Anthony Burke. Fear of Security: Australia's Invasion Anxiety. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Britain isn't the only country to go into periodic panics about its vulnerability to invasion, after all. This book ostensibly begins in 1788, but looks like it mostly deals with the Cold War and after.

Andrew J. Rotter. Hiroshima: The World's Bomb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. As the name suggests, a global history of the Bomb, highlighting the extent to which its development was an international race. Correctly notes the continuities with strategic bombing theory. NB. out of four titles so far published in Oxford's "The Making of the Modern World Series", this makes three that I've bought ...

Peter Stanley. Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942. Camberwell: Viking, 2008. Every so often, I get into arguments on the net with someone who claims that Japan was poised to invade Australia in 1942, and who therefore is someone who is wrong on the Internet. I used to have to point them at this paper by Peter Stanley. Now I can point them at his book instead.

John T. Whitaker. Fear Came on Europe. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1937. Just when one is tempted to agree with Evo Shandor that society is too sick to survive, somebody performs an act of random kindness. I found this in my pigeonhole at work this week, from a senior colleague with whom I've had many enjoyable chats over the years, who thought it might be of interest to me. And it is! Whitaker was an American journalist who covered the League of Nations at Geneva, including the World Disarmament Conference, and also the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Lots of gloomy foreboding about the failure of internationalism and the descent into war. Thanks Lindsay!

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