Simone Kaho on The Farewell Touristby Alison Glenny and Night Music by Harvey Molloy
Rescuing Sex Work from Stigma
Barbara Brookes on My Body, My Business: New Zealand sex workers in an era of change by Caren Wilton
How to ease the realm of pain?
Gerry Te Kapa Coates on Ko Taranaki te Maunga by Rachel Buchanan
Urgent Challenges
Giovanni Tiso Fair Borders? Migration policy in the twenty-first century, edited by David Hall (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 240 pp., $14; Sea Change: Climate politics and New Zealand by Bronwyn Hayward (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 120 pp., $14; Island Time: New Zealand’s Pacific futures by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 256 pp., $14.99 The […]
Disobedient Preaching
Bernard Beckett Disobedient Teaching: Surviving and creating change in education by Welby Ings (Otago University Press, 2017), 208 pp., $35 I sit firmly within the demographic of Welby Ings’ target audience. I am closing in on thirty years of working in secondary-school classrooms, and have not yet outgrown my knack of annoying management upon occasion. […]
Where the Four Winds Wend
Vaughan Rapatahana South D Poet Lorikeet by Jenny Powell (Cold Hub Press, 2017), 97 pp., $29.95; Walking to Jutland Street by Michael Steven (Otago University Press, 2018), 80 pp., $27.50; The Light and Dark in Our Stuff by Mere Taito (MT Productions, 2016), 30 pp., $10; He’s So MASC by Chris Tse (Auckland University Press, […]
The Great Depression and Collective Memory
Cybèle Locke The Broken Decade: Prosperity, depression and recovery in New Zealand, 1928–39, by Malcolm McKinnon (Otago University Press, 2016), 556 pp., $49.95 In this magisterial account of the 1930s Depression, Malcolm McKinnon aims to disturb the historical orthodoxy which depicts a conflict between the powerless and powerful – ‘We and They’ – ‘in which […]
Raising the Standard
Denis Harold The Interregnum: Rethinking New Zealand, edited by Morgan Godfrey, with Andrew Dean, Max Harris, Lamia Imam, Chloe King, Daniel Kleinsman, Edward Miller, Courtney Sina Meredith, Carrie Stoddart-Smith, Wilbur Townsend, and Holly Walker (Bridget Williams Books Texts, 2016), 172 pp, $14.99 This roughly hewn gem of a book of essays is not a primer for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Maoriland
Nicholas Reid Ko Te Whenua Te Utu: Land Is the Price by M.P.K. Sorrenson (Auckland University Press, 2014) 344 pp., $49.99; Beyond the Imperial Frontier: The contest for colonial New Zealand by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, 2014) 280 pp., $49.99 Professor Emeritus M.P.K. Sorrenson is one of the people most qualified to write ‘Essays […]