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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 …
Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British, and Israeli Armies , Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2011, 288 pp, ISBN 9780804772037, RRP US$24.95. Colonel Wesley L Fox, USMC (Ret), Six Essential Elements of Leadership: Marine Corps Wisdom from a Medal of Honor Recipient (Leatherneck Original), Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2011, 192 pp, ISBN 9781612510248, RRP US$24.95. Reviewed by: Brigadier Chris Field, Department of Defence At initial consideration, …
To Win Without Fighting by James A Siebens (ed.) New York: Routledge, Asian Security Series, 2024, 286 pp. Hardcover ISBN 9781032481838 eBook ISBN 9781003387770 Reviewed by: Gregory Raymond Security in the Indo-Pacific region is rarely discussed without mention of China. Its military spending, expanding naval capabilities, investment in new technologies and assertiveness in the maritime domain guarantee its continued attention from journalists, policymakers and security studies scholars. So what might …
Combat Units in the US, British, and German Infantries of World War II by G Stephen Lauer Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022, 463 pp. Hardcover ISBN 978-1626379589 Reviewed by: Anthony Duus In keeping with the theme of this edition of the AAJ, it is prudent to examine how the Australian Army selects, trains and sustains forces for employment. This book investigates how nations raised infantry forces up to and through the Second World War, and explores the popular [1] (or unpopular depending upon your …
The Battle to Recapture Lae from the Japanese, 1943 by Ian Howie-Willis Big Sky Publishing, 2023, 480 pp. ISBN 9781922896148 Reviewed by: Tom Richardson In September 1943, Allied forces seized the town of Lae on the northern New Guinea coast in an operation codenamed POSTERN. On 4 September, the 9th Australian Division went ashore east of Lae to little immediate Japanese resistance and began advancing towards their objective. The next day, the US 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment seized the airfield …
