Penguin Books Australia

This book provides an account of events during World War II as they unfolded in Malaya, Singapore and elsewhere in the world prior to the Japanese attack, as well as a detailed study of the troops on the ground attacking and defending Singapore.

James Carroll's urgent, masterly Jerusalem , Jerusalem uncovers the ways in which the city became a transcendent fantasy that ignites religious fervour unlike anywhere else on earth.  He shows how the conflicts within this holiest of cities underscore an important point of history: that religion and violence fuel each other.

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan Stack, a 25-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times , was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she travelled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and to other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen...

This stunning photographic journey goes straight to the heart of Bhutan - a country on the cusp of opening its doors to the West.  It explores the culture, history, beliefs and dazzling Himalayan landscapes of the world's newest democracy taking us into the lives of its people as their country enters the modern world.

The result is a book of brilliant and evocative photographs and stories about...

A generation after Pol Pot's regime killed one quarter of the nation's population, Cambodia shows every outward sign of having overcome its devastating history – the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But behind this façade lies a country still haunted by its years of terror.

'AN EXCELLENT POLITICAL OVERVIEW'
GUARDIAN

Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. This now-classic book, fully updated to 2009, follows the historic struggles of the region over the last two hundred years, from Napoleon's assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations, the...

In the early nineteenth century China remained almost untouched by Britain and other European powers - ferocious laws forbade all trade with the West outside one tiny area of Canton. Anyone teaching a European to speak Chinese could be executed. But as new technology began to unbalance the relationship, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. China should be opened, they believed...

The modern city of Shanghai rose up from truly 'muddy' origins, both in the soft subsoil its foundations were build upon and its early economy based on a trade in opium, or 'foreign mud'.  Forced open to the British by the unequal Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Shanghai did what it does best: it beat the odds to become a 'bawdy and gaudy' metropolis that, 168 years later, commands a place in the contemporary...

The years 1975 to 1996 were witness to the largest mass migration in modern history, with more than a million people leaving their war-torn homeland, Vietnam, in search of safety.

A bestselling historian recounts the epic clash that ended the Renaissance and pushed Islam to the gates of Vienna

'By far the most insightful survey of Pakistan I have read in recent years . . . a vital book'  Mohsin Hamid, New York Review of Books

Eugene Rogan has written an authoritative new history of the Arabs in the modern world. Starting with the Ottoman conquests in the sixteenth century, this landmark book follows the story of the Arabs through the era of European imperialism and the Superpower rivalries of the Cold War, to the present age of unipolar American power.

Josephus' account of a war marked by treachery and atrocity is a superbly detailed and evocative record of the Jewish rebellion against Rome between AD 66 and 70. Originally a rebel leader, Josephus changed sides after he was captured to become a Rome-appointed...

This chronicle of the Byzantine Empire, beginning in 1025, shows a profound understanding of the power politics that characterized the empire and led to its decline.