Kokoda: Beyond the Legend provides readers with a complete understanding of this major turning point in the Second World War.

The fighting on the Kokoda Track in World War II is second only to Gallipoli in the Australian national consciousness. The Kokoda campaign of 1942 has taken on mythical status in Australian military history. According to the legend, Australian soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the Japanese, who suffered great losses in battle and as a result of the harsh conditions of the Kokoda Track. In this important book, Peter Williams seeks to dispel the Kokoda myth. Using extensive research and Japanese sources, he explains what really happened on the Kokoda Track in 1942. Unlike most other books written from an Australian perspective, The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and reality focuses on the strategies, tactics and battle plans of the Japanese and shows that the Australians were in fact rarely outnumbered. For the first time, this book combines narrative with careful analysis to present an undistorted picture of the events of the campaign. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the truth of the Kokoda campaign of 1942.

Ralph Honner: Kokoda Hero is the story of one of Australia's great World War II battalion commanders. Honner fought as a junior officer in the first and triumphant North African battles of Bardia, Tobruk and Derna. He then took part in the heartbreaking and disastrous campaigns in Greece and Crete where he was one of the last Australians to be evacuated by submarine-three months after Crete's fall. But it was during 1942, at Isurava on the Kokoda Trail and at the Japanese beachhead of Gona in Papua New Guinea, that Ralph Honner played a decisive role in the making of an Australian legend. Worshipped by his men, he was severely wounded in 1943 and, after a long convalescence, served Australia with distinction as a public servant, political figure and diplomat. Written by one of Australia's bestselling military history authors, who knew Ralph Honner and had access to his private letters and papers, Ralph Honner: Kokoda Hero contains gripping, action-packed descriptions of the fighting in North Africa, Greece, Crete and Papua New Guinea. The story of a remarkable man, it covers events from Honner's adolescence in the last vestiges of pioneering Australia through to his distinguished political and diplomatic career, spanning nearly a century of his nation's history.

Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

The inspiration for a major two-part ABC documentary, KOKODA is set to win over a whole new audience 'Never in my life ... had I seen soldiers who looked so shocked and so tired and so utterly weary as those men' Brigadier John Rogers, Australia's Director of Military Intelligence, 1942Now a major two-part ABC documentary series produced with Screen Australia's Making History, Paul Ham's KOKODA is the bestselling history of the crucial battles in Papua New Guinea that saved Australia from the threat of Japanese attack.In this acclaimed account, Ham describes both sides of the appalling struggle along the Kokoda track in 1942 when a few badly trained Australian troops confronted the Imperial Japanese Army in the worst terrain imaginable.Few of us know the true story behind that legend; few know the guts inside the myth. Kokoda was a war without mercy; a predatory war, where men hunted down men like wild animals. No army had fought in such conditions; no Allied general believed it possible.Yet Kokoda was a vital struggle; undoubtedly a turning point in the Pacific War. Had the Japanese captured Port Moresby, Australia would surely have been bombed and cut off as the only base in the South West Pacific for the Allied counter-offensive.the diggers were fighting for their very country's survival as the last free nation in Asia.Paul Ham is the author of VIEtNAM: tHE AUStRALIAN WAR and the Australia correspondent for the LONDON SUNDAY tIMES. He co-wrote, co-produced and appears in the ABC's two-part documentary based on this book, which, for the first time, took a camera crew along the full length of the KOKODA tRACK.

By 1942 the formidable Japanese military had conquered swathes of territory across south-east Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Despite its defeat at the Battle of Midway, Japan remained a potent enemy committed to the creation of a defensive arc to shield its captured possessions in the Pacific. The capture of Port Moresby would cement the southern border of this defensive arc and sever the vital lines of communication between Australia and the United States. It was the Japanese plan to seize Moresby that would set the course for the Battle of Milne Bay. Situated on the eastern tip of New Guinea, Milne Bay was a wretched hell-hole: swamp-riddled, a haven for malaria and cursed with torrential rain. It was here that General Douglas MacArthur ordered the secret construction of an Allied base with airfields to protect the maritime approach to Port Moresby. But the Japanese soon discovered the base at Milne Bay and despatched a task force to destroy its garrison and occupy the base. All that stood between the Japanese and their prize was a brigade of regular Australian soldiers untrained in tropical warfare and a brigade of Australian militia with no combat experience whatsoever. While the Kokoda campaign is etched in public memory, its sister battle at Milne Bay has long been neglected. However the bitter fighting over this isolated harbour played an equally important role in protecting Port Moresby and made a valuable contribution to shifting Allied fortunes in the Pacific War.

The Kokoda legend lay dormant for six decades, during which the rampant New Guinean jungle reclaimed many of its historic sites. Now, after years of painstaking research, and with the aid of the fast-thinning ranks of both Australian and Japanese veterans, Bill James has uncovered these 'lost battlefields', plus more. For those wishing to understand the history of the Kokoda Track, the (528 page) book will be of great interest. For those intending to undertake the gruelling trek, it is essential reading. The third edition of the book includes a new 1:50?000 scale waterproof trek map (740 mm x 408 mm 2-sided) that will be an indispensible aid. The revised edition includes the grave or memorial information for the fallen.