Secondhand Biography & History Bargain Book Box SP2679
Secondhand History, Biography & Non-Fiction Bargain Book Box — 17 Books
Seventeen works of history, biography, memoir, and essential non-fiction spanning prehistoric Australia to the streets of Baghdad, Tudor France to Stuart Britain, the trenches of Vietnam to the cockpit of an Apache helicopter. There's a Nobel laureate's son writing about his father, Daphne du Maurier editing her grandfather's letters, the world's greatest hoaxes cheerfully debunked, and a history of the Inquisition that explains rather more about power than the Church would prefer. One of the most genuinely varied non-fiction collections you'll find in a single box.
1. That Damned Democrat — Michael Cannon John Norton — Australian newspaper proprietor, populist agitator, and one of the most controversial figures in colonial and Federation-era politics. Cannon writes about Norton with the relish the subject demands, and the result is a portrait of an era as much as a man.
2. The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War The war told in the words of those who fought it, reported it, protested it, and survived it. Oral histories capture what official accounts cannot — the texture, the contradiction, and the human cost of a conflict that divided a generation.
3. The Hippo Eats Dwarf! — Alex Boese From the author of Elephants on Acid — the world's greatest urban myths, fakes, and hoaxes comprehensively, gleefully debunked. From bonsai kittens to human-flavoured tofu, Boese dismantles the stories people insist are true with wit and forensic enthusiasm.
4. A World in Flames: The History of World War II — Martha Byrd Hoyle A single-volume history of the Second World War that earns its ambition — Hoyle writes the global conflict with clarity and pace, covering every theatre without losing the human scale that makes history matter.
5. The Spirit of the Digger: Then & Now — Patrick Lindsay A national bestseller tracing the tradition of the Australian soldier from the beaches of Gallipoli to modern deployments — Lindsay writes about the Digger with deep respect and real historical rigour, connecting the legend to the living reality.
6. The Young George du Maurier: Letters 1860–67 — ed. Daphne du Maurier Daphne du Maurier editing her grandfather's letters from the years before he became famous — an intimate document of artistic ambition and the social world of Victorian bohemia, framed by one of the twentieth century's finest novelists.
7. Francis I: The Maker of Modern France — Leonie Frieda The Renaissance king who transformed France — patron of Leonardo da Vinci, rival of Charles V, and one of the most charismatic monarchs in European history. Leonie Frieda (Catherine de Medici) brings the same scholarly authority and narrative drive to Francis that made her Catherine a bestseller.
8. Journey to My Father, Isaac Bashevis Singer — Israel Zamir Singer's own son writes about his relationship with the Nobel Prize-winning author — a memoir about absence, reconciliation, and the strange experience of having a father who belongs to the world. Moving, complicated, and unlike any other literary biography.
9. Live from the Battlefield — Peter Arnett Thirty-five years in the world's war zones, from Vietnam to Baghdad — Arnett is one of the great war correspondents, the man who reported live from Baghdad as the first Gulf War bombs fell. This memoir is essential journalism history and a gripping personal account of bearing witness under fire.
10. The Wicked Lord Lyttelton — Thomas Frost Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton — Georgian rake, politician, and one of the eighteenth century's most scandalous figures, whose death was reportedly foretold in a dream. Frost brings the period to life around a genuinely compelling character.
11. The Inquisition: Hammer of Heresy — Edward Burman A rigorous history of the Inquisition that cuts through the myth and the propaganda — both the Black Legend of Catholic brutality and the revisionist counter-narrative — to explain how an institution designed to enforce orthodoxy shaped the political and religious landscape of Europe for centuries.
12. Drums and Trumpets: The House of Stuart — Kirsty McLeod Part of the Mirror of Britain series — the Stuarts from James I to the Old Pretender, rendered with narrative clarity and a strong sense of how the dynasty's fatal combination of arrogance and bad luck changed Britain permanently.
13. Extreme South — Ian Brown (Australian Geographic) The first Australian team to reach the South Pole — the struggles, the triumphs, and the extreme conditions that tested them to their limits. Brown writes adventure non-fiction with the authority of someone who understands what the landscape actually demands.
14. People in Glass Houses — Adelaide Lubbock Growing up at Government House — a memoir of a colonial childhood in the official residence, with all the strange formality and unexpected intimacy that entails. Geoffrey Blainey's foreword signals the book's significance as social history as much as personal memoir.
15. Archaeology of the Dreamtime — Josephine Flood The essential text on prehistoric Australia — Flood traces the story of Australia's first peoples across forty thousand years of archaeological evidence with scholarly rigour and genuine wonder. A landmark book in Australian cultural history.
16. Hell Fire — Ed Macy Andy McNab called Macy "a 21st century Topgun" — and this account of Apache helicopter combat in Afghanistan earns that description. Macy writes about modern air warfare from the inside with the technical authority and visceral honesty that made Apache a bestseller.
17. Six Wings — George Sarton Sarton was the founding historian of science, and this study of Renaissance men of science brings the intellectual explosion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to life — the moment when the medieval world gave way to the modern one, one extraordinary mind at a time.
Genre: Fiction
Secondhand History, Biography & Non-Fiction Bargain Book Box — 17 Books
Seventeen works of history, biography, memoir, and essential non-fiction spanning prehistoric Australia to the streets of Baghdad, Tudor France to Stuart Britain, the trenches of Vietnam to the cockpit of an Apache helicopter. There's a Nobel laureate's son writing about his father, Daphne du Maurier editing her grandfather's letters, the world's greatest hoaxes cheerfully debunked, and a history of the Inquisition that explains rather more about power than the Church would prefer. One of the most genuinely varied non-fiction collections you'll find in a single box.
1. That Damned Democrat — Michael Cannon John Norton — Australian newspaper proprietor, populist agitator, and one of the most controversial figures in colonial and Federation-era politics. Cannon writes about Norton with the relish the subject demands, and the result is a portrait of an era as much as a man.
2. The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War The war told in the words of those who fought it, reported it, protested it, and survived it. Oral histories capture what official accounts cannot — the texture, the contradiction, and the human cost of a conflict that divided a generation.
3. The Hippo Eats Dwarf! — Alex Boese From the author of Elephants on Acid — the world's greatest urban myths, fakes, and hoaxes comprehensively, gleefully debunked. From bonsai kittens to human-flavoured tofu, Boese dismantles the stories people insist are true with wit and forensic enthusiasm.
4. A World in Flames: The History of World War II — Martha Byrd Hoyle A single-volume history of the Second World War that earns its ambition — Hoyle writes the global conflict with clarity and pace, covering every theatre without losing the human scale that makes history matter.
5. The Spirit of the Digger: Then & Now — Patrick Lindsay A national bestseller tracing the tradition of the Australian soldier from the beaches of Gallipoli to modern deployments — Lindsay writes about the Digger with deep respect and real historical rigour, connecting the legend to the living reality.
6. The Young George du Maurier: Letters 1860–67 — ed. Daphne du Maurier Daphne du Maurier editing her grandfather's letters from the years before he became famous — an intimate document of artistic ambition and the social world of Victorian bohemia, framed by one of the twentieth century's finest novelists.
7. Francis I: The Maker of Modern France — Leonie Frieda The Renaissance king who transformed France — patron of Leonardo da Vinci, rival of Charles V, and one of the most charismatic monarchs in European history. Leonie Frieda (Catherine de Medici) brings the same scholarly authority and narrative drive to Francis that made her Catherine a bestseller.
8. Journey to My Father, Isaac Bashevis Singer — Israel Zamir Singer's own son writes about his relationship with the Nobel Prize-winning author — a memoir about absence, reconciliation, and the strange experience of having a father who belongs to the world. Moving, complicated, and unlike any other literary biography.
9. Live from the Battlefield — Peter Arnett Thirty-five years in the world's war zones, from Vietnam to Baghdad — Arnett is one of the great war correspondents, the man who reported live from Baghdad as the first Gulf War bombs fell. This memoir is essential journalism history and a gripping personal account of bearing witness under fire.
10. The Wicked Lord Lyttelton — Thomas Frost Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton — Georgian rake, politician, and one of the eighteenth century's most scandalous figures, whose death was reportedly foretold in a dream. Frost brings the period to life around a genuinely compelling character.
11. The Inquisition: Hammer of Heresy — Edward Burman A rigorous history of the Inquisition that cuts through the myth and the propaganda — both the Black Legend of Catholic brutality and the revisionist counter-narrative — to explain how an institution designed to enforce orthodoxy shaped the political and religious landscape of Europe for centuries.
12. Drums and Trumpets: The House of Stuart — Kirsty McLeod Part of the Mirror of Britain series — the Stuarts from James I to the Old Pretender, rendered with narrative clarity and a strong sense of how the dynasty's fatal combination of arrogance and bad luck changed Britain permanently.
13. Extreme South — Ian Brown (Australian Geographic) The first Australian team to reach the South Pole — the struggles, the triumphs, and the extreme conditions that tested them to their limits. Brown writes adventure non-fiction with the authority of someone who understands what the landscape actually demands.
14. People in Glass Houses — Adelaide Lubbock Growing up at Government House — a memoir of a colonial childhood in the official residence, with all the strange formality and unexpected intimacy that entails. Geoffrey Blainey's foreword signals the book's significance as social history as much as personal memoir.
15. Archaeology of the Dreamtime — Josephine Flood The essential text on prehistoric Australia — Flood traces the story of Australia's first peoples across forty thousand years of archaeological evidence with scholarly rigour and genuine wonder. A landmark book in Australian cultural history.
16. Hell Fire — Ed Macy Andy McNab called Macy "a 21st century Topgun" — and this account of Apache helicopter combat in Afghanistan earns that description. Macy writes about modern air warfare from the inside with the technical authority and visceral honesty that made Apache a bestseller.
17. Six Wings — George Sarton Sarton was the founding historian of science, and this study of Renaissance men of science brings the intellectual explosion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to life — the moment when the medieval world gave way to the modern one, one extraordinary mind at a time.