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War

The Armenian Genocide, which claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives, began in 1915. It continues to cause controversy today and is a hotly contested event; ...

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Australians must start 'thinking like hawks, while moving like doves', James Brown asserts in his viscerally illustrated but poorly argued Firing Line: Australia's path to war ...

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Published in August 2016, no. 383

When we talk about the importance of Australia's remembered wartime past, we mostly think of home-front experiences or Australians who went away ...

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For more than a year and a half the armed conflict in Ukraine has touched many in Australia. On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in the war zone after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. There was a short burst of jubilation by pro-Russian rebels on social media, before it became clear that this was not a military machine but a civilian airliner. ...

Published in May 2016, no. 381

In this meticulously researched and eminently readable history, Jeannine Baker presents a gallery of impressive women who reported war news despite the obstacles put in their way by military authorities and press traditions alike. Along the way she deftly fills in key information about the conflicts involved, from the Boer War to Vietnam – a disturbing reminder of ...

Geoffrey Blainey reviews 'Bearing Witness' by Peter Rees

Geoffrey Blainey
Thursday, 28 May 2015

Charles Bean is now seen as one of the classiest journalists and historians Australia has produced. Like many talented historians, he had no prior training in his craft, except as a war correspondent during World War I, when he wrote in the face of daily and nightly dangers such as most war journalists no longer have to confront.

I have the strong impression ...

In 1966 as a young first-year cadet at the Royal Military College, I purchased Anzac to Amiens by C.E.W. Bean, which had been published twenty years earlier. Bean had been Australia’s Official Historian for World War I, and Anzac to Amiens was his masterly condensation of the twelve-volume official history of which he had been the general editor and principal author. It was to be many years before I purchased the twelve volumes or could find time and commitment to read them. In the meantime, Anzac to Amiens was my guide to the history of Australia’s involvement in the war. I still refer to it.

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Andrew Alexandra reviews 'In Defence of War' by Nigel Biggar

Andrew Alexandra
Tuesday, 27 May 2014

This book by Nigel Biggar, Anglican minister and Oxford Professor of Theology, is in the rich and broad tradition of thinking about war known as Just War Theory (JWT). JWT sees war as justifiable, but holds that decisions about going to war, as well as about the way it is fought, are subject to moral constraints ...

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Mark Dapin’s anthology, From the Trenches, is a timely but not opportunistic book. At more than 400 pages, it is long enough to suggest the sheer scale of the war and its centrality to European (if not world) history ever since. It samples all the relevant genres (letters, memoir, journalism, fiction, poetry) and offers a multiplicity of viewpoints (senior ranks, subalterns, NCOs, privates, and nurses). The book is not simplistically pro- or anti-war, but its overall message is unmistakable. The whole enterprise was a huge and bloody mistake, stupidly prolonged by inadequate politicians for more than four years.

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Published in April 2014, no. 360

2014 Calibre Prize (Winner): Unearthing the Past

Christine Piper
Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Christine Piper is the winner of the 2014 Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, worth $5,000. In this powerful essay, she writes about Japanese biological weapons and wartime experiments on living human beings.

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Published in April 2014, no. 360