Penguin Books Australia

Lessons from 100 of the world's greatest speakers and speeches – now in new mass paperback edition.

At length, almost to our sorrow, we made the land upon the 3rd of June 1790, just one year all but one day from our leaving the river. We landed all our convicts safe.

First published in 1822, this is the extraordinary story of John Nicol, a sailor who circled the globe twice, fought Napoleon's navy, was in Hawaii just after Cook's death, and went to Port Jackson on a Second Fleet vessel with its cargo...

Planning a cruise?  Heading for the high seas?  This book is guaranteed to make you think twice.

You won't be immune to a frisson of fear as you peruse these gripping stories of piracy on the Chinese seas.  After all, piracy is as prevalent today as it was in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Culled from contemporary newspapers, from journals, and a rare selection of diplomatic...

In 1901 the Australian colonies came together to form a new nation which, for the next twenty-six years, was governed from Melbourne. It was a small city, a place where people knew each other—not just the people who mattered, but those who didn't yet—where small changes loomed large and the import of big changes could scarcely be imagined. Yet in the extraordinary first quarter of the twentieth...

THE ESSENTIAL WORK OF AN EMINENT CRITIC

Simon Leys' cultural and political commentary has long been legendary for its profundity and acerbic wit.  In The Hall of Uselessness his most significant essays are finally gathered together, on subjexts ranging from China to Orwell, from Quixotism to the sea.

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai...

Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These are questions that have sporadically interested people since the dawn of time, but whose answers have continually eluded us. Now in their new book, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff (who include the team behind The Onion) tackle them and many more with their trademark wit, irreverence and intelligence. They will take us on an...

The Complete Idiot's Guide to World History, Second Ed

A dynamic portrait of the world's greatest human conflict, now in paperback

World War I is a dramatic account of the Great War combining emotive photography with personal accounts to evoke both the futility and spirit of the conflict.

A compelling and powerful global account of the Second World War in all its brutal intensity, now in paperback

Evoking the epic scale of combat and its appalling impact across the globe, World War II is a unique telling of the Second World War.

Relive history as it happened – year by year

From the origins of our earliest African ancestors right up until the present day, History Year by Year covers the history of cultures and nations around the world in amazing visual detail.

The definitive, 4.4 million year-old story of human history

From the origins of mankind to the 21st century, spanning the globe and based on the latest research, the complete story of the people, events, themes, ideas and forces that have shaped human existence.

Decade provides an extraordinary insight into our recent history ­– dramatic, nostalgic, intimate and educational by turns. Arranged in chronological order, 500 beautiful, engaging and often startling photographic images depict the people and events, both famous and unknown, that have shaped our history since 2000. Accompanied and contextualized by extended historical captions...

Food, and in particular the lack of it, was central to the experience of the Second World War.

For over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern was synonymous with being western. This original and ground-breaking new book argues that the twenty-first century will be different. With the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, the west will no longer be dominant and there will be many ways of being modern. In this new era...

" . . . The Australian has few equals in the world at swearing . . . the commonest swear words are bastard (pronounced "barstud"), "bugger", and "bloody", and the Australians have a genius for...

OOPS.

* Reeling from the Black Death, Europe's peasants decide it is cats that are carrying the plague, and start killing them off . . .leading the rat population, which is really spreading the disease, to explode.

* A better society is Prohibition's goal-but the result is robbery and homicide, plus the use of cocaine, marijuana, and opium as substitutes for alcohol.

* Mexico invites Americans to Texas. ...

Throughout history women have caused wars, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees. The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcées, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves. Scandalous Women tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events.

In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs with the intention of erasing the German city from the map.  The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead.

Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force...