Smiths were among the first men to land at Gallipoli. Smiths fought and died at Pozieres, Bullecourt and Passchendaele. Smiths were wounded - and treated by doctors and nurses named Smith. At home, Smiths penned patriotic doggerel and spoke vociferously against conscription. There was Grace Cossington Smith and her iconic painting The Sock Knitter, and Victor Smith, who designed a guided missile in his dad's workshop in suburban Brisbane. Australia's Smiths included the AIF's senior policeman, a Jewish VC, and the war's most famous Australian aviators. They and thousands of more humble Smiths reflect the hopes and fears, the tragedies and the triumph of Australia in the Great War. Then there are the German-Australian Smiths, the Schmidts, who fought for Australia even as Schmidts at home were vilified and interned. Just as the Great War affected all Australians, we can see the great range of their experience through the lives and deaths of those sharing the most common, representative surname.

Australia and the Great War explores both the immediate and long-term consequences of the war on this complex relationship, looking in particular at identity, history, gender, propaganda, economics and nationalism. This multidisciplinary collection of essays unveils the creation and subsequent [mis]use of histories and mythologies while considering the necessity and nature of both remembering, and forgetting, war.

Eric Bogle has written many iconic songs that deal with the futility and waste of war. Two of these in particular, ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘No Man’s Land (a.k.a. The Green Fields of France)’, have been recorded numerous times in a dozen or more languages indicating the universality and power of their simple message. Bogle’s other compositions about the First World War give a voice to the voiceless, prominence to the forgotten and personality to the anonymous as they interrogate the human experience, celebrate its spirit and empathise with its suffering. This book examines Eric Bogle’s songs about the Great War within the geographies and socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and consumed. From Anzac Day in Australia and Turkey to the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and from small Aboriginal communities in the Coorong to the influence of prime ministers and rock stars on a world stage, we are urged to contemplate the nature and importance of popular culture in shaping contemporary notions of history and national identity. It is entirely appropriate that we do so through the words of an artist who Melody Maker described as ‘the most important songwriter of our time’.

The Great War of 1914-1918 affected all Australians and decisively changed the new nation. They were 'The Crying Years' according to writer Zora Cross, who lost her brother in 1917. This visual history of Australia's Great War offers a different perspective on a period of time familiar to many. It helps to connect the war overseas - the well-chronicled battles at Gallipoli, Fromelles, Passchendaele and Villers-Bretonneux - with the equally bitter war at home, for and against conscription, over 'loyalty' and 'disloyalty'. Men faced life-changing choices: volunteer to fight or stay at home; join the revolutionary unionists or break the strikes. Women bore the burdens of waiting and worrying, of working for charities, or of voting to send men to their deaths. Even children were drawn into the animosities, as their communities fractured under the stress. Prize-winning historian Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra uses documents, photographs, artefacts and images from the collections of the National Library of Australia to evoke the drama and tragedy, suffering and sacrifice, pain and pity of Australia's Great War.

Thoroughly researched and generously illustrated, Australia 1944-45 is the compelling final instalment in Peter Dean's Pacific War series.

'He was courageous. He was ambitious. He was skilled. He was visionary. He could be ruthless. He was someone born of a new nation. But he was of a time now long past. And yet in the language of a later generation it could be said he had the "right stuff" . . . Michael Molkentin captures [Ross Smith] brilliantly.' - Andy Thomas, NASA Astronaut (Retired) In the smouldering aftermath of the First World War a young Australian pilot and his crew prepare to attempt the inconceivable: a flight, halfway around the globe, from England to Australia. The 18,000 kilometre odyssey will take 28 days and test these men and their twin-engine biplane to the limit. It is a trans-continental feat that will change the world and bring the air age to Australia. It will also prove to be the culminating act in the extraordinary and tragically brief life of its commander, Captain Sir Ross Smith. Raised on a remote sheep station in the dying days of Australia's colonial frontier, there was little in Ross Smith's childhood that suggested a future as one of the world's great pioneering aviators. He went to war in 1914, serving with the light horse at Gallipoli and in the Sinai before volunteering for the fledgling Australian Flying Corps. In a new dimension of warfare, Ross Smith survived two gruelling years of aerial combat over Palestine to emerge as one of the most skilled and highly decorated Australian pilots of the war. In 1919 he was a pilot on the first ever mission to survey an air route from Cairo to the East Indies, before gaining international fame as the winner of the government's £10,000 prize for leading the first aircrew to fly from England to Australia. His attempt to exceed this by circumnavigating the world by air in 1922 would end in disaster. Drawing on the rich and extensive collection of Ross Smith's private papers, Anzac & Aviator tells, for the first time, the gripping story of a remarkable aviator, the extraordinary times in which he lived and the air race that changed the world. 'Standing with Lindbergh, Earhart and Kingsford Smith as one of the greatest pioneers of the air, Sir Ross Smith's life is brilliantly captured in this compelling biography.' - Richard Champion de Crespigny AM, bestselling author and captain of QF32