The question is as searing as it is fundamental to the continuing debate over Japanese culpability in World War II and the period leading up to it: "How could Japanese soldiers have committed such acts of violence against Allied prisoners of war and Chinese civilians?" During the First World War, the Japanese fought on the side of the Allies and treated German POWs with respect and civility. In the years that followed, under Emperor Hirohito, conformity was the norm and the Japanese psyche became one of selfless devotion to country and emperor; soon Japanese soldiers were to engage in mass murder, rape, and even cannibalization of their enemies. Horror in the East examines how this drastic change came about. On the basis of never-before-published interviews with both the victimizers and the victimized, and drawing on never-before-revealed or long-ignored archival records, Rees discloses the full horror of the war in the Pacific, probing the supposed Japanese belief in their own racial superiority, analyzing a military that believed suicide to be more honorable than surrender, and providing what the Guardian calls "a powerful, harrowing account of appalling inhumanity...impeccably researched."

The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English.
The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region. Drawing upon metaphors of oceanic voyaging, Michelle Keown takes the reader on a discursive journey through a variety of literary and cultural contexts in the Pacific, exploring the Indigenous literatures of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and also investigating a range of European or Western writing about the Pacific, from the adventure fictions of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson, and Jack London to the Pakeha European) settler literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book explores the relevance of 'international' postcolonial theoretical paradigms to a reading of Pacific literatures, but it also offers a region-specific analysis of key authors and texts, drawing upon Indigenous Pacific literary theories, and sketching in some of the key socio-historical trajectories that have inflected Pacific writing. Well-established Indigenous Pacific authors such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and Patricia Grace are considered alongside emerging writers such as Sia Figiel, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. The book focuses primarily upon Pacific literature in English - the language used by the majority of Pacific writers - but also breaks new ground in examining the growing corpus of francophone and hispanophone writing in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Easter Island/Rapa Nui.

Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith were the original pioneers of Australian aviation. Together they succeeded in a number of record-breaking flights that made them instant celebrities in Australia and around the world: the first east-to-west crossing of the Pacific, the first trans-Tasman flight, Australia to New Zealand, the first flight from New Zealand to Australia. Business ventures followed for them, as they set up Australian National Airways in late 1928. Smithy was the face of the airline, happier in the cockpit or in front of an audience than in the boardroom. Ulm on the other hand was in his element as managing director. Ulm had the tenacity and organisational skills, yet Smithy had the charisma and the public acclaim. In 1932, Kingsford Smith received a knighthood for his services to flying, Ulm did not. Business setbacks and dramas followed, as Ulm tried to develop the embryonic Australian airline industry. ANA fought hard against the young Qantas, already an establishment favourite, but a catastrophic crash on the airline's regular route from Sydney to Melbourne and the increasing bite of the Great Depression forced ANA's bankruptcy in 1933. Desperate to drum up publicity for a new airline venture, Ulm's final flight was meant to demonstrate the potential for a regular trans-Pacific passenger service. Somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii his plane, Stella Australis, disappeared. No trace of the plane or crew were ever found. In the years since his death, attention has focused more and more on Smithy, leaving Ulm neglected and overshadowed. This biography will attempt to rectify that, showing that Ulm was at least Smithy's equal as a flyer, and in many ways his superior as a visionary, as an organiser and as a businessman. His untimely death robbed Australia of a huge talent.