Wikipedia page for the book

2. Spark Notes on the book

3. Buy from Amazon

4. Read the text online here

5. Goodreads page for the book

A Drink Before the War - A Kenzie and Gennaro Thriller #1 (Dennis Lehane)

A Drink Before the War - A Kenzie and Gennaro Thriller #1

Dennis Lehane

Blurb: Summer in Boston.

The week before Independence Day. A city steeped in history and racial strife. A city abut to be ripped apart by an unspeakable scandal and a raging gang war...

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents.

But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive once they have. The investigation escalates, implicating members of Jenna's family and rival gang leaders, while uncovering extortion, assassination, and child prostitution extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.

ISBN: 9780553820546 (Paperback)

Year: 1994

Publisher: Bantam Books

Pages: 334 (Fiction)

Links

1. Wikipedia page on the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Goodreads page for the book

4. Author's official site

5. Review of the book

The American Civil War - A Military History (John Keegan)

The American Civil War - A Military History

John Keegan

Blurb: This magisterial history of the first modern war is on the scale of John Keegan's classics, A History of Warfare and The First World War. In his sweeping, unputdownable narrative he highlights the geography, leadership and strategic logic at the heart of the conflict.

John Keegan writes: 'The geography of the battlefield is to me a living reality. I know the appearance of the battlefields, I know the distances between them, I know the cemeteries in which the dead were buried. What constantly puzzles me, however, is to relate the landmarks of the war to its events, chronology, strategy and logic. That war went on for so long and over such an enormous space - the Confederacy covered an area as large as Europe west of Russia - and involved so many battles (260 is the common reckoning) and so many people, that its events conform to no patterns at all.

'How to make sense of the war is the question. In recent years, this became the primary concern of historians, after nearly a century of writing concerned either with arguing the rights and wrongs or simply retelling the story chronologically.

'The story of America is, in one of its dimensions, that of man and wilderness. The story can be told as one in which man tames and dominates; it can equally be told as one in which nature is never really subdued, always bides its time, often asserts its power to remind men of their pygmy status. The Civil War is certainly a story of the struggle of man against man; it is equally a story of the struggle of man against geography, in which those who had a feel for the country eventually succeeded because they knew how to work with the landscape instead of ignoring or defying it.'

ISBN: 9780091794835 (Hardback)

Year: 2009

Publisher: Hutchinson

Pages: 394 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Review of the book

3. Civil War Collection page

4. Another review

5. Buy from Barnes and Noble

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (Bob Woodward)

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

Bob Woodward

Blurb: As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the U.S. government from 2006 through mid-2008.

The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly opposes a surge of additional U.S. forces and confronts the president, who replies that her suggestions would lead to failure. The president keeps his decision to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from Vice President Dick Cheney until two days before he announces it. A retired Army general uses his high-level contacts to shape decisions about the war, as Bush and Cheney use him to deliver sensitive messages outside the chain of command.

For months, the administration's strategy reviews continue in secret, with no deadline and no hurry, in part because public disclosure would harm Republicans in the November 2006 elections. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tells Rice, 'We've got to do it under the radar and screen because the electoral season is so hot.'

The War Within provides an exhaustive account of struggles of General David Petraeus, who takes over in Iraq during one of the bleakest and most violent periods of the war. It reveals how breakthroughs in military operations and surveillance account for much of the progress as violence in Iraq plummets in the middle of 2007.

Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realises the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 U.S. troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election.

The War Within addresses head-on questions of leadership, not just in a war but in how we are governed and the dangers of unwarranted secrecy.

ISBN: 9781921470103 (Hardback)

Year: 2008

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 487 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

2. Foreign Affairs look at the book

3. The Washington Post's in depth look at the book

4. Article on the book

5. Good reads page for the book

Weapons of Choice - World War 2.1 (Axis of Time #1) (John Birmingham)

Weapons of Choice - World War 2.1 (Axis of Time #1)

John Birmingham

Blurb: A near-future military experiment thrusts a multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding towards Midway Atoll - and what was to be the most spectacular Allied triumph of World War II.

ISBN: 0330421891 (Paperback)

Year: 2004

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 673 (Fiction)

Links

1. Google books page

2. Review of the book

3. Buy from Amazon

4. Publisher's page on the author

5. Wikipedia page for the series

The Hitler Club: The Rise and Fall of Australia's No.1 Nazi (Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig)

The Hitler Club: The Rise and Fall of Australia's No.1 Nazi

Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig

Blurb: After immigration restrictions were lifted in 1925, a numer of German nationals came to live in South Australia, the heartland of earlier German settlement. Among them was Dr Johannes Becker, who would go on to achieve infamy as Hitler's Confidential Agent, and 'Australia's No. 1 Nazi.'

A 29 year old war veteran and ship's surgeon, Becker travelled to the Barossa Valley and quickly established a thriving medical practice. Embroiled in controversy and litigation from the start he would later become the leading Nazi Party organiser for Australia. He gathered around him a small following of like-minded expatriates who were eager to see the re-emergence of Germany from the wreckage of the Great War.

Days after the Second World War broke out he and his Party comrades were interned. They were regarded by the Government as risks to national security, but newly declassified archives reveal that none of them had committed any acts which endangered Australian interests or affected the rights of any citizens. Though Becker lost favour with Nazi officials in Germany and was expelled from the Party in 1941, the Australian Authorities nevertheless interned him for seven years.

For a short time in 1947 he became a fugitive and Australia's most wanted when he disappeared whilst on parole. Following his accidental capture on board a ship headed for Panama he was deported to Germany, leaving behind his family amid a blaze of hysterical publicity. He was never allowed to return to Australia and never saw his wife and children again.

'The Hitler Club' (the name coined by Australian security operatives) tells the gripping story of Becker and the people in his life, his rise to prominence and his inevitable fall at the hands of an unsympathetic legal system. Analysis of the transcript of Becker's deportation hearing reveals that the Judge's findings were flawed and unsupported by the evidence; the hearing was litter more than a show trial.

The book highlights the irony of an innocent former Nazi being denied justice by a xenophobic Establishment that preached fair play but practised bias. This is a story that cannot be ignored in today's 'war on terror' and the internment of 'enemy aliens' without due process.

ISBN: 9781921221095 (Paperback)

Year: 2007

Publisher: Brolga Publishing

Pages: 427 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Google books page

2. National Library of Australia page for the book

3. Publisher's page for the book

4. Buy from Fishpond

5. Review of the book

Goodbye Mickey Mouse (Len Deighton)

Goodbye Mickey Mouse

Len Deighton

Blurb: England 1944.

In Goodbye Mickey Mouse Len Deighton has written his best novel yet: a brilliant, multi-dimensional picture of what it is to be at war...and what it was to be in love in the England of 1944.

ISBN: 9780007851836 (Paperback)

Year: 1982

Publisher: Harper

Pages: 437 (Fiction)

Links

1. Wikipedia page for the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Good reads page

4. Other books by the same author

5. Blog on the book

The Dakota Trail (Ralph Compton novel by Robert Vaughan)

The Dakota Trail

Ralph Compton novel by Robert Vaughan

Blurb: After the Civil War, Dick Hodson returns to his home of Windom, Texas, the lone survivor of all the men who left to fight against the Union. He finds the former cattle town destitute, for there were no able ranch hands to drive the herds, and now the few ranches that survived are on the edge of ruin.

To save the town, Dick plans to drive the remaining cattle north with a trail party made up of raw greenhorn children. But the unforgiving trail is the least of their problems. A gang of merciless cutthroats is waiting for them - hired by the evil Bryan Phelps, whose fortune rests on the failure of the desperate cattle drive.

Now, with little more than his own cunning and the blind courage of his young crew, Dick Hodson is going to war...

ISBN: 0451204174 (Paperback)

Year: 2001

Publisher: Signet

Pages: 261 (Fiction)

Links

1. Author's Wikipedia page

2. Google books page

3. Buy from Amazon

4. List of other books by the author

5. Author's Good reads page

Turning The Tide: Decisive Battles of The Second World War (Nigel Cawthorne)

Turning The Tide: Decisive Battles of The Second World War

Nigel Cawthorne

Blurb: The Second World War was the final global conflict of the twentieth century. It involved more combatants, and a wider range of battlefield terrain than any other conflict in history, from the frozen plains of Russia to the baking Libyan desert, and from the atolls of the Pacific to the skies over Britain.

In Turning the Tide, Nigel Carthorne has taken a fresh look at the crucial battles which decided the outcome of the Second World War, beginning with the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, a feat that boosted the morale of a nation during its darkest hour, and reaching a climatic end with the final bloody reckoning between the Red Army and the Third Reich amongst the ruins of Berlin.

ISBN: 1841931128 (Paperback)

Year: 2003

Publisher: Capella

Pages: 240 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Google books page

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Buy from Book Depository

4. Author's official site

5. Author's wikipedia page

The Widow of the South (Robert Hicks)

The Widow of the South

Robert Hicks

Blurb: If God was watching that Indian summer afternoon of 30 November 1864, some say he would have been looking at the continent of America, in the central part of a state called Tennessee, at a little town called Franklin - where a terrible battle was about to begin.

Within a few short hours nearly ten thousand men would be dead, and the lives of many others changed utterly; none more so than that of Carrie McGavock, who would find her home taken over by the Confederate Army and turned into a field hospital. On the field of battle, a seasoned Southern soldier, Zachariah Cashwell, would drop his gun and charge forward into Yankee territory holding only the flag of his company's colours.

In the pain-filled days and weeks that followed, both would find a form of mutual healing that neither thought possible.

In an extraordinary debut novel, based on a true story, Robert Hicks paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who, through love and loss, found a cause. Known throughout the century as the Widow of the South, Carrie McGavock gave her heart first to a stranger, then to a piece of hallowed ground, becoming in the process a symbol of a nation's soul.

ISBN: 059305590 (Paperback)

Year: 2005

Publisher: Bantam Press

Pages: 432 (Fiction)

Links

1. Review of the book

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Goodreads page

4. Author's Wikipedia page

5. Official site of the book and author

Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Thomas Keneally)

Abraham Lincoln: A Life

Thomas Keneally

Blurb: A master storyteller reveals Lincoln as he truly lived. Author of the award-winning novel that inspired the film Schindler's List and acclaimed for his recent Civil War biography, American Scoundrel, Thomas Keneally delves with relish - and a keen, fresh eye - into Abraham Lincoln's complicated persona. Abraham Lincoln depicts all the amazing man's triumphs, insecurities, and crushing defeats with the uncanny insight: his early poverty and the ambition that propelled him out of it; shaping of the man and his political philosophy by youthful exposure to Christianity, slavery, and business; his tempestuous marriage and his fatherly love. Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of its pivotal figure, his greatness etched even more clearly in this very touching human story.

ISBN: 9780143114758 (Paperback)

Year: 2003

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 183 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy the ebook

2. Blog review

3. Blogcritics review

4. Google books page

5. White House page on Abe