Showing results by publisher "Bolinda audio" in History

Matt Bevan, host of the wildly popular podcast If You're Listening, takes listeners on a fascinating journey through the murky waters of history, memory and the stories we tell ourselves. Bevan explores how history is often a patchwork of conflicting accounts, misremembered details and outright myths. With wit, curiosity and a knack for uncovering the unexpected, Bevan dives into tales of lemon trees conjured by Stalin, Bob Hawke's emotional misstep on Tiananmen Square and the bizarre flight of a German teenager into Soviet airspace.

This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the colonial world – of land seized, fortunes made and lost, and the violence let loose as squatters and their allies fought for possession of the country – a war still unresolved in today's Australia.

Growing up at Farmleigh, a country house outside Dublin, Arthur Edward Guinness – Ned for short – was fascinated by the secrets and legends that surrounded the early generations of his famous family of brewers. Against a backdrop of epic and convulsive times in Ireland and Britain, he outlines the struggles and passions of his ancestors, who went from obscurity in Kildare to the pinnacle of Irish and British society.

One of the most popular accounts by an Australian veteran of WWI - written entirely from the private soldier's point of view.

Oliphant's brilliance was not limited to atomic science, he was also central to the development of radar, which saved Britain from Nazi invasion. After the war, Oliphant's push against US nuclear dominance drew suspicion from the CIA. Based on his interviews with Oliphant, bestselling author Perry traces his life from his humble beginnings in Adelaide, his early triumphs alongside Sir Ernest Rutherford, and his breakthrough work on radar and the Manhattan Project, through to his key role in establishing the Australian National University and his controversial governorship of South Australia.

July, 1942. The North African campaign rages. The Allies have been forced to retreat from Gazala, and are being pursued through the sandy wastes by 'The Desert Fox' – Field Marshal Rommel and his Panzerarmee. The target of the enemy is Cairo – if taken, the Axis powers will control the Suez Canal and be within striking distance of the oil fields of the Middle East, tipping the war in Hitler's favour. In their way is the Eighth Army, spearheaded by the battle-hardened troops of the Ninth Australian Division and the Second New Zealand Division.

We live in an age that seems eerily familiar. A time of dictators, populists, organised lying, European wars, grabs for territory, ideological extremism and even antisemitism, a time when things are falling apart and the centre is struggling to hold. It has all happened before, in the 1920s and 1930s. History is sending us a warning, and unless we heed it, history will have its revenge as we repeat the disaster of the 1940s. The world needs to learn the lessons of these decades, and fast.

In the early 1930s, Nancy Wake was a young woman enjoying a bohemian life in Paris. By the end of the Second World War, she was the Gestapo's most wanted person. As a naive, young journalist, Nancy Wake witnessed a horrific scene of Nazi violence in a Viennese street. From that moment, she declared that she would do everything in her power to rid Europe of the Nazis. What began as a courier job here and there became a highly successful escape network for Allied soldiers.

Have you ever seen, heard or felt something that cannot be rationally explained? Australia is troubled by the departed spirits of convicts, bushrangers, drovers, nurses and miners. People have seen spectres in pubs, theatres, lighthouses, asylums and by lonely waterholes. There are locations in the bush that send a shiver down your spine, as well as some truly perplexing phenomena such as the Spirit Stones of Mayanup, Quinn's Light, the Guyra Ghost, the Humpty Doo haunting and the Min Min lights.

In 1942 a group of 65 Australian Army nursing sisters was evacuated from Malaya a few days before the fall of Singapore. Two days later their ship was bombed and sunk by the Japanese. Of the 53 survivors who scrambled ashore, 21 were murdered and the remaining 32 taken prisoner. White Coolies is the engrossing record kept by one of the sisters, Betty Jeffrey, during the more than three gruelling years of imprisonment that followed.

Madame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in 19th-century Melbourne, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman behind the alter ego. Born in Prussia to a working-class family, Hodgson arrived in Melbourne in 1871. Left alone when her police-officer husband was sent to work in remote Victoria, she turned her hand to running brothels.

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.

On March 7, 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport. His destination was Equatorial Guinea; his intention was to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organized coup d’état. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies, and Mann had already planned, overseen, and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. So why did it go so wrong?

Vegemite shares the fascinating tale of Cyril Callister, the man who invented what would become Australia's most beloved consumer product, along with the story of its rocky road to acceptance. Spanning the Gold Rush, the Depression and two world wars, it opens a window on the evolution of modern Australia. Vegemite is a great Australian story of overcoming the odds, and of how extraordinary things can happen to (almost) ordinary people.

In late 1940 a group of five young Australian soldiers set out on a secret mission: one of the Second World War’s most daring operations and the first for Britain’s legendary Special Operations Executive. Leading a small force of Ethiopian freedom fighters on an epic trek across the harsh African bush from the Sudan, the small incursion force entered Italian-occupied Ethiopia and began waging a guerilla war against the 250,000-strong Italian army. One of these men, Ken Burke, was Duncan McNab's uncle.

Where were you when America elected Barack Obama? Kate Jennings was in New York, eyes wide open, completing her take on an amazing time: "the run-up to the election... a time when every day felt like a year and we became slightly crazed from worry but also mesmerised, unable to switch off the cable news stations, obsessively tracking the DOW, VIX, LIBOR spreads, polls in red states. So much at stake. American Revolution is a dazzling and perceptive look at the United States between hope and despair.

The Northern Ireland conflict is one of the most protracted, bitter, and complex campaigns of terrorism the Western world has ever seen. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the region has come a long way, finally achieving a hard-won peace. Yet hostility between Unionists and Nationalists is as strong as ever, communities remain divided, and sectarian violence is rife. Edwards and McGrattan’s balanced introduction skilfully dissects the “Troubles” to offer fresh perspectives on their complicated history and legacy.

When called up to fight in yet another World War, Drum Major Jackson promised his beloved wife, Mabel, that he would return to lead his band and play for her once more. In May 1940, he was captured at Dunkirk and interned in several German forced labour camps throughout Poland. Two years later, he was transferred to Auschwitz IV. When his captors appointed Jackson their ‘Kapellmeister’ (man in charge of music), he seized the opportunity to provide entertainment for his fellow prisoners at rehearsals and cover for escapees during concerts.

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Ian McPhedran takes us to the heart of the RAAF through personal accounts of fighter pilots’ bombing raids over Iraq, of hi-tech spy planes over Afghanistan, of the operational nerve centre of the Middle East war, and of the men and women who deliver humanitarian aid across the world. This is the compelling narrative, in the RAAF’s 90th year, of its aircraft, leadership, traditions, and personalities at a time of rapid change.

For months during 1943 there was no night in Hellfire Pass. By the light of flares, carbide lamps and bamboo fires, men near-naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific, they struggled, died, and survived with a little help from their mates.