New World History

In 2015, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin warned that the country’s citizens were dividing into tribes: by class and ethnicity, by geography, and along lines of faith. In Twelve Tribes, award-winning author Ethan Michaeli portrays this increasingly fractured nation by intertwining interviews with Israelis of all tribes into a narrative of social and political change.

The fourth novel of adventure set upon His Majesty's New World. A new year brings ominous silence to the new world. As the b'ys of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment await their next mission, British and American leaders on the old world plan for the worst, and seek options that might give humanity a hope of surviving war with the blue men. When intelligence appears suggesting help might almost be within reach, the b'ys are sent on a risky mission into the unknown. Led by the son of a politician, will Waller and his men have a fighting chance? A dangerous drive awaits them.

The Taj Mahal is a fascinating building that inspires childlike wonder to people all over the world. However, there are many mysteries still surrounding it. There are many knowns and unknowns about the large stone structure in Northern India. There are a series of questions to be answered, like when and how was it built? Who built it? Why was it built in the first place? What impact did this incredible structure have on culture at the time and modern Indian culture today?

Celebrated historian Diana Preston presents betrayals, escapes, and survival at sea in her account of the mutiny of the Bounty and the flight of convicts from the Australian penal colony. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men's survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh's escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization.

The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving thousands of miles from continents. Who were these people? From where did they come? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such vast tracts of ocean?

March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's Indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. HMAS Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager, Stuart and Waterhen were old ships, small with worn-out engines. Their crews used to joke they were held together by string and chewing gum; when the Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels heard of them, he sneered that they were a load of scrap iron.

In 1979, the idea of an oral history based project on the administration of Papua New Guinea germinated at the ABC, driven by Tim Bowden and Daniel Connell. This massive undertaking involved the recording of 350 hours of tape recorded interviews with Australians and Papua New Guineans who had been involved with Australia's colonial administration which ended with self government and independence in 1975.

In this wise and illuminating essay, Laura Tingle looks at leadership, economics, history and more. Competitiveness has marked our relationship from its earliest days. In the past half-century, both countries have remade themselves amid shifting economic fortunes. New Zealand has been held up as a model for everything from tax reform to the conduct of politics to the response to COVID-19. Tingle considers everything from Morrison and Ardern as national leaders to the different ways each country has dealt with its colonial legacy.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.

There's no doubt that technology has overrun our lives. Over the past few decades, the world has embraced "progress", and we're living with the resultant clicking, beeping, anxiety-inducing frenzy. But a creative backlash is gathering steam, helping us cope with the avalanche of data that threatens to overwhelm us daily through our computers, tablets, and smartphones.

As a humble barman at the M25 Orbital raves, Kirk Field witnessed the moment acid house exploded. Inspired by media lies to start writing the truth about what he saw unfolding, Kirk became a 'raving' reporter for the clubbers' bible Mixmag, covering the historic parties from the inside and sending sweat-soaked dispatches from distant dancefloors as the scene expanded across Europe and beyond. With a cast of characters, Kirk's whirlwind account of the golden age of clubbing tells the story of what really happened in the 'naughty '90s'.

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged toward Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen—including several from Australia and New Zealand—were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution.

World War II was thus the culmination of a quarter century of tank development, and it would also be the first major test of tanks in mobile warfare, during which they had to face other tanks. As each new, improved model came off the assembly lines, the opposing powers rushed to create a tank that could beat it. In that regard, World War II was also a war between rival engineers. The Evolution of Tanks in World War II looks at the most important tanks from 1942 to 1945, and how doctrines changed in the wake of Germany’s conquest of Western Europe.

The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Like Christopher Columbus before him, Hernán Cortés was lionized for his successes for centuries without questioning his tactics or motives, while indigenous views of the man have been overwhelmingly negative for the consequences his conquests had. Just about the only thing everyone agrees upon is that Cortés had a profound impact on the history of North America.

This Is Planet Earth is dedicated to the wonders of planet Earth, the most amazing place in the known universe. The ancient Greeks called it Gaia, the Romans Terra. We know it simply as Earth, the planet we call home. And what a planet it is. Formed around 4.6 billion years ago from the debris of the big bang and long-dead stars, at first it was nothing special, but somehow it evolved to become the most amazing place in the known universe.

Dr Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist, specialising in forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now more than 1,000 years old, she can determine childhood diet and thereby where a person was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years. And her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking culture.

Discover what life was really like during World War 2 for over 100,000 Japanese Americans. Whether you are an immigrant or not, anyone can imagine what it would be like to live in a country that is totally new to you and where you aren’t fully accepted. The life of an immigrant can be shockingly difficult. Japanese people who immigrated to the United States of America felt the brunt of this truth. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Japanese families were uprooted from their stable lives and put into harsh internment camps around the USA. Their homes were lost, their businesses sold, and their ...

The legacy of imperial Spain was shaped by many hands. Chief among them was the towering figure of King Philip II, the cultivated Spanish monarch whom a contemporary once called "the arbiter of the world". Cheerful and pious, he inherited vast authority from his father but felt himself unworthy to wield it. His 42-year reign changed the face of the globe forever.

The Spanish Empire stands as one of the most magnificent empires in the history of the world. It unfurled its might across multiple continents, conquered all who stood in its way, and left an indelible impact on cultures around the globe. For over four centuries, its dominance remained unchallenged, casting a vast shadow across Europe and beyond.