University Of Wales Press imprint: 340 books

For many years in Australia, reading journalist Alan Ramsey’s vitriolic, insightful, and always engaging pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald was a standard feature of Saturday mornings. This book is the compilation of Ramsey’s best work, granting ample access to Australia’s national parliament...

Half a million Australians encountered a new world when they entered Asia and the Pacific during World War II: different peoples, cultures, languages, and religions chafing under the grip of colonial rule. This book paints a picture not only of individual lives transformed, but of dramatically shifting national perceptions, as the gaze of Australia turned from Britain to Asia.

The author of the bestselling Darwin Spitfires casts a forensic eye over the role that Allied air forces played —or failed to play—in crucial World War II campaigns in New Guinea. This is the story of the early battles of the southwest Pacific theatre—the Coral Sea, Kokoda, Milne Bay, Guadalcanal—presented...

In 1948, a man was found dead on an Adelaide, Australia, beach. Well-dressed and unmarked, he had a half-smoked cigarette by his side, but no identity documents. Six decades later, the Somerton Man's identity and murder are still a mystery. From the missing labels from all his clothing to the tiny...

Indonesia’s current terrorist problems have a long and complex history, and this work, based on a remarkable array of sources, many of which have never been publicly cited, is a rigorous account that fills in many gaps in our knowledge of jihadist groups, how they interacted with the state and events...

The Sydney Wars tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians—described as "this constant sort of war" by one early colonist—around the greater Sydney region. Telling the story of the first years of colonial Sydney in a new and original way, this...

Known as a historian, conservationist, leading public intellectual, and, most famously, the “father of Australian archaeology,” John Mulvaney is renowned for uncovering the depth of Australian human prehistory. This insightful and illuminating memoir traces Mulvaney’s life from his childhood...

The common picture of the war correspondent is a heroic, male reporter on the frontline, but women reporters have been more numerous and significant than we ever knew. Against the vehement opposition of newspaper editors, their male colleagues and military hierarchies, twentieth-century women journalists...

Unearthing the recent paleontologial discoveries, this fascinating popular science book shows that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. The discovery of the first feathered dinosaur in China in 1996 sent shockwaves through the paleontologial world. Were the feathers part of a complex mating...

Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first ordination of women priests in the Australian Anglican Church, this book analyzes the ordination debate and reviews how it occupied church synods, ecclesiastical tribunals, civil courts, and media headlines. It also highlights the accomplishments of...

The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Marking its...

A forger and convicted felon, Francis Greenway was transported to Sydney in 1814. Only a decade later, his dreams of a “city superior in architectural beauty to London” began to be realized as he designed Hyde Park Barracks, St James’ Church, the Supreme Court, St Luke’s Church in Liverpool,...

The Family Law Act of 1975 and the establishment of the Family Court of Australia in the following year aimed to revolutionize the settlement of marital disputes. But the court quickly became the focus of hostility, and many saw it as a failed experiment. Drawing on interviews with judges, lawyers,...

An insider’s account of the transformation—and recovery from potential ruin—of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), this book details how the iconic research agency reinvented itself through its National Flagship Initiative. In 2001, facing the...