Seen as the last 'hot' frontline of the Cold War, the ten-year struggle in the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam unleashed the most devastating firepower on the Vietnamese nation and visited terrible harm on civilians and soldiers. Yet the Australian forces applied tactics that were very different from those of the Americans. Guided by their commanders' experience of jungle combat, Australian troops operated with stealth, deception and restraint in pursuing a 'better war'. Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti-war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefield, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women. More than 500 soldiers were killed and thousands wounded. Those who made it home returned to a hostile and ignorant country and a reception that scarred them forever. This is their story.

Product Description: A searing indictment of the rationale behind the First World War and a shocking portrayal of what might have been.      In August 1914, the European powers plunged the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems and set the world on course for the bloodiest century in human history...read more

Product Description: Based on the author's experience in the Australian Army, The Odd Angry Shot is the seminal account of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War: brief and bracing, tragic yet darkly funny.This classic Australian novel won Australia's National Book Council Award and became an iconic film...read more

Product Description: This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war—a barely known episode of unimaginable horror.After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2700 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo...read more

Product Description: The brilliantly told but harrowing story of the Borneo Death Marches of 1944-5.      After the fall of Singapore in 1942, the conquering Japanese Army transferred some 2500 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp at Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo...read more

Product Description: In a unique and balanced portrayal, renowned journalist Paul Ham recounts both the Australian and Japanese perspectives of the events on the hellish Papuan jungle trail where thousands fought and died during World War II. It was a war without mercy, fought back and forth along 90 miles of river crossings, steep inclines and precipitous descents, with both sides wracked by hunger and disease, and terrified of falling into enemy hands...read more

In a unique and balanced portrayal, renowned journalist Paul Ham recounts both the Australian and Japanese perspectives of the events on the hellish Papuan jungle trail where thousands fought and died during World War II.It was a war without mercy, fought back and forth along 90 miles of river crossings, steep inclines and precipitous descents, with both sides wracked by hunger and disease, and terrified of falling into enemy hands. Defeat was unthinkable: the Australian soldier was fighting for his homeland against an unyielding aggressor; the Japanese ordered to fight to the death in a bid to conquer "Greater East Asia."Paul Ham captures the spirits of those soldiers and commanders who clashed in this war of exceptional savagery, and tells of the brave souls on both sides of the campaign whose courage and sacrifices must never be forgotten.

Product Description: Seen as the last 'hot' frontline of the Cold War, the ten-year struggle in the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam unleashed the most devastating firepower on the Vietnamese nation and visited terrible harm on civilians and soldiers...read more

Product Description: The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness...read more

Product Description: The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness...read more