David Eggleton The Penguin Book of New Zealand War Writing, edited by Harry Ricketts and Gavin McLean (Penguin Random House, 2015), 602 pp., $65; Calls to Arms: New Zealand society and commitment to the Great War by Steven Loveridge (Victoria University Press, 2014), 336 pp., $40; How We Remember: New Zealanders and the First World […]
Perpetrator, Judge and Jury
Gerry Te Kapa Coates Kūpapa: The Bitter Legacy of Māori Alliances with the Crown by Ron Crosbie (Penguin Random House, 2015) 504 pp., $65 Ron Crosby is a barrister with a keen interest in Māori history, and a recent member of the Waitangi Tribunal. He also is the author of The Musket Wars (1999), which […]
Connecting Places, Ancestors, Gods with the Present
Edmund Bohan The Lives of Colonial Objects, edited by Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla (Otago University Press, 2015), 368 pp., $50 The inspiration for this beautifully produced and sumptuously illustrated essay collection, described by its three editors as one ‘in which objects serve as pathways into New Zealand’s colonial history’, comes originally from […]
Hornby, Dinky, Tonka and Torro
Nicholas Reid Hello Girls and Boys! A New Zealand Toy Story, by David Veart (Auckland University Press, 2014), 314 pp., $65 When I was a kid I lived next door to a boy who loved trolleys. He did not have just one homemade trolley, but a small fleet of them. Because he lived on a […]
Bookplates, Stamps and Signatures
Iain Sharp Hocken: Prince of Collectors, by Donald Kerr (Otago University Press, 2015), 424 pp., $60 The first thing one notices about Donald Kerr’s handsome new appreciation of Dunedin bibliophile Thomas Morland Hocken is its expanse: 300 pages of body text, followed by 100 closely printed pages of appendices, notes and bibliography. In Otago University […]
Kia Ora, Everybody!
Michael O’Leary Parekura Horomia – ‘Kia Ora Chief’, by Wira Gardiner (Huia Publishers, 2014), 448 pp., $45 If there was ever an Apt Phrase Award about its subject in the title of a book, then this biography of Parekura Horomia, with its ringing ‘Kia ora, Chief’, would have to be in the running for top […]
Fragments from Ritual Recitations
William Direen The Gold Leaves (being an account and translation from the Ancient Greek of the so-called ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets), by Edward Jenner (Atuanui Press, 2014), 162 pp., $35 Jenner begins by situating himself among the group that sees these gold leaves as signs of ‘experimental speculations’ (a term used by the late Walter Burkert), […]
Keep it in the Ground
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman Coal: The rise and fall of King Coal in New Zealand by Matthew Wright (David Bateman, 2014), 200 pp., $39.99; Tragedy at Pike River: How and why 29 men died by Rebeccca McFie (Awa Press, 2013), 275 pp., $40.00 Poor old King Coal: nobody loves him. The SOE Solid Energy, formerly State […]
The Urban Archeologist
James Dignan Working Lives c. 1900: A photographic essay, by Erik Olssen (Otago University Press, 2014), 167 pp., $50 Dunedin has seen better times. Once the country’s economic powerhouse, it has been overtaken in size by the likes of Hamilton and Tauranga, and is facing the psychological precipice which may see its ‘main centre’ status […]
Architect of a Compassionate Society
Edmund Bohan Richard Seddon, King of God’s Own: The life and times of New Zealand’s longest-serving prime minister by Tom Brooking (Penguin Books, 2014), 584 pp., $65 At a mayoral reception during my first visit to St Helens in Lancashire in 1966, I was, when identified as a New Zealander, proudly ushered by the mayor […]
The Missionary and the Murderer
Max Oettli Journey to a Hanging by Peter Wells (Vintage, 2014), 412 pp., $45 Peter Wells’ historical account of the persecution and assassination of Kereopa Te Rau has a rather gloomy title, and I first opened it with a sense of foreboding and unease. It’s true though that the story he tells us here is […]
This Bloody War
Helen Watson White Passing Through by Coral Atkinson (Dancing Tuatara, 2014), 345 pp., $34.95 Coral Atkinson’s third historical novel, Passing Through, makes a good holiday read with its many-sided plot, interesting and well-defined characters, and its feeling for the troubled yet reckless mood here following World War I. The war itself is described as it […]
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