David Eggleton Promoting Prosperity: The art of early New Zealand advertising, by Peter Alsop and Gary Stewart (Craig Potton Publishing, 2013), 440 pp., $79.99; From Earth’s End: The best of New Zealand comics, by Adrian Kinnaird (Godwit, 2013) 447 pp., $59.99 You approach Promoting Prosperity: The art of early New Zealand advertising as if through […]
Fiction and the 1981 Springbok Tour
David Herkt Cross Fingers, by Paddy Richardson, (Hachette, 2013), 288 pp., $35 A second-rate literary artwork, no matter its genre, always contains lessons. Comparative artlessness reveals much that is otherwise hidden. It is possible to observe the inherited mechanics, the authorised shapes, and routine expectations of the novel in starkly-lit detail. We are offered a […]
Pākehā Philosopher, Māori Advocate, Psychology Professor
Gerry Te Kapa Coates Paikea: The Life of I.L.G. Sutherland, by Oliver Sutherland, (Canterbury University Press, 2013), 480 pp., $65.00 This fascinating book is about an early twentieth-century New Zealand philosopher and teacher, Ivan Lorin George Sutherland, a relatively little-known or acknowledged Pākehā New Zealand academic now, who threw off his conservative upbringing to become […]
A White Collar and a Red Tie
Edmund Bohan White-Collar Radical: Dan Long and the rise of the white-collar unions, by Mark Derby, (Craig Potton Publishing, 2013), 302 pp., $39.99 White-Collar Radical: Dan Long and the rise of the white-collar unions reveals its author Mark Derby writes well, though this is hardly surprising because he is an experienced writer and historian, whose […]
Eclectic Styles
David Eggleton R.A. Lawson: Victorian architect of Dunedin, by Norman Ledgerwood (Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust, 2013), 256 pp., $74.99 New Zealand’s Lost Heritage: The stories behind our forgotten landmarks, by Richard Wolfe (New Holland, 2013), 192 pp., $49.99 Converted Houses: New Zealand architecture recycled, by Lucinda Diack, (Penguin, 2012), 207 pp., $65 On a Saturday […]
Cautiously Searching for Ancestors
Chris Else Migrations, by Rod Edmond, (Bridget Williams Books, 2013), 248 pp., $39.99 History begins where memory ends, although the line between the two is blurred: other people’s memories – parents’ and grandparents’, for example – are as much our personal experiences as our own; and the artificial construction of the past from the historical […]
Unrepentant Lovers of Modernism
Michael Findlay Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938 to 1977, by Jeremy Hansen (Godwit, 2013), 352 pp., $75.00 There is something fundamentally wrong about the oxymoronic idea of ‘retro modernism’, but this desire to recapture the essence of mid-century architecture is what has driven design taste here for the past quarter century. It has been […]
Flight to the Wilderness
John Horrocks Outsiders: Stories from the Fringe of New Zealand Society, by Gerard Hindmarsh (Craig Potton Publishing, 2012) 234 pp. $49.99. Our family liked to show visitors the old plywood dinghy they had owned since 1963. They bought it after prison escaper George Wilder had taken it from a bach at Waihaha, on the western shore […]
The Tasman World
Stevan Eldred-Grigg Christchurch Crimes 1850-75: Scandal and Skulduggery in Port and Town, by Geoffrey W. Rice, (Canterbury University Press, 2012), 232 pp., $30; A Concise History of New Zealand: Second Edition, by Philippa Mein Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 368 pp., $26.99; Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past, by Tony Ballantyne (Bridget Williams Books, […]
Happiest When Specimen Hunting
Anne Else The Owl that Fell from the Sky: Stories of a Museum Curator, by Brian Gill (Awa Press, 2012), 152pp. $35; Flashback: Tales and Treasures of Taranaki, by Andrew Moffat, (Huia Publishers, 2012), 321 pp., NZ$55. In 2013, a museum looks like an increasingly strange idea. Get together various collections of still, silent […]
Too Exceptional to Amalgamate
Edmund Bohan The Making of New Zealanders, by Ron Palenski, Auckland University Press (2012), 382 pp, $45; Home in the Howling Wilderness; Settlers and Their Environment in Southern New Zealand, by Peter Holland, Auckland University Press (2013), 254 pp, $49.99. Ron Palenski has achieved much in his several careers as journalist, sports writer and […]
The Little Stranger
Anna Rogers Born to a Changing World: Childbirth in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Alison Clarke, (Bridget Williams Books, 2012) 312 pp., $39.99. Just when it seems that there cannot be yet another fascinating historical topic lurking in New Zealand’s literary undergrowth, another will appear. ‘Of course,’ we think immediately, ‘what a wonderful idea. Why hasn’t […]
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