“Unlike cricket, which is a polite game, Australian Rules Football creates a desire on the part of the crowd to tear someone apart, usually the referee.” This is only one of the entertaining and astute observations the U.S. military provided in the pocket guides distributed to the nearly one million American soldiers who landed on the shores of Australia between 1942 and 1945. Although the Land Down Under felt more familiar than many of their assignments abroad, American GIs still needed help navigating the distinctly different Aussie culture, and coming to their rescue was Instruction for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942. The newest entry in the Bodleian Library’s bestselling series of vintage pocket guides, this pamphlet is filled with pithy notes on Australian customs, language, and other cultural facts the military deemed necessary for every American soldier.

             From the native wildlife—a land of “funny animals”—to the nation’s colonial history to the general characteristics of Australians—“an outdoors sort of people, breezy and very democratic”—Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia gives a concise yet amazingly informative overview of the island nation. Regarding Aussie slang, it notes that “the Australian has few equals in the world at swearing. . . . The commonest swear words are ‘bastard’ (pronounced ‘barstud’), ‘bugger,’ and ‘bloody,’ and the Australians have a genius for using the latter nearly every other word.” The pamphlet also contains a humorous explanation of the country’s musical traditions—including an annotated text of “Waltzing Matilda”—as well as amusing passages on sports, politics, and the Aussies’ attitudes toward Yanks and Brits.

            A fascinating look at a neglected Allied front in the Southern hemisphere, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942 follows its successful predecessors as a captivating historical document of a pivotal era in history.

Numerous documents attest to the horrific conditions endured by African slaves during the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. Less well known is the perspective of those who wielded power during this dark time in human history. The Bodleian Library fills that gap here with the memoirs of a principal figure in the slave trade, Captain Hugh Crow.

The first-hand account of a man who commanded one of the last legal slave vessels to cross the Atlantic, Life and Times of a Slave Trade Captain offers a revealing if frequently troubling look into the psyche of a slave trader. His chronicle leaves nothing to the imagination, as he recounts the harsh routine of daily life on a slave vessel, where on average a fifth of the crew—let alone the human cargo—never survived the crossing. Crow portrays himself as an “enlightened” slaver, a claim he justifies through the link between his close attention to his “negroes” and his financial success, and the songs composed for him by the slaves. His account also includes commentary on the social propriety of the slave trade and notes about the conditions on West Indian and Caribbean plantations as well as on slave ships. John Pinfold’s illuminating introduction recounts the life of Hugh Crow and sets him in the rich historical context of eighteenth-century mercantilism and its battle with the abolitionist movement. An eye-opening read, Life and Times of a Slave Trade Captain reveals an often overlooked facet in the complicated history of transatlantic slavery.