Cage of Ghosts
Australian History Photography Cultural Studies World War II Military History Pacific War History Travel Memoir
Cage of Ghosts is a scarce 2018 first-edition hard-cover that fuses travel memoir, cultural studies and Australian history into one absorbing narrative. Author-photographer Jon Rhodes retraces the 1942 escape route of 300 WWII soldiers through the New Guinea highlands, weaving their wartime diaries with his own contemporary journeys through the same rugged landscape. The result is a 230-page, large-format volume that lets readers compare never-before-published 1940s photographs with Rhodes’ modern images, revealing how tribal customs, colonial footprints and environmental change have reshaped the region.
Collectors prize this self-published release because every copy was personally handled by Rhodes; the 2018 print-run was tiny and most copies were sold on tour, making clean first editions hard to locate. This particular copy carries a warm gift inscription on the fly-leaf—adding provenance without detracting from readability—and only a handful of pages show the light thumbing you’d expect from a title that has been read once and then shelved. The sewn binding and heavy matte stock remain tight and square, so the book sits proudly on a shelf and can be opened flat for repeated reference to the 150-plus duotone plates.
What makes Cage of Ghosts special is the way it doubles as both a scholarly resource and a visual time-capsule. Students of Pacific history value the annotated maps and firsthand soldier accounts, while photography collectors hunt the edition for Rhodes’ cinematic jungle imagery printed in rich quad-tone. Because the ISBN (9780646964157) points to the author’s own micro-press, online listings are sporadic; securing a clean, personally inscribed first printing now ensures you own the version that will appreciate as the title moves out-of-print and into the rare-book market.
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