Penguin Books Australia

Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August 1945, five men connected by happenstance fought the key battles of the war against Japan.

The Battle of Britain tells the extraordinary story of one of the pivotal events of the Second World War - the struggle between British and German air forces in the late summer and autumn of 1940. Exposing many of the myths surrounding the conflict, the book provides answers to important questions: how close did Britain really come to invasion? What were Hitler and Churchill's motives? And what was...

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.

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

The Second World War left Europe in chaos.

Landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than 35 million people killed. Across most of the continent, the institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport,local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates soared, economies collapsed, and the European population...

Beyond the Battlefield by Gerald Hensley is the dramatic unknown story of New Zealand's involvement in World War II told for the first time, here in an accessible, popular and enjoyable read.

Savage, Nash, Fraser, Freyberg, Churchill, Roosevelt, Menzies, all great names from New Zealand and world history during the Second World War and all involved in the story of New Zealand's response to the global...

" . . . 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...

Through the epic war chronicle Band of Brothers , an entirely new generation of Americans learned of the heroism, sacrifice, and camaraderie of the soldiers who served, fought, and died in Easy Company during World War II.

In World War II, there were all too many ways for a fighting man to die.  But no theater of operations offered more fatal choices than the skies above Nazi-occupied Europe.  Inside a B-17 bomber, thousands of feet above the earth, death was always a moment away.  From the hellish storms of enemy flak and relentless strafing of Luftwaffe fighters, to midair collisions, mechanical failure...

In 1944 the OSS set out to recover more than 500 downed airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time.

After chronicling the personal stories of the Band of Brothers in We Who Are Alive and Remain , author Marcus Brotherton presents a collection of remembrances from the families of the soldiers of Easy Company-and how their wartime experiences shaped their lives off the battlefield . . .

Complied from notes, journals, letters, photographs, and the author's personally conducted interviews with the surviving...

'Engagingly written and packed with the kind of shrewd insights so typical of Showalter's work.'
- Richard L. DiNardo, author of Germanys Panzer Arm

On the front lines of World War II, a new strategy was implemented.  Devastating and unstoppable, it would enable the Nazi juggernaut to engulf almost all of Europe . . .

I AM AN OLD MAN NOW.
BUT MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG,
I HELPED TO DEFEAT THE GREATEST EVIL THE
WORLD HAD EVER KNOWN.

I was little more than a boy when my beloved France fell to the Nazi invaders.  But when Winston Churchill recruited me as a 'special' secret agent shortly thereafter, my youth did not matter.  All that mattered was my determination to rid Europe of the Nazi scourge...

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...

'A colorful and gripping portrait of the three aging leaders at their historic encounter.'
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

'Fly is an absorbing read thanks to the amazing and previously untold stories Veitch collected from aging pilots, navigators and gunners.' HERALD SUN

Written only a year after the disaster, John Hersey brought the event vividly alive with his heartrending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. He added a further chapter when, forty years later, he...