Soldiers and Gentlemen: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Great War 1914-1918     Written by: Dr William Westerman Cambridge University Press, 2017,  ISBN 9781107190627, 320pp   Reviewed by: Colonel Michael Mumford The Australian Army History series continues to produce excellent histories of the Australian Army and the latest, William Westerman’s Soldiers and Gentlemen , is devoted to the role of the battalion commander in the First World War. This book is the first examination of the background, …

The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War Series     Edited by: Jeffrey Grey Oxford University Press, 2014-2015, volumes 1 to 5     Reviewed by: Professor Michael Neiberg Mark Twain once said that Australia’s history “does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.” 1 When it comes to commemoration of the First World War, Twain’s words may be a bit harsh, but they have a ring of truth, and not only for Australia. Among the many patterns that have emerged worldwide during the …

Trust and Leadership: The Australian Army Approach to Mission Command   Edited by: Russell Glenn University of North Georgia Press, Dahlonega, 2020, ISBN 1940771692, 408pp Reviewed by: Dr Albert Palazzo Nations may wage wars, but soldiers conduct missions. There was a time when such a distinction did not exist. Warriors slashed and thrust at each other with swords and spears, and when one side broke and ran the battle, and often the war, was over. Today, however, the waging of war is far more complex and …

Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News   Written by: Clint Watts Harper, 2018,  ISBN 9780062795984, 304pp Reviewed by Major Lee Hayward Messing With the Enemy is a contemporaneous look at our hyper-connected world, the way that the rise in social media has enabled state and non-state actors to influence individuals, and how these actors potentially can affect Defence, government, business and individuals. Clint Watts points out that state …

The Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations Volume 1: The Long Search for Peace, Observer Missions and Beyond, 1947–2006   Written by: Peter Londey, Rhys Crawley and David Horner, Cambridge University Press, 2019, ISBN 9781108482981, 899pp Reviewed by Jason Thomas Despite being entitled ‘Volume 1’, this is one of the final volumes of the Australian War Memorial’s peacekeeping series to be released. With a title that matches its length (900 pages), it is a …

Making Warriors in a Global Era: An Ethnographic Study of the Norwegian Naval Special Operations Commando   Written by: Tone Danielson Lexington Books, 2018,  ISBN 9781498561815, 178pp Reviewed by Dr Kieran Stewart I am not even sure what our culture is today. So many things have changed. It might help us to have an outsider’s view and analyses. You know how things are normally done in the military; they [strategic level] send a hired consultant who will tell us ‘use this model, and then you will have …

  The Strategic Corporal Revisited: Challenges Facing Combatants in 21st Century Warfare Eds: David W Lovell and Deane-Peter Baker UCT Press, 2017, ISBN 9781775822202, 210pp Reviewed by Diana Clark Gill Edited books command a reader’s attention differently from single-author volumes. The former are beehives of perspectives, while the latter enjoy the force of a single mind. For this book, though, I endorse the editors’ choice of the group approach due to the complexity of the subject. The book’s …

From the Somme to Victory: The British Army’s Experience on the Western Front 1916–1918   Written by: Peter Simkins Pen and Sword, 2014, ISBN 9781781593127, 256pp Reviewed by: Brigadier Chris Roberts (Ret’d) AM, CSC This excellent book contains eight essays previously written by the highly respected Professor Peter Simkins over the 15 years prior to 2014. He has revised and updated each essay with new material that has become available since they first appeared. In doing so, he tackles some of the myths, …

Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, 1951–75   Written by: Tristan Moss Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 9781108182638, 284pp Reviewed by: Lieutenant Colonel Mark O’Neill Dr Tristan Moss is currently a researcher on the Official Histories of Australian Operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor at the Australian War Memorial and an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He is also a previous winner of the C. E. W. Bean Prize for Military …

The Last Battle: Endgame on the Western Front, 1918   Written by: Peter Hart Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 9780190872984, 464pp Reviewed by: Brigadier Chris Roberts (Ret’d) AM, CSC In 2008 Peter Hart, oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, wrote 1918: A Very British Victory , in which he covered the fighting throughout 1918 from a largely British and Commonwealth perspective. In his latest work, The Last Battle: Endgame on the Western Front,1918 , Hart returns to the last year of the war with …