This publication goes a long way in providing those of us who have lost touch with our heritage a more complete picture in which to see ourselves and the experiences of South Australians of German origin.

The book constitutes a meticulously researched source for everyone interested in the intricate relationship between Germany and (South) Australia. The clear style and absence of jargon as well as the breadth of themes render Germans: Travellers, settlers and their descendants in South Australia a worthwhile compendium for scholars and general readers alike.

Such subversion makes this book fascinating, along with the biographies of several men held on Torrens Island that reveal the practice of deportation, separation from wives and children, sometimes forever, and men who surrendered themselves to internment because war had rendered them unemployable and they faced destitution.

An impressive exploration of an easily neglected dark but intriguing chapter in South Australia's history ... [The authors] have done their subject proud through their scholarly, ground-breaking research and the impressive presentation of illuminating photographs.

A lasting record of one easily neglected aspect of South Australia's experience of the Great War ... A story as timely now as it ever was.

For all those interested in the history of South Australia or the reaction of human beings to pressure, both internal and external, this book is one that will fascinate and reward from beginning to end.

Interned: Torrens Island 1914-1915 presents the reader with an otherwise hidden piece of South Australian history. Monteath, Paul and Martin respectfully capture the experiences of the internees through the internees' own eyes, shading in gaps with historical context to give the reader a rich understanding of the circumstances surrounding Torrens Island.

Hypertension, alcohol and tobacco addiction, impotence and diarrhoea, the loss of the art of working for a living, were - Monteath contends - nearly as likely to afflict those who had been prisoners of the Germans as of the Japanese. Some suffered from a "tormenting restiveness"; others preferred the "silent world of retreat into their memories". Monteath concludes POW with a salute to the few hundred of them still alive. His book has already paid them a nuanced, richly detailed tribute.

Not only is it about time that a book on this subject has been published but Monteath has delivered one that will become the leading authority on the subject and essential reading for all researchers of Australian PoWs of Hitler's Reich.

Notwithstanding the awful context of the broader European conflict, these pages resound with echoes of a more innocent and respectful time, where officers on both sides were gentlemen and played largely by the rules. How distant all this seems from our contemporary regimes of extraordinary rendition and torture. Flinders University's Peter Monteath has produced an outstanding book highly recommended for any student of Australian history, or for lovers of true adventure.

In sum, this is a well-constructed history that tells us as much about the general experience of western prisoners of war in German hands as it does about those of the Australians. Most of this has been covered in other texts but this has a highly readable style that will make it accessible to a readership beyond the realm of academia. That said, its greatest appeal is likely to be the wider Australian public - exactly as the author intended.

In a lively and knowledgeable manner, the author of this book traces the history of the Anzacs, soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, who went into German captivity in the European theatre of war between 1939/40 and 1945. Against the background of the history of the Second AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and the units of Air Force (RAAF) and Navy (RAN), all of which were deployed in the fight against the Third Reich under British High Command, Peter Monteath exhaustively documents the history of war imprisonment in its central aspects. By evaluating numerous interviews with war veterans, he manages to present more than just another "story from below".

Well worth reading, both for its account of colonial Australia and for the author’s engaging style.

A travel writer with a wit to rival Bill Bryson.

A chronicle of Australia’s rip-roaring colonial days, Gerstäcker's lively account of Sydney Town as cartloads of men and their equipment made their way to the goldfields is written with humour and insight and gives a vivid image of those times. Here is a fascinating account of what this huge country was like then with all its dangers, delights and curiosities.

Professor Monteath's book is well referenced and intelligently edited and makes a serious contribution to a scholarly analysis of Australian life through German eyes in the 1850s. A thoroughly readable and enjoyable book.

Gerstäcker's Australien offers drama, humour, suspense, excitement and a heightened sense of the exotic. Yet amid the exotic - and perhaps this feature lay at the core of Gerstäcker's genius - there was also and always the reassuringly familiar. Whether he was describing the Australian bush or the jungle of Brazil, a small piece of Germany was never far away. No other author united the familiar and the exotic as successfully as Gerstäcker did.

As a result of thorough and relentless research, including access to ASIO files and the Stasi files of East Germany's notorious secret police, Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt have produced an engrossing biography of radical anthropologist and communist Fred Rose.

Red Professor traces Rose's life from his birth in South London during the Great Depression to his death in East Berlin shortly after the Wall came down. This biography is an extremely revealing portrait of much of the 20th century as seen through communist eyes. It also uncovers gripping details about a political and scientific activist from the time he joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1942, largely because of what he perceived as the gross abuse of Aboriginals.

The collapse of the GDR in 1989 appalled him, and he died in 1991, leaving what he saw as his magnum opus largely unpublished. How good an anthropologist he was remains unclear from this judicious and well-researched biography, but most other things the reader might want to know are in there.

Overall, this sweeping biography brings to life the global Cold War context, the paranoia on both sides and how this affected one man and his family, as well as anthropological studies of Aborigines. The biography flows excellently. The authors note that the breadth of the subjects they covered in their biography placed them, at times, outside their intellectual comfort zones. They are to be congratulated for weaving together many different subjects. We need more interdisciplinary books with such a broad, global focus, which would highlight the many ways in which the Pacific is interconnected with the rest of the world.

The authors, by their timely research, have placed in their debt not only the anthropological community but also all historians of contemporary Australia and those who remember the chilling time of the Cold War. One can only wish this considerable work the widest publication.

The authors bring to our attention the extraordinary and complex back story of this now little-remembered nbame, and restore to some contemporary clarity the political stakes at issue in mid-century contests over academic and other forms of cultural authority. In particular, this book reminds of the length and difficulty of the struggle for Land Rights and cultural autonomy for Indigenous communities, and sheds new light on the contests within and outside professional anthropology that played out in cold-ear configurations of Indigenous rights, across the political spectrum, and their influence on post-war culture.

Rose has been effectively written out of the intellectual history of Australia despite the emblematic nature of his fate. The anthropological establishment preserves practically no memory of his pioneering work on Groote Eylandt in the 1930s; the radical intelligentsia whose circles he once frequented have long since moved on from the concerns that shaped his life. There is a reason for this neglect, a single, all-dominating reason: the episode that lies at the heart of the subtle new biography of Rose by Flinders University history academics Valerie Munt and Peter Monteath.

Red Professor provides a fascinating glimpse of the interpersonal workings of espionage, of the intimacy between informant and handler - in Rose's case a relationship more committed and more openly communicative than that between husband and wife.

The book opens in 1976 at a dinner in East Berlin with Gough Whitlam and his entourage reminiscing with Fred and Edith about Australian politics, Aboriginal land rights - and their shared bete noir Sir John Kerr! After a delightful evening Fred reported their conversation in full, to his Stasi handlers. The authors ask, "What kind of man would do that?" By the end of this wonderfully researched account, we can answer that question and - almost - understand how Fred Rose became that man.

The cover blurb quotes Humphrey McQueen describing this very well researched and referenced biography as "unputdownable"; indeed, it is an engrossing read.

A vivid, comprehensively researched and engrossing study of a man whose objective to research Aboriginal life and culture thoroughly and sensitively was thwarted at every turn by authorities wedded to an "assimilationist" policy or who found his leftist politics repugnant or distasteful. As an academic working in Australian studies, this book spoke to me both professionally and personally.

...their book is a scholarly achievement of the first order, deserving of recognition on more than one continent.

Few people can have a CV to rival Fred Rose's: Cambridge University graduate, remote area meteorologist, anthropologist, alleged Soviet spy, eminent East German academic and Stasi informant.

A remarkably informative and at the same time easy to read biography ... Everyone interested in recent world and Australian history should have a copy.

I always like a good spy story and couldn't put this book down ... a tale well told with the evidence of weighty research.

The level and depth of research undertaken by Monteath and Munt in this biography is astounding and their narrative is masterly and captivating. This is not a dry academic treatment of the subject but a very readable and entertaining story of a man of intelligence, character and a fair share of human failings.

A gripping and often chilling account of this chameleon-like man, set in a sweeping backdrop of the 20th century.

A real treat for those interested in more about those heady times during the Cold War and the Petrov Affair.

His story remained largely untold until after his death in 2002, but thanks to the efforts of Peter Monteath this remarkable story about a young man of great determination and courage, lives on to become one of the many that go to make up the remarkable history, of not just Australian fighting forces overseas, but also reminds us of the caring and courage displayed by ordinary people when faced with extraordinary events in their lives.

You may not know the name of Johnny Peck, but that needs to change right away. If you love a good World War II history book, then this is the story for you. If you just enjoy real life adventure yarns, this one will have you hooked from the beginning.

Peter Monteath helps to explain the political atmosphere within which Johnny Peck was forced to work. His story of Peck the Escape Artist is a very considerable aid to those who are interested in the events in North Italy in the latter years of World War II as well as the Australian European POW story in general. John Peck’s story is indeed that of a great AIF escaper.

Escape Artist presents the full extent of Peck’s career, and pays tribute to it. It highlights that altruism among friends and allies is more important than self-interest or individual liberty. Peter Monteath’s very readable account reveals that Peck’s war was more than ‘incredible’. It was one of great courage, gallantry and singular achievement.

This is certainly a book addressed at the popular market, but it is the work of a professional historian. The many individual stories are deftly set against the wider movements of the war and told with a keen sympathy for those on whose lands the war was being fought.