Written by: John Cotton and John Ravenhill Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2012, . ISBN 9780195567274, 360 pp   Reviewed by: Andrew Carr Of what do middle powers dream? This is the intriguing question at the heart of this excellent addition to the Australia in World Affairs series. Like its predecessors (this is the fourth edited by James Cotton and John Ravenhill), Middle Power Dreaming is a must have reference for any serious student of Australian foreign policy. It provides an …

    Written by: David Shambaugh Routledge, London and New York, 2011. ISBN 9780415619554, 187 pp   Reviewed by: Dr Jingdong Yuan This edited volume could not have come at a more opportune time. With China overtaking Japan as the world’s second largest economy and with its growing political influence and military power, there are increasing interests in and analyses of what China’s future holds. Will this rising power challenge the existing international system, or will it become a responsible stakeholder …

  Written by: Jeremy Black Thames and Hudson, London, 2011,  ISBN 9780500251768, 208 pp     Reviewed by: Lieutenant Colonel Ben Pronk In his seminal A Little History of the World , Ernst Gombrich condenses the entire story of human existence into a couple of hundred pages of beautifully composed text, written to be easily understood by children. In many ways, this appears to be what Jeremy Black and his contributing authors have attempted to do in Elite Fighting Forces . Largely, they have succeeded, …

    Written by: Richard Holmes HarperPress, London, 2011,  ISBN 9780007225699, 506 pp   Reviewed by: Major Tim Inglis The Chief of Army has stressed the importance of all serving personnel knowing their military history. Our Army Museums, barracks and messes are filled with reminders of the proud history we have carved out of the events of the last century. Cleary our history reaches back much further through our links with the British Army, and it is this history that comes to life in Soldiers. Written …

  Written by: Craig Stockings (ed) Military History, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2012, 335pp, ISBN 978174223288   Reviewed by: Major Dayton McCarthy, Department of Defence The best selling horror writer, Dean Koontz, noted that ‘the only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.’ Sequels, whether works of literature or film, always carry with them an air of heightened expectancy. Will the sequel match or …

  Written by: Peter Edgar Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2011, 407 pp,  ISBN 9780987057495,   Reviewed by: Dr Robert Stevenson, Research Fellow, University of New South Wales This biography is Peter Edgar’s second book examining the life of Sir William Glasgow (1876–1955). In 2006 he published To Villers-Bretonneux 1 examining the military service of Glasgow as the commander of the 13th Infantry Brigade (AIF) on the Western Front. Although this work was not so much a biography of its commander as it was a …

  Written by: James Bradfield Moody & Bianca Nogrady  Vintage, 2010, 311pp, ISBN 97817416688962011   Reviewed by: Major Cameron Leckie, Department of Defence The Sixth Wave: How to Succeed in a Resource Limited World is a bold attempt to lay out a road map for a future where economic growth can be decoupled from resource consumption. The premise of the book is that through changes in technologies, institutions and markets, a sixth wave of innovation will dramatically change the global economy, creating a …

  Written by: Lester W Grau and Dodge Billingsley University Press of Kansas, 2011, 464 pp,  ISBN 9780700618019   Reviewed by: WO2 Ian Kuring, Army History Unit It is difficult to believe that almost a decade has passed since American and Allied forces (including Australian Special Forces) carried out their first major combat operation in Afghanistan. Operation ANACONDA was mounted against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in rugged mountain country around the Shar-i-Kot Valley near the Pakistan border during 2–15 …

  Written by: Amanda Laugesen Ashgate, Farnham (United Kingdom), 2012, 310 pp, ISBN 9781409427322   Reviewed by: Dr Craig Wilcox, freelance historian, Sydney ‘I’ve been reading a little, the first book for many, many months, and I cannot settle to it,’ admitted Eric Evans of the Australian Imperial Force’s 13th Battalion in 1917. He confessed the reason to his diary: ‘my mind has been persistently on the topic of women, women, women’. What exactly was Evans trying to read when finding himself so sorely …

  Written by: Graham Wilson Big Sky Publishing, 2012, 448 pp, ISBN 9781921941566     Reviewed by: Justin Kelly, Department of Defence In Bully Beef and Balderdash Graham Wilson sets out to debunk some myths surrounding the First AIF—an objective that is comprehensively achieved. The myths that Wilson addresses are varied and range from those—like the one in which the diggers were born bushmen and natural soldiers—reflective of an emerging Australian nationalism, to the more mundane examination of the …