History

A City Possessed

Originally published in 2001, A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case is the harrowing account of one of New Zealand’s most high-profile criminal cases – a story of child sexual abuse allegations, gender politics and the law. A penetrating analysis of the social and legal processes by which the conviction of Peter Ellis was obtained, and repeatedly upheld, raises major issues for our justice system and the way we see ourselves.

A Deserter's Adventures

One of the first Benedictine monks to be sent to New Zealand, Dom Felice Vaggioli arrived in 1879 and returned home in 1887, having worked in Gisborne, Auckland and the Coromandel.

A Distant Shore

OUT OF PRINT: This book about New Zealand's Irish heritage offers the view that colonial New Zealand was more multicultural than we have been led to believe. Eight writers – most of Irish descent – have produced A Distant Shore: Irish Migration and New Zealand Settlement.

A Foucault Primer

OUT OF PRINT: A Foucault Primer Discourse, Power and the Subject By Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace 'A consistently clear, comprehensive and accessible introduction which carefully sifts Foucault's work for both its strengths and weaknesses. McHoul and Grace show an intimate familiarity with Foucault's writings and a lively, but critical engagement with the relevance of his work. A model primer.' - Tony Bennett, author of Outside Literature.

A Great New Zealand Prime Minister?

OUT OF PRINT: One of New Zealand’s longest-serving Prime Ministers, his political legacy has not always been treated kindly. However, recent work by historians suggests that a reappraisal of Bill Massey – which this book provides – is overdue.

A Religious Atheist?

OUT OF PRINT: During his lifetime, internationally celebrated New Zealand thinker and author Lloyd Geering has published numerous thought-provoking books on the nature of religious belief - and has also been tried for heresy (in 1967). This book critiques Geering's now well-known religious atheism in terms of its philosophical underpinnings.

A Rising Tide

In New Zealand, evangelical Christianity has always played a significant role. This book explores the fascinating story of the resurgence of evangelical Protestantism in the 1950s and 60s, and its pre-war origins.

A Southern Architecture

OUT OF PRINT: The forms of Ted McCoy’s houses can recall the early stone and mud brick buildings of the colonial era in Otago, as this region has been both his locus and his inspiration.

A Theatre in the House

OUT OF PRINT: For most of the 1960s, Dunedin's Globe Theatre was the most important thing happening in serious New Zealand theatre. In this book, Rosalie Carey tells the story of the theatre in its Carey years.

Acknowledge No Frontier

While other British settler societies – Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa – have states or provinces, New Zealand is a unitary state. Yet New Zealanders today hold firm provincial identities, dating from the time when the young colony was divided into provinces: 1853 to 1876. Why were the provinces created? How did settlers shape and change their institutions? And why, just over 20 years later, did New Zealand abolish its provincial governments? 'Acknowledge No Frontier', by André Brett, is a lively and insightful investigation into a crucial and formative part of New Zealand’s history. It examines the flaws within the system and how these allowed the central government to use public works – especially railways – to gain popular support for abolition of the provinces. The provincial period has an enduring legacy. This is the surprising and counterintuitive story of how vociferous parochialism and self-interest brought New Zealanders together.

Across the Pass

Across the Pass includes writing from New Zealanders such as trampers Mark Pickering and Geoff Spearpoint, writers John Mulgan, David Hill and Elsie Locke, mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, adventurer Graeme Dingle, journalist Elsie K Morton, and poets Blanche Baughan, Sam Hunt and Brian Turner.

Adventures in Democracy

OUT OF PRINT: The first comprehensive history of the vote and elections in New Zealand, published to mark the 150th anniversary of elections in New Zealand.

Advocating for Children

OUT OF PRINT: Advocating for Children: International perspectives on children's rights

Aftermaths

Aftermaths explores the life-changing intergenerational effects of colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. Ranging from Ōrākau pā in the Waikato to the Kimberleys in northwest Australia, from orphanages in Fiji to the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California, this collection of illustrated essays reveals the living legacy of historical events, showing how they have been remembered (and misremembered) within families and communities into the present day.

Amassing Treasures for All Times

OUT OF PRINT: Sir George Grey, governor of New Zealand, South Australia and the Cape Colony, was an outstanding British colonial statesman in the nineteenth century. This study sheds light on the genius and magnanimity of an increasingly controversial figure, demonstrating the complex humanity underlying his apparent remoteness.

Amongst Friends

OUT OF PRINT: This book provides a rare contemplation of the bonds between the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

An Accidental Utopia?

EBOOK: An Accidental Utopia? investigates a more egalitarian past at a time when New Zealand ranked fourth in the developed world for social inequality.

Anatomy of a Medical School

OUT OF PRINT: What makes a medical school? Certainly not bricks and mortar, essential though they be. People and ever more people, yes. Knowing what to teach and how to teach it, yes. An adjacent hospital, certainly. Partnership with Government, certainly. And, importantly, a host academic institution and a supportive community within which to flourish. The 10,000th graduate of the Otago Medical School was capped in December 2006. Since the 1970s it has in fact been three schools, based in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington. Its graduates include many distinguished researchers and practitioners all over the world.

Annie’s War

Annie’s War is a remarkable book. There have been many published collections of soldiers’ diaries and letters from the First World War, but never a first-hand account of one New Zealand family’s life in England during these challenging and frightening years.

Ants of New Zealand

This book is the outcome of a lifetime’s research by the author. He reveals that there are 37 established species of ants in New Zealand, 11 of which are considered to be endemic. This leaves 26 that are exotic or introduced, 2 of which are recent arrivals. Three of 4 additional recent arrivals pose serious threats to New Zealand’s invertebrate fauna and economy if they ever become established.

Anzac Nations

In Anzac Nations: The legacy of Gallipoli in New Zealand and Australia, 1965–2015, author Rowan Light examines the myth-making around Anzac and how commemoration has evolved.

Archaeology of the Solomon Islands

Archaeology of the Solomon Islands presents the outcome of 20 years’ research in the Solomon Islands undertaken jointly by Richard Walter and Peter Sheppard, both leaders in the field of Pacific archaeology.

Arrowtown

OUT OF PRINT: A town born of gold, nestled at the foot of the mountains of western Otago, Arrowtown has retained much of its goldfields character, with historic buildings and goldmining sites. It is also a picturesque place and a popular holiday destination.

Artefacts of Encounter

The Pacific artefacts and works of art collected during the three voyages of Captain James Cook and the navigators, traders and missionaries who followed him are of foundational importance for the study of art and culture in Oceania. These collections are representative not only of technologies or belief systems but of indigenous cultures at the formative stages of their modern histories, and exemplify Islanders’ institutions, cosmologies and social relationships. Recently, scholars from the Pacific and further afield, working with Pacific artefacts at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (MAA), have set out to challenge and rethink some longstanding assumptions on their significance. The Cook voyage collection at the MAA is among the four or five most important in the world, containing over 200 of the 2000-odd objects with Cook voyage provenance that are dispersed throughout the world. The collection includes some 100 artefacts dating from Cook’s first voyage. This stunning book catalogues this collection, and its cutting-edge scholarship sheds new light on the significance of many artefacts of encounter.

Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand

Asians and the New Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand presents thought-provoking new research on New Zealand’s fastest-growing demographic – the geographically, nationally and historically diverse Asian communities.

Beachcombing

Beachcombing looks at waves and tides, the connectivity of Southern Hemisphere coastlines, and the life cycles of marine plants and animals. It will help you understand the objects and organisms you find on beaches, and the intriguing reasons they have come to be there.

Bob Crowder: A New Zealand organics pioneer

Bob Crowder: A New Zealand organics pioneer tells the story of Bob Crowder, a leading horticulturist and early champion of regenerative agriculture in Aotearoa New Zealand. Crowder played a pivotal role in the birth of the organics movement in New Zealand, establishing the country’s only university-based organics research unit in the early 1960s and helping to build a sector now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Body Trade

OUT OF PRINT: A compelling collection of essays on the ‘traffic’ in human bodies in the Pacific from the eighteenth century until today.

Books and Boots

OUT OF PRINT: A.H. Reed's enduring contribution to his adopted homeland was as a publisher, writer and benefactor, but he is also fondly remembered by many as a long-distance walker. This biography offers an engaging portrait of 'Alf', his love of Belle, his ceaseless activity and his many contributions to the wider community. It includes a bibliography of his works and is profusely illustrated.

Borderland Practices

OUT OF PRINT: Defining what is 'orthodox' and what is 'alternative' in primary health care therapies and practice is a difficult task these days. Some alternative therapies may be practiced by general practitioners as well as by alternative therapists, and some therapies are no longer 'alternative'. Kevin Dew argues that terms such as 'science', 'unorthodoxy' and 'incompetence' have tended to change in meaning over time.

British Capital, Antipodean Labour

OUT OF PRINT: British Capital, Antipodean Labour is the first book to look at the processes of work on the waterfront. The author focuses on three ports: Auckland, Wellington and Lyttelton, revealing how the work of loading and unloading ships was done, and the conditions in which the 'wharfies' worked.

Building God's Own Country

OUT OF PRINT: Although New Zealand historians have tended to pay little attention to the role of religions in this country's past, the essays in this collection show that religious beliefs have had an important historical influence on our society.

Built for Us

OUT OF PRINT: Surrounding us in our everyday lives are public buildings we all relate to: post offices, state houses, schools, railway stations, courthouses, office buildings, police stations. Many of these buildings were designed by six men, who held the post of Colonial or Government Architect from the 1860s to 1960s. This book brings together all of their surviving public works, with drawings illustrating the distinctive style of design and particular brilliance of each.

Bus Stops on the Moon

Bus Stops on the Moon is a personal and a cultural history. As memoir, it is a sequel to The Dreaming Land (2015). A troubled and restless young Martin Edmond is on his way to becoming the wiser, older man who will sit down and write both narratives. As cultural history, the book gives us a participant’s-eye view of the early years of Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell’s avant-garde theatre troupe Red Mole.

Butterflies of the South Pacific

It is easy to misjudge butterflies as fragile flying insects: their distribution across a wild and expansive Pacific Ocean proves otherwise. Long ago they colonised by flight isolated and tiny atolls and they continue to claim new territory. Others came by land bridges when sea levels were lower, to mark out their distribution and perhaps establish new species. This book surveys (and discovers) the butterfly inhabitants of the South Pacific.

Can’t Get There from Here

Can’t Get There from Here traces the expansion and – more commonly – the contraction of New Zealand’s passenger rail network over the last century. What is the historical context of today’s imbalance between rail and road? How far and wide did the passenger rail network once run? Why is there an abject lack of services beyond the North Island’s two main cities, even as demand for passenger transport continues to grow? This book seeks to answer these questions.

Castles of Gold

OUT OF PRINT: From the 1860s, the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island was the scene of two major goldfields, attracting hopefuls from all over the world. Suddenly, where there had been native bush and wide rivers, towns with 400 pubs and accommodation houses had appeared. Amongst the hopefuls were Irish miners, many of whom stayed on after the goldrushes as part of a community with its own distinctive character. This is the first study on the history of those Irish ...

Class and Occupation

OUT OF PRINT: Class and Occupation is the first systematic attempt to identify New Zealand's actual occupational structure from 1893 to 1938, using the information gathered by the Census. The six essays consider how best to construct an occupational structure for both the whole country and for regions/localities within it. Identification of changes in occupational structure occurring across the period casts light on social change in New Zealand and, significantly, women's participation in the paid non-agricultural workforce.

Class, Gender and the Vote

OUT OF PRINT: With the rise of the study of social history in the second half of the twentieth century, the focus of many historians shifted from politics, high culture and foreign policy to new areas, including health, demographics, families, crime, women and immigration. But with this new historical work came a problem that threatened coherence in the field: how to deal with the detail of so many different pasts amongst the people of New Zealand?

Cleansing the Colony: Transporting convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land

Author Kristyn Harman offers insights into penal servitude in Van Diemen’s Land as revealed through the lived experiences of the men and sole woman transported from New Zealand.

Colonial Discourses

OUT OF PRINT: In 1855, the government used its own newspaper, Te Karere Māori. Other newspapers were published by government agents, evangelical Pakeha, the Wesleyan Church and the rival Māori government, the Kingitanga. But while the newspapers were used for propaganda, they provided a forum, with many Māori debating the issues of the day. As a result, this book is able to illuminate the whole colonial discourse between Māori and Pakeha as it appeared in the Māori-language newspapers.

Come Back to Mona Vale

Come Back to Mona Vale is a beautifully written, compelling narrative/memoir that sets about unravelling the mysteries and anomalies behind the public history of a wealthy Christchurch business family in the first half of the 20th century.

Common Ground

Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa takes a loving look at gardens and garden practices in Aotearoa New Zealand over time. From the arrival of the earliest Polynesian settlers carrying precious seeds and cuttings, through early settler gardens to ‘Dig for Victory’ efforts, Matt Morris traces the collapse and renewal of home gardening culture, through the emergence of community initiatives to the recent concept of food sovereignty.

Common Ground?

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealand's first detailed guide to historical and cultural heritage management. It addresses a wide range of heritage issues and is well-illustrated.

Communities of Women

OUT OF PRINT: The sense of belonging to a community is real but communities are also necessarily, imagined by the people who belong to them. Communities of Women: Historical Perspectives examines how women have perceived and lived in communities. Communities of Women provides insights on how women's lives have been shaped by communities in vastly different times and places. A series of essays by international contributors range from medieval Swabia to twentieth century Australasia.

Continuity amid Chaos

OUT OF PRINT: Since 1989 there have been four different structures for the New Zealand health sector. The country can now claim to have the 'most restructured' of any of the world's health systems and has captured the attention of researchers and policy-makers worldwide as a result. To review what has been happening and how providers have responded to the successive reforms, Robin Gauld has brought together this volume of essays by people managing and delivering health care.

Cook's Sites

OUT OF PRINT: In 1773, Captain James Cook visited Dusky Sound in the far south of New Zealand. The voyage artist, William Hodges, produced remarkable paintings of the spectacular antipodean environment, and of the Maori people who occupied it. The visit represents one of the beginnings of New Zealand's colonial history. How do we make sense of it today? The authors of this book have revisited the sites of contact between Cook's crews in Dusky Sound and Queen Charlotte Sound.

Creature Comforts

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world – in 2011, 68 per cent of all Kiwi households had at least one pet: almost half had a cat and nearly a third had a dog. Yet until now no book has explored how pets came to be such an integral part of the New Zealand way of life. Creature Comforts does just this. By chronicling the major events and ideas that have shaped pet keeping in New Zealand, this fascinating and entertaining book explains the strong relationship we have with our animal friends, and how this has changed over time.

Crossing the Lines

In Crossing the Lines, Brent Coutts brings to light the previously untold history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in World War II, drawing on the experiences of ordinary men who lived through extraordinary times.

Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920

Using confiscated mail as a starting point, Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 reveals the remarkable stories of people caught in the web of wartime surveillance.

Decolonizing Methodologies

This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth'. Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonisation of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Defence of Madrid

OUT OF PRINT: Goodies and baddies take some sorting out in this tale of the siege of Madrid by Franco's right-wing forces supported by the Nazis and the fascist regime of Mussolini (the 'rebels'), against the civilian population and its government representatives, just elected, who happened to be left-wing. Once sorted, Cox's account of the city under attack, in one of the twentieth century's first urban wars, has all too many echoes today. This new edition, with an introduction and selection of historical photographs, as well as samples of Cox's journalism from the front, will confirm its position as one of the classics of twentieth-century reportage.

Democratic Governance and Health

OUT OF PRINT: This book traces the development of New Zealand’s elected health boards, from the 1930s to the present District Health Board structure, analysing the history of democratic governance of health care, how boards have functioned, the politics surrounding their reform, and the idea of local democracy in health care decision-making. Based on extensive primary research, it assesses the capacity of elected boards to effectively govern the allocation of public expenditure on behalf of taxpayers and patients. Are there alternatives to the existing District Health Board model? How might the electoral model be improved upon? The concluding chapter provides some suggestions.

Detours

OUT OF PRINT: Summer, 1981. A youngish Neville Peat set out from Cape Reinga on his imported 10-speed bike ‘Blue’, aiming to cycle through small-town New Zealand from north to south, all the way to Stewart Island. The week before Easter, he reached his destination. He wrote a book about it, Detours: A journey through small-town New Zealand, which sold lots of copies and was broadcast on radio. Many times in the intervening years, usually on anniversaries of the journey – ten years, fifteen years, twenty years – he wished to try a repeat journey, but life held other challenges. Now, as a leading author and in the age of the personal computer and cell phone, a very different world, he has revisited many of the towns and regions, not on a bicycle, but by car. In Detours – A generation on, he reflects once again on how small-town New Zealand is doing.

Diplomatic Ladies

OUT OF PRINT: Diplomatic Ladies tells the inside story of New Zealand’s diplomatic wives and daughters over a hundred years of diplomacy. Based on private letters, MFAT archives and personal interviews, it records many unknown episodes in New Zealand’s diplomatic history, including the part played by the spouses in Baghdad during the first Gulf War, and the perils faced by diplomatic wives in Saigon and Tehran. It also gives a unique insight into the workings of diplomatic life and the role of the diplomatic hostess.

Disputed Histories

EBOOK: In Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Past, leading historians reflect on writing about New Zealand's past. They also test how that past is investigated and framed. Their essays tell us much about New Zealand's many pasts and how historians have imagined them, and indicate particular concerns with what the country is now and the current role of history as a discipine within our nation.

Doing Well and Doing Good

OUT OF PRINT: Ross & Glendining Ltd was founded in Dunedin in 1862, during the gold rush, by two contrasting characters: Caithness-born John Ross and Robert Glendining, from Dumfries. Initially a drapery importing business, it opened branches throughout New Zealand and warehouses in all the main centres. Careful management and efficient systems enabled the business to grow, despite strong competition from Australia. After the investment boom of the seventies, R&G began to diversify, investing in sheep runs, a woollen mill, other manufacturing, and even a coal mine. This history offers not only a portrait of a firm but a window on the development of the New Zealand economy and the emergence of a manufacturing sector.

Dolphins Down Under

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealand dolphins, also known as Hector’s dolphins, are fascinating and beautiful animals. Found only in New Zealand waters, their numbers are now under constant threat – especially from human fishing activities. This book introduces the dolphin to readers of all ages. The authors have devoted the last 30 years – more than a dolphin lifespan – to intensive study of the dolphin’s distribution, behaviour, biology, reproduction and communication, using photography as their principal research tool. They have identified over 100 individuals and recorded their life events.

Dumont d’Urville

Explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville (1790–1842) is sometimes called France’s Captain Cook. Born less than a year after the beginning of the French Revolution, he lived through turbulent times. He was an erudite polymath: a maritime explorer fascinated by botany, entomology, ethnography and the diverse languages of the world.

Dunedin

OUT OF PRINT: Built on mid-Victorian gold and located in a wonderful natural environment, Dunedin is a gracious old lady with a spirit of adventure. Dunedin: History, Heritage and Ecotourism by historian Gavin McLean offers a guide to the city and its immediate environment. McLean gives a potted history and describes walks and trips that can be taken by visitors and residents alike.

Dunedin Soundings

OUT OF PRINT: The 'Dunedin Sound' of the 1980s is a phenomenon known throughout the world. But what does Dunedin music-making sound like in the 21st century? Dunedin Soundings features writing from musicians, composers and scholar/practitioners. They discuss genres as diverse as brass band, opera, classical, Indonesian gamelan, jazz, rock and more, the intricacies of the composition and lyric-writing processes, digital remixing, and scoring for film and TV. Together, they reveal the ways in which these supposedly separate music fields have the potential to inform and stimulate each other.

Early New Zealand Photography

OUT OF PRINT: We are all participants in an increasingly visual culture, yet we rarely give thought to the ways that photographs shape our experience and understanding of the world and historical past. This book looks at a range of New Zealand photographs up to 1918 and analyses them as photo-objects, considering how they were made, who made them, what they show and how our understanding of them can vary or change over time. This emphasis on the materiality of the photograph is a new direction in scholarship on colonial photographs.

Ecosanctuaries

OUT OF PRINT: Over the past 10 years many communities around the country have launched ambitious projects to bring New Zealand’s native ecologies back to the mainland. By building predatorproof fences around big areas of land the aim is to protect native flora and fauna from introduced predators such as possums, mice, rats and stoats. These projects have faced a difficult balancing act as they try to build and sustain the social and economic support needed.

Edward Eyre, Race and Colonial Governance

OUT OF PRINT: Edward Eyre, a mid nineteenth-century explorer, colonial administrator and later colonial governor, is remembered in Australia as the enlightened defender of Aboriginal rights. In New Zealand, it is simply recalled that he did not get on with Governor Grey. In England and the Caribbean, he is the reviled 'butcher of Jamaica'. In 1865, in response to an alleged rebellion in Morant Bay, he declared martial law. Over 600 'floggings', 1000 homes incinerated, and 439 deaths was the result. This book explores Eyre's actions through his perceptions of the colonial encounter with local populations.

Eyewitness

OUT OF PRINT: In 1932, Geoffrey Cox travelled to Britain to take up a Rhodes Scholarship. First as a student, then as a journalist, Cox became an eyewitness to events which have since become history: Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, Stalin's brutal collectivisation of agriculture. Rich in detail, Cox's elegantly written prose offers a ringside seat to major 20th century events. This is a memorable memoir by one of the world's premier journalists.

Facing the Music

OUT OF PRINT: The Triad was founded in 1893 and ran into the late 1920s. For its first twenty-two years it was published in New Zealand, but in 1915 publication was transferred to Sydney where it was re-launched as an Australasian magazine. The magazine offered well-informed coverage of cultural activities in New Zealand, Australia and internationally in a broad mix of critical and original writing. Notoriously outspoken, Baeyertz was feared and respected as a critic. His music criticism was particularly intelligent and rigorous, making no concessions to personality or amateur or professional status. His later co-editor, the self-styled ‘decadent’ Frank Morton, was equally candid. This is an engaging biography of a fascinating man which also throws new light on a long-neglected period of New Zealand’s cultural past.

Far from 'Home'

OUT OF PRINT: For almost 200 years, the English have been one of the largest migrant streams to New Zealand (they have been on the move globally since around 1600). Yet relatively little has been written about their experiences in New Zealand, compared with their Irish, Scottish, Indian, Chinese and Pacific counterparts. This book brings together leading international scholars and prominent local researchers to explore a wide range of topics and issues at the very heart of research into human mobility. Why did English-born people decide to emigrate? What factors shaped their migration and adaptation? How might we best describe and explain their experiences? This collection of essays will interest anyone interested in migration and/or family history.

FigureWork

OUT OF PRINT: Although landscape has dominated New Zealand art, the human form has also been a focus for many artists. The importance of the nude in New Zealand art is explored in FigureWork: The Nude and Life Modelling in New Zealand Art by Sandra Chesterman. The first to take this fresh approach to New Zealand art, FigureWork provides absorbing insights into the wide range of artists who have worked with the nude, the models who posed for them, and the controversies they may have encountered along the way.

Filming the Colonial Past

The New Zealand Wars were defining events in the nation’s history. Filming the Colonial Past, an engaging new book from Annabel Cooper, tells a story of filmmakers’ fascination with these conflicts over the past 90 years. From silent screen to smartphone, and from Pākehā adventurers to young Māori songwriters, filmmakers have made and remade the stories of this most troubling past. In examining this history, Annabel Cooper illuminates a fascinating path of cultural change through successive generations of filmmakers.

Fiona Pardington

European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and found. From Cook onwards, a serious expedition included artists and scientists in its ship's company. An ambitious journey of the 19th century was the third voyage of the French explorer Dumont d'Urville, from 1837 to 1840. It was just before the invention of photography, when phrenology, the study of people's skulls, was the latest thing. D'Urville chose to take on the voyage an eminent phrenologist, Pierre-Marie Dumoutier, to preserve likenesses of people by making life casts. When the expedition returned to France, the casts were displayed, and later stored in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, to be joined eventually by other casts from Dumoutier's collection, including those of the d'Urville and Dumoutier families. All were overtaken by photography and history.

Fitz

EBOOK: The story of James Edward FitzGerald, whose energy and enthusiasm contributed so much to the early history of Christchurch. Orator, writer, politician and journalist, he was the first Canterbury Pilgrim to set foot in New Zealand, first superintendent of the province of Canterbury, first leader of the general government, and founder of the Press newspaper. From his early years in the Anglo-Irish gentry of England to his old age as auditor-general of the colony, FITZ is a gripping biography that reads like a novel, breathing new life into the extraordinary man who played a major role in public life through fifty years of New Zealand history.

Flu Hunter

When a new influenza virus emerges that is able to be transmitted between humans, it spreads globally as a pandemic, often with high mortality. \nGripping account of tenacious scientific detective work. Clear explanation of the science behind the headlines. Insights from a long and celebrated career.

Flying Kiwis

OUT OF PRINT: Leaving home to see the world is something that succeeding generations of young New Zealanders have done in ever-increasing numbers. ‘Overseas experience’ or the ‘OE’ has been the topic of countless individual travel accounts, and has provided the subject matter for plays, films and novels. Until now, there hasn’t been a history of the OE. Based on the oral accounts of several hundred travellers, across all seven decades of the OE, this vibrant history shows how the OE has changed over time.

Fossil Treasures of Foulden Maar

In Fossil Treasures of Foulden Maar, authors Daphne Lee, Uwe Kaulfuss and John Conran share their passion and knowledge for Foulden Maar in Otago, New Zealand, a paleontological site of international significance and home to countless rare, well-preserved fossils. This beautifully illustrated book reveals the unique paleontological discoveries that have been made to-date, taking a snapshot of changing life and ecosystems at the beginning of the Miocene and paying tribute to the scientific researchers who have helped bring Foulden Maar’s scientific marvels to the surface.

From Alba to Aotearoa

Scots made up nearly 20 per cent of the immigrant population of New Zealand to 1920, yet until the past few years the exact origins of New Zealand’s Scots migrants have remained blurred. From Alba to Aotearoa establishes for the first time key characteristics of the Scottish migrants arriving between 1840 and 1920, addressing five core questions: From where in Scotland did they come? Who came? When? In what numbers? and Where did they settle? In addition, this important study addresses, through statistical analysis, issues of internal migration within Scotland, individual and generational occupational mobility, migration among Shetland migrants, and return migration. From Alba to Aotearoa offers context to the increasing body of studies of the social and cultural history of New Zealand’s Scots, their networks, cultural transfers and identity.

From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen

In the past two decades, cuisine and culinary history have attracted increasing attention, with both popular and academic books reflecting the growth of interest. Recipes are both sensitive markers of the socioeconomic conditions of their times and written representations of a culture's culinary repertoire yet, despite the vast number of cookbooks that survive, they have not been the primary focus of research projects. Acknowledgement of their potential contribution to our understanding of culinary history has been slow. This book is a first in its field.

From Suffrage to a Seat in the House

The history of women striving to share in governing the country, a neglected footnote in the nation’s electoral history, is now captured in this essential work by Jenny Coleman. She has drawn on a wide range of sources to create a rich portrayal of a rapidly evolving colonial society in which new ideas and social change were in constant friction with the status quo

Gathering for God

OUT OF PRINT: Combining 'the gathering of artefacts with the gathering of souls', George Brown was a key figure in the Christian, and especially the Wesleyan Methodist, history of nineteenth-century Oceania. Using his life as a case study, Helen Bethea Gardner examines the role of Christian missionaries in the Pacific Islands. Brown's career (1860–1908) spanned one of the most tumultuous political periods in the South Pacific, as one by one islands were colonised by imperial nations. He was one of the most politically engaged of all missionaries, encouraging colonial rule in the Pacific by America, Britain, Germany and, eventually, Australia and New Zealand.

Give your thoughts life

OUT OF PRINT: The provincial newspaper columns were the ‘public spheres’ of their time, places for geographically separated individuals to contribute opinions to the debates of an immature democracy. But equally they were the vehicles for the passionately held views of bigots egged on by unscrupulous editors eager for exciting copy. These letters from Colenso, and their replies, show colonial politics to be argumentative, fervent and nasty – and the rants of opinionated, self-styled experts are thrilling in their vehemence.

God & Government

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealand is often portrayed as a secular society, but look at the depth of feeling stirred up in recent years by the 'Virgin in a Condom' controversy, or the Hikoi of Hope. These incidents remind us that religion continues to play a significant and sometimes controversial role in the politics and culture of modern New Zealand. The relationship between religion and politics is the topic of God & Government: The New Zealand Experience, edited by Rex Ahdar and John Stenhouse, both of the University of Otago. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in a number of disciplines, this volume explores church-state relations in contemporary New Zealand, with a glance back to the past.

Gothic NZ

Contemporary creative writers, intellectuals, photographers, painters and other artists have all contributed to this volume exploring the idea of 'gothic' in New Zealand culture. From Martin Edmond's abandoned houses, to Ian Lochhead's Victorian corrugated iron structures, to Otis Frizzell's tattoos, from Peter Jackson's movie-making to ghost paintings - there's plenty of it. As the editors suggest, gothic is 'endemic to New Zealand's self-representation'.

Grace Joel

Dunedin-born artist Grace Joel (1865–1924) exhibited to acclaim in London and Paris, yet she and her art are relatively unknown today. Joel excelled at portraiture and mother and child studies, and was skilled in portraying the nude. She received her artistic training in Melbourne, and lived for the mature years of her career in London, where her work appeared at the prestigious Royal Academy, as well as the Paris Salon and the Royal Scottish Academy. She also held a number of solo exhibitions at prominent venues in Australasian, English and European cities. Today she is claimed by New Zealand, Australia and Britain.

Harbour

OUT OF PRINT: For the past three years Alastair Grant has travelled the great inland harbours of the west coast of the North Island creating a photographic record of these fascinating and under-appreciated regions, trying to capture their atmosphere and a feel for the people who live and work around them.

Hauaga

EBOOK: John Pule is one of the most significant artists living and working in New Zealand today. From the mid-1990s his powerful, enigmatic and personal paintings attracted great interest, and his work came to be widely shown. Famously inspired by hiapo, the innovative barkcloths of nineteenth-century Niue, Pule has been fascinated by the Polynesian past and present, but his work ranges far more widely, responding both to ancestral culture, and to the global terror and violence of our time.

Heart Stood Still

Heart Stood Still is an eco-memoir and a lyrical portrait of Manawatū, Aotearoa. In early 2020, Miriam Sharland was nearing the end of a 17-year adventure in Aotearoa and was set to return to her family and friends in England when Covid put an end to her travel plans. Facing isolation, Sharland turned to the natural beauty of Manawatū to find healing and a sense of belonging in a time of uncertainty.

Histories of Hate

Histories of Hate explores radical intolerance and extremism in Aotearoa New Zealand, bringing together a wealth of historians, sociologists, political scientists, kaupapa Māori scholars, and experts in religious and media studies to explore the origins of the New Zealand radical right in the late nineteenth century to the present day.

History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants

A new edition of a rare and sought-after book. History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants is the English translation of Italian monk Dom Felice Vaggioli’s radical, prescient appraisal of British colonisation in Aotearoa. Vaggioli was one of the first Benedictine priests to be sent to Aotearoa NZ, and while working in Auckland, the Coromandel and Gisborne during the years 1879–1887, he observed lifestyles and customs and gathered information about the country’s history, including first-hand accounts of the signing of Te Tiriti and the conflicts in Taranaki and Waikato. The Italian version of his book about Aotearoa was destroyed in Europe due to its anti-Protestant and anti-British views but was later discovered and translated into English in Aotearoa by John Crockett in 2000. This 2023 edition brings Vaggioli’s unique document into the public eye once more.

Hocken

Dr Thomas Morland Hocken (1836–1910) arrived in Dunedin in 1862, aged 26. Throughout his busy life as a medical practitioner he amassed books, manuscripts, sketches, maps and photographs of early New Zealand. Much of his initial collecting focused on the early discovery narratives of James Cook; along with the writings of Rev. Samuel Marsden and his contemporaries; Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the New Zealand Company; and Māori, especially in the south. He gifted his collection to the University of Otago in 1910. Hocken was a contemporary of New Zealand’s other two notable early book collectors, Sir George Grey and Alexander Turnbull. In this magnificent piece of research, a companion volume to his Amassing Treasures for All Times: Sir George Grey, colonial bookman and collector, Donald Kerr examines Hocken’s collecting activities and his vital contribution to preserving the history of New Zealand’s early post-contact period.

How to Do Local History

OUT OF PRINT: Local historians, church and institutional historians, genealogists, thesis-writers, and the people who commission them will welcome How To Do Local History. It is a brief and lively introduction to historical research, writing and publishing by a leading historian. This book explains how to use books and archives, and is full of practical tips on 'reading' the landscape, on oral history and on using illustrations effectively. The last chapter takes historians and their clients through the intricacies of internet and conventional publishing, using case studies of real books to explain terminology, scheduling, design, costing and selling.

'I am five and I go to school'

The twentieth century was a time of great change in early years education. As the century opened, the use of Froebel's kindergarten methods infiltrated more infant classrooms. The emergence of psychology as a discipline, and especially its work on child development, was beginning to influence thinking about how infants learn through play. While there were many teachers who maintained Victorian approaches in their classrooms, some others experimented, were widely read and a few even travelled to the US and Europe and brought new ideas home. As well, there was increasing political support for new approaches to the 'new education' ideas at the turn of the century. All was not plain sailing, however, and this book charts both the progress made and the obstacles overcome in the course of the century, as the nation battled its way through world wars and depressions.

I whanau au ki Kaiapoi

Natanahira Waruwarutu was a child at the time of the capture of Kaiapoi Pa by Te Rauparaha's Ngati Toa warriors in 1832. The early years of his life, recounted here in the original Maori text and an accompanying translation, saw great change in the Maori communities of Waitaha (Canterbury) and Akaora. Otako leaders set aside Moeraki, further south, for Kaiapoi refugees and Waruwarutu moved between the two places until he died in 1895. Before his death, he passed on to scribe Thomas Green, himself a Ngai Tahu elder, a substantial body of material that now defines modern understanding of the traditional history of Ngai Tahu. This manuscript was part of that material and, as Te Maire Tau describes in his introduction, has a history of its own.

In Stormy Seas

OUT OF PRINT: A detailed look at the New Zealand economy in the twentieth century, and in particular its course since World War II. This is not just a history but a 'narrative about a problem', defining, analysing and 'hopefully contributing to an understanding that will aid in its solutions'.

In the Paddock and On the Run

OUT OF PRINT: The prominence of the rural world in New Zealand’s social, cultural and economic history is long established and undisputed. For decades, the country was termed ‘Britain’s overseas farm’ or ‘the Empire’s dairy farm’. This is the first book to explore the rich heritage of language the rural sector has generated.

India In New Zealand

OUT OF PRINT: Indian people in 'bi-cultural' New Zealand have long been an invisible minority, rarely mentioned in our history books. This volume is a second contribution to remedying this historical silence, following the publication of Indian Settlers: The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community by Jacqueline Leckie. The first section introduces the context, briefly tracing the history of Empire and migration, which saw a few hundred adventurers from Gujarat and Punjab braving the seas and settling here in the late 19th century. Now Indians constitute the second-largest Asian-Kiwi group in our population (having more than doubled in number between 1991 and 2001).

Indian Settlers

OUT OF PRINT: Indians have been present in New Zealand for over a hundred years, yet few New Zealanders would know their story. Who were these people, where did they come from, and what role have they played in the making of Aotearoa as it is in the twenty-first century? This book seeks to provide some answers.

Indigenous Identity and Resistance

Indigenous Identity and Resistance brings together the work of Indigenous Studies scholars working in Canada, New Zealand and the Pacific in research conversations that transcend the imperial boundaries of the colonial nations in which they are located. Their lucid, accessible, and thought-provoking essays provide a critical understanding of the ways in which Indigenous peoples are rearticulating their histories, knowledges, and the Indigenous self.

Invasive Predators in New Zealand

The story of invasive species in New Zealand is unlike any other in the world. By the mid-thirteenth century, the main islands of the country were the last large landmasses on Earth to remain uninhabited by humans, or any other land mammals. Carolyn M. King brings together the necessary historical analysis and recent ecological research to understand this long, slow tragedy.

James Courage Diaries

Between 1920 and 1963, New Zealand author James Courage confided his innermost thoughts to a private diary. He wrote about leaving New Zealand, the men he met in London’s streets, and forging friendships in the literary scene. He was an evocative chronicler of landscapes and indoor settings: life on long ocean voyages, air raid shelters during the war, and the psychiatrist’s clinic at a time when society was deeply ambivalent about homosexuality.

John Larkins Cheese Richardson

OUT OF PRINT: The definitive biography of a much-beloved and respected colonial activist. Born in Bengal in 1810 but educated in England, Richardson spent his early career in India in the military, achieving the rank of major. He served in the Afghanistan campaign in 1842 and was ADC to Sir Harry Smith throughout the Sikh Wars. On his retirement from the army in the 1850s he spent four months in New Zealand and subsequently decided to migrate permanently, settling in Otago in 1856.

Ka Ngaro Te Reo

In 1800, te reo Māori was the only language spoken in New Zealand. By 1899, it was on the verge of disappearing altogether. In 'Ka Ngaro Te Reo', Paul Moon traces the spiralling decline of the language during an era of prolonged colonisation that saw political, economic, cultural and linguistic power shifting steadily into the hands of the European core. In this revelatory and hard-hitting account, Moon draws on a vast range of published and archival material, as well as oral histories and contemporary Māori accounts, to chart the tortuous journey of a language under siege in a relentless European campaign to ‘save and civilize the remnant of the Maori Race’. He also chronicles the growing commitment among many Māori towards the end of the nineteenth century to ensure that the language would survive.

Ka Taoka Hakena

OUT OF PRINT: In 1907 Dr T.M. Hocken of Dunedin – historian, bibliographer and collector – undertook to gift to the University of Otago his magnificent collection of books, manuscripts, paintings and other historical documents relating to New Zealand and the Pacific.

Kalimpong Kids

In the early 20th century, 130 young Anglo-Indians were sent to New Zealand in an organised immigration scheme from Kalimpong, in the Darjeeling district of India. They were the mixed-race children of British tea planters and local women, and were placed as workers with New Zealand families from the Far North to Southland.

Kate Edger

In 1877, Kate Edger became the first woman to graduate from a New Zealand university. The New Zealand Herald enthusiastically hailed her achievement as ‘the first rays of the rising sun of female intellectual advancement’.

Kerikeri Mission Station and Kororipo Pā

A concise guide to the Kerikeri mission from its inception in 1819 until 1845, when it became a secular settlement and the Stone Store was sold to private owners. It includes a discussion of missionaries and Māori who were involved with the mission, including people such as Hongi Hika, Rewa and Moka.

Kitchens

This engrossing history of the domestic kitchen covers 10 decades that saw our culinary traditions accommodate extraordinary changes in technology and the irresistible process of globalisation. Each chapter surveys the external influences on households and their kitchens, samples the dishes prepared during the decade, and discusses the structure of meals. A study of kitchen equipment and design then closes each chapter, cumulatively revealing more innovation in these aspects than in what we ate.

Kiwi

OUT OF PRINT: In this book, the author describes the kiwi from every point of view, from wild bird to national emblem. What is this biological oddity called the kiwi? Exactly how many species of kiwi are there? Where do they live? What do they eat? How are people helping them to survive? Why does this bird have such a major place in the Kiwi nation's life?

Kiwitown's Port

OUT OF PRINT: Located on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, Oamaru harbour struggled to become a safe haven. Yet it became an example of the ‘progress industry’ that reshaped the country’s destiny in the pivotal 1860s and 1870s, an archetypal rural servicing town, manufacturing centre and port. Today viticulture, dairy farms and farm stays characterise its region but the tides still roll in and out of the harbour, which in turn has become a heritage centre, recreation space and tourist venue.

Lands for the People?

OUT OF PRINT: An enlightening political biography of the Minister of Lands and Agriculture in the 1890s. John McKenzie was the legislator who 'burst up' the great pastoral estates and assisted the establishment of the small family farm in New Zealand.

Landscape/Community

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealanders have a strong affinity with the land and firm connections are drawn between the land and cultural identity in the economy, in politics and in art. Histories of migration, settlement and environmental adaptation ensure the subject of communities and landscapes is increasingly important in New Zealand studies.

Lenin's Legacy Down Under

OUT OF PRINT: Although described by Lenin as 'the country at the end of the world', like other western countries New Zealand was a participant in the defining ideological conflict of the twentieth century and there are stories to be told as a result. Lenin's Legacy Down Under: New Zealand's Cold War uses the once-classified archives of the Cold War protagonists to reassess that conflict. It draws upon New Zealand, Russian, Chinese, American and Australian sources to re-evaluate the impact of the Cold War on New Zealand's foreign policy and domestic affairs from 1917 to the early 1990s.

Letters of Denis Glover

In this magnificent volume Sarah Shieff presents around 500 of Glover’s letters to around 110 people, drawn from an archive of nearly 3000 letters to over 430 recipients.

Mad or Bad?

EBOOK: Amy Bock's life has been the inspiration for plays, books, a TV programme, music, poems, an exhibition and more, but Mad or Bad? is the first comprehensive biography. And while Amy gained notoriety as a daring, duplicitous and talked-about con artist who impersonated a man and married an unsuspecting woman, in this book the author shows how her story was not a straightforward case of fraud and misrepresentation.

Making a New Land

Making a New Land presents an interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most rapid and extensive transformations in human history: that which followed Maori and then European colonisation of New Zealand's temperate islands. This is a new edition of Environmental Histories of New Zealand, first published in 2002, brimming with new content and fresh insights into the causes and nature of this transformation, and the new landscapes and places that it produced.

Making Our Place

EBOOK: Fascination with the interplay of people and place inspired the editors to bring together New Zealanders from differing backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our sacred, historic, rural, urban and coastal landscapes. All engage with the underlying question: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and each other?

Malaria Letters

OUT OF PRINT: New cases of malaria affect more than one hundred million people each year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. But with global warming the distribution of mosquito vectors is changing and whole populations are at increasing risk.

Migration, Ethnicity, and Madness

Migration, Ethnicity, and Madness: New Zealand, 1860–1910, by Angela McCarthy, Otago University Press

Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament

OUT OF PRINT: An essential reference for voters or anyone working in politics, journalism, research or education, this book records all the ministers and members of the New Zealand Parliament since 1911. The first section lists ministers, their dates of office and ministerial responsibilities. In the second there is an alphabetical listing of names, dates of service, party affiliation, electorate and whether a minister. MPs currently in office are listed in bold type. Appendices include information such as general elections, by-elections and parliamentary sessions, referenda, women MPs and ministers, independents and third party MPs and MPs' honoraria, salaries and allowances, and leaders of major political parties.

More than Law and Order

OUT OF PRINT: Immediately after the Second World War, the New Zealand Police were in a sorry state: short on resources, antiquated in their systems and with too many elderly and infirm staff. The period covered by this book saw major change and modernisation. The author explores the ways in which the police have overhauled their management structure repeatedly since the 1940s and shows how they have often struggled to position themselves within the modern public sector. These issues lift the history into the wider context of government and management in the second half of the twentieth century.

Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific

Like a human tsunami, World War II brought two million American servicemen to the South Pacific where they left a human legacy of some thousands of children. 'Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific' traces the intimate relationships that existed in the wartime Pacific between US servicemen and indigenous women, and considers the fate of the resulting children. The American military command carefully managed such intimate relationships, applying US immigration law based on race to prevent marriage ‘across the colour line’. For indigenous women and their American servicemen sweethearts, legal marriage was impossible, giving rise to a generation of children known as ‘GI babies’. Among these Pacific war children, one thing common to almost all is the longing to know more about their American father. 'Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific' traces these children’s stories of loss, emotion, longing and identity, and of lives lived in the shadow of global war. It considers the way these relationships developed in the major US bases of the South Pacific Command from Bora Bora in the east across to Solomon Islands in the west, and from the Gilbert Islands in the north to New Zealand. The writers interviewed many of the children of the Americans and some of the few surviving mothers, as well as others who recalled the wartime presence in their islands. Oral histories reveal what the records of colonial governments and the military largely have ignored, providing a perspective on the effects of the US occupation that until now has been disregarded by historians of the Pacific war.

Murder that Wasn't

This book tells the story of the case of George Gwaze, twice charged and twice acquitted of the rape and murder of his ten-year-old adopted niece, Charlene Makaza. When Charlene is found unconscious one morning, gasping for breath, with a high fever and lying in a pool of diarrhoea, her family rush her to the Christchurch 24-hour clinic. She is treated for overwhelming sepsis and transferred to hospital. Sadly her life cannot be saved and at 1.00am she dies. During the course of Charlene’s short illness the diagnosis shifts from infection to sexual assault and homicide, and her grieving family find themselves publicly engulfed in a criminal investigation. What unfolds next is a surreal set of events so improbable that they seem fictitious. Murder that Wasn’t meticulously explores the facts surrounding this case, based on scientific, medical and court records and individual interviews, to tell this family’s extraordinary story.

New Zealand Nurses

Author Pamela Wood’s New Zealand Nurses draws on a wealth of nurses’ personal stories to identify the values, traditions, community and folklore of the nursing culture from 1880 – when hospital reforms began to formally introduce ‘modern nursing’ into New Zealand – to 1950, three years after New Zealand severed its final tie as part of the British Empire.

New Zealanders at Home

OUT OF PRINT: A visual history of New Zealand domestic interiors, as seen through contemporary photographs, drawings and paintings. The book is divided into four periods, taking the reader from the interior of a whare through the homes of missionaries and settlers to the turn-of-the-century villas of Auckland and twentieth-century bungalows of suburban Christchurch.

Niue 1774–1974

Niue 1774–1974: 200 years of contact and change, by Margaret Pointer, Otago University Press

Niue and the Great War

Tragic story of Niue’s sacrifice in WW1. Captivating, richly illustrated account. By a leading author on Niue history.

No Idle Rich

EBOOK: Wealth and power in a colonial society is the subject of No Idle Rich: The Wealthy in Canterbury & Otago 1840–1914. It is a detailed study of the richest settlers in southern New Zealand, where the country's earliest fortunes were made, mostly by pastoral farmers and financiers.

Oamaru

OUT OF PRINT: Oamaru is a town built on nineteenth-century gold and grain booms, and the birthplace of the frozen meat. Nestling around its old port fringes is New Zealand's most intact Victorian architectural landscape. Using a 'Victorian Town at Work' theme to promote these unique features, Oamaru is now a major heritage centre.

On the Left

OUT OF PRINT: On the Left is the first comprehensive study of socialist thought and practice from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuy. The essays examine the ideas, political organisations and social actions adopted by the left - from early syndicalism to feminist and unemployed movements - and their impact on society. The result is a book that brings the left back in to New Zealand's historical consciousness - and opens up a whole new field of historical enquiry.

Only Two for Everest

The First New Zealand Himalayan Expedition, in 1951, was initiated by Earle Riddiford, who with Ed Cotter and Pasang Dawa Lama made the first ascent of Mukut Parbat, their target peak in the Garhwal Himalaya. Accompanying them on that expedition, though not to that summit, were two other New Zealand climbers, Edmund Hillary and George Lowe. Hearing of the success on Mukut Parbat, the New Zealand Alpine Club suggested to the Alpine Club in London that acclimatised New Zealanders would be a valuable asset on the forthcoming 1951 British Reconnaissance of Mt Everest, to be led by Eric Shipton. This resulted in an invitation for two New Zealanders to join the party: thrilling news the four climbers received while they were ensconced in the hill-country village of Ranikhet. A day and a half of bitter dispute rent the party asunder. Which two should go to Everest?In this enthralling narrative, journalist Lyn McKinnon tells the stories of Earle Riddiford and Ed Cotter, two extraordinary New Zealanders whose climbing achievements were forever eclipsed by the exploits of others. She draws on private papers as well as published work, and extensively interviews Cotter himself, and the families of both men, as well as many other contemporary climbers, to set the record straight.

Operation Vietnam

EBOOK: New Zealand has a long and honourable record of sending health service personnel to trouble spots around the world. Michael Shackleton was an energetic and determined pioneer. In 1963 he established and led a New Zealand surgical team in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. Until East Timor, this was New Zealand's biggest ever overseas medical operation and was sustained until 1975.

Otago

The University of Otago has always taken pride in its status as New Zealand’s first university. This history is arranged thematically, looking at the university’s foundation and administration; the evolving student body; the staff; the changing academic structure and the development of research; the Christchurch and Wellington campuses and the university’s presence in Auckland and Invercargill; key support services – libraries, press, student health and counselling, disability services, Māori Centre and Pacific Islands Centre; the changing styles of teaching; the university’s built environment; and finally, the university’s place in the world – its relationship with the city of Dunedin, its interaction with mana whenua and its importance to New Zealand and to the Pacific.

Passageways

EBOOK: The author’s eight great grandparents all arrived in New Zealand between 1858 and 1868. Their family names were Harrop, Sales, Campbell, Brown, Valentine, Maxwell, Jefcoate and Oliver. She looks at their reasons for migration, how they fared once settled, and at their participation in gold-digging, farming, road-making, school-teaching and surveying. Both of her parents were graduates of Canterbury University and A.J. Harrop was a respected New Zealand historian.

Past Caring? Women, work and emotion

Past Caring? Women, work and emotion Edited by Barbara Brookes, Jane McCabe and Angela Wanhalla Otago University Press. Are women past caring? Care is essential to social relationships and individual well-being. It is woven into New Zealand’s key social institutions, such as the family, and is also embedded in societal expectations around state provision of health and welfare. Care is so vital, in fact, that it is often taken for granted and goes unnoticed and unrewarded.

Past Judgement

EBOOK: Appreciating New Zealand's distinctive social policy history is important in formulating future social policies. This is one of the premises in Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History, which brings together recent research on a range of social policy contexts.

Peace, Power & Politics

This is a story of how ordinary people created a movement that changed New Zealand's foreign policy and our identity as a nation. The story of peace activism from our pre-recorded history to 1975 was told in Peace People: A history of peace activities in New Zealand (1992) by Elsie Locke. In this new book her daughter Maire Leadbeater takes the story up to the 1990s in an account of the dramatic stories of the colourful and courageous activist campaigns that led the New Zealand government to enact nuclear-free legislation in 1987. Politicians took the credit, but they were responding to a powerful groundswell of public opinion.

Pewhairangi

EBOOK: When a small group of three English families were landed in the bay below Rangihoua pa in 1814, under the protection of its chief and inhabitants, the story told in Pewhairangi began. It is the story of New Zealand’s first permanent European settlement, at Hohi, and the church mission that it represented, and of the other mission communities subsequently established in the Bay of Islands, at Kerikeri, Paihia, Te Puna and Waimate. It is a story of Ngapuhi and Pakeha engagement, as neighbours, over four decades.

Phoney Wars: New Zealand Society in the Second World War

Phoney Wars: New Zealand Society in the Second World War, a new book from Stevan Eldred-Grigg, argues that we had no business going to war against either Germany in 1939 or Japan in 1941. Our motives for doing so were muddled and contradictory.

Piano Forte

OUT OF PRINT: Piano Forte focuses on the era in which the piano became of central significance in the private, social and cultural lives of many New Zealanders. It is a book composed of many voices, being based on memoirs, diaries, letters, concert programmes, company records and other accounts. The stories begin in 1827, with the arrival of what was probably the first piano to be brought to New Zealand, and end in 1930, when the increasing popularity of the phonograph, the radio and the introduction of talkie movies were beginning to have a profound impact on people's leisure activities.

Pickerill

OUT OF PRINT: The first biography of Henry Percy Pickerill, a pioneer in plastic surgery, dental education and dental research.

Pills and Potions

OUT OF PRINT: In this fascinating and by turns alarming book, Claire Le Couteur has researched the background to some of the popular medical remedies in New Zealand’s medical history, based on items found in the collection of the Cotter Medical History Trust. The Cotter Trust was established in Christchurch by retired surgeon Pat Cotter, with the aim ‘to collect, preserve and display artefacts of a medical nature’.

Polly Plum

Polly Plum is a biography of one of New Zealand’s earliest feminists, Mary Ann Colclough, whose publicly voiced opinions saw her described in the nineteenth century as ‘our own little stray strap of a modern female fanatic’.

Promised New Zealand

EBOOK: Promised New Zealand is the true tale of refugees who fled Nazi terror in Europe for a safe haven on the opposite side of the world – New Zealand.

Publicans and Sinners

OUT OF PRINT: A compact but comprehensive study of the role, during the Roman Republic, of the publicani who may be variously described as capitalists, contractors, revenue collectors, entrepreneurs, or simply 'big business'.

Pushing Boundaries

'Pushing Boundaries' is the first book-length attempt to tell the story of the evolution of overseas missionary activity by New Zealand’s Protestant churches from the early nineteenth century up to World War II. In this thought-provoking book, Hugh Morrison outlines how and why missions became important to colonial churches – the theological and social reasons churches supported missions, how their ideas were shaped, and what motivated individual New Zealanders to leave these shores to devote their lives elsewhere. Secondly, he connects this local story to some larger historical themes – of gender, culture, empire, childhood and education. This book argues that understanding the overseas missionary activity of Protestant churches and groups can contribute to a more general understanding of how New Zealand has developed as a society and nation.

Quarantine!

OUT OF PRINT: Every day, all over the world, quarantine officials screen international passengers and cargo and every week a border protection story is in the news. As a group of islands for which biosecurity is vital, New Zealand provides an ideal focus for this book, the world's first national history of quarantine.

Queenstown

OUT OF PRINT: Queenstown is unlike anywhere else in New Zealand. It is the country's tourism mecca, for lots of good reasons: mountains, rivers, lakes, climate, snow sports, tramping, fishing, bungy jumping, whitewater-rafting - the list goes on and on.

Queer Objects

Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with the gifts we share with our friends, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, various reminders of state power, as well as the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another. But what makes an object queer?

'Rats and Revolutionaries'

OUT OF PRINT: Australia and New Zealand are closely connected by both geography and history. One cultural quality they share is a fixation on what lies to the north, and a 'reciprocal amnesia' about their near neighbours. Few historians in either country have examined the shared history. In this book, James Bennett looks at the labour movement in the two countries during the period when it was emerging.

Rauru

OUT OF PRINT: Tene Waitere of Ngati Tarawhai (1854-1931) was the most innovative Maori carver of his time; his works reached global audiences decades before the globalisation of culture became a fashionable topic. Rauru is the highlight of a famous anthropological museum in Germany. Hinemihi, the carved house featured in one section of this book, sheltered survivors of the Tarawera eruption in 1886 before being removed to the park of an English country house. The magnificent His carved Ta Moko panel is one of Te Papa the Museum of New Zealandís icons.

Reconstructing Faces

The two world wars played an important role in the evolution of plastic and maxillofacial surgery in the first half of the 20th century. This book is about four of the key figures involved. Sir Harold Gillies and Sir Archibald McIndoe were born in Dunedin; McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem studied medicine at the University of Otago Medical School, and Henry Pickerill was foundation Dean of the University of Otago Dental School. The author describes how these surgeons revolutionised plastic surgery and the treatment of facial trauma, working on soldiers, fighter pilots and civilians disfigured by bombs, shrapnel and burns.

Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses

Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses offers a collaborative ethnographic investigation of Indigenous museum practices in three Pacific museums located at the corners of the so-called Polynesian triangle: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Hawai‘i; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; and Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert, Rapa Nui.

Refuge New Zealand

Unlike people who choose to migrate in search of new opportunities, refugees are compelled to leave their homeland. Typically, they are escaping war and persecution because of their ethnicity, their religion or their political beliefs. Since 1840, New Zealand has given refuge to thousands of people from Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Refuge New Zealand examines New Zealand's response to refugees and asylum seekers in an historical context. Which groups and categories have been chosen, and why? Who has been kept out and why? How has public policy governing refugee immigration changed over time?

Responsibility and Restoration

OUT OF PRINT: M E Andrew explores the Book of Ezekiel.

Restoring Kapiti

OUT OF PRINT: Modern Kapiti Island is best known as a sanctuary for wildlife. It is one of New Zealand's longest and most exciting conservation stories, beginning in 1897. Projects here to eradicate possums and rats, and to increase or establish populations of endangered birds such as the little spotted kiwi, have put the country on the world map for conservation management and provided models to follow in other parts of the country. Animal pests are eradicated, weeds controlled, and the forests are returning.

Rewarding Service

OUT OF PRINT: Remember the days when working for the public service was for life, with the reward of superannuation at the end? Things have changed in recent years and 'super' has become one of New Zealand's most contentious social and political issues. This book traces the controversial and often colourful history of public service superannuation. Rewarding Service: A History of the Government Superannuation Fund, by Neill Atkinson, is published by the University of Otago Press in association with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

Ruling Passions

OUT OF PRINT: 'Culture’ is often seen as somehow elevated above daily life (set in a rarefied realm) or set apart from it (e.g. the anthropological study of cultures other than our own). But for contemporary sociologists and media theorists, culture is better seen as the matter-of-fact practice and taken-for-granted nature of everyday life. Culture is inherent to how the world is made to mean something, how knowledge is produced and how society functions. As a result, we need to interrogate what we take as ‘given’.

Rushing for Gold

OUT OF PRINT: 'Rushing for Gold' is the first book to take a trans-Tasman look at the nineteenth-century phenomenon that was the gold rushes in Australia and New Zealand. It explores links between the rushes, particularly those in Victoria and Otago, to show that they were strongly intertwined affairs. The book brings together contributions from both experienced and newly emergent researchers, who together provide a close examination of miners’ migration patterns, ethnicities and merchant networks. The contributors’ insightful analyses and narrative accounts of the places, commerce and heritage of the rushes reveal a pantheon of characters, from merchants, hoteliers, financiers and policemen to vagrants, sly-groggers and entertainers, not to mention women, all of whom prompted and populate the mythology of the era, which this book does much to unravel and rewrite.

Seabird Genius

EBOOK: The first biography of Lance Richdale, who achieved international fame as the father of Otago's albatross colony from 1936 and for his research on the behaviour of the Yellow-eyed Penguin – Time magazine dubbed him 'The Dr Kinsey of the penguin world' – and the sooty shearwater, or muttonbird. Richdale grew up in Wanganui, took a tertiary course in agriculture in New South Wales, and returned to New Zealand to teach mainly in rural schools in the North Island for several years, eventually taking up a position with the Otago Education Board in 1928 as an inspiring itinerant agricultural instructor and nature study teacher.

Seabirds beyond the Mountain Crest: The history, natural history and conservation of Hutton’s shearwater

Seabirds Beyond the Mountain Crest tells the fascinating story of New Zealand’s endemic Hutton’s shearwater, a species that breeds only at two remote locations, high in the Kaikoura Mountains.

Secular Sermons

Discursive, entertaining and provocative, Secular Sermons contains fourteen essays by celebrated philosopher Professor Alan Musgrave, examining the basic assumptions of science, religion and mathematics. Can we decide what to believe? Why do scientists do experiments and wat can their experiments show? Is evolution a scientific theory? Such apparently simple questions are brilliantly investigated by Musgrave in order to interrogate the worldviews we inhabit – and their consequences. He brings to these questions an expansive historical knowledge, provoking his readers to enter the now-discredited belief-systems of earlier ages in order to compare these with their own.

See No Evil

Powerful, shocking account of New Zealand’s ‘selective diplomacy’ over West Papua by a leading author on peace and Pacific issues, Maire Leadbeater

Sexuality Down Under

OUT OF PRINT: The study of sexuality is both important and controversial. It permeates most aspects of everyday life and is both a hot topic and a taboo subject at the same time. The 'Virgin in a condom' art work that attracted protests wherever it was exhibited features in the book's final essay and many more mundane aspects of sexualtity are also covered: teenage motherhood, sexuality in advertising, sexuality and Pacific peoples, homosexual law reform, the difference between sex and rape, prostitution, the impact of viagra, and lesbian doctors.

She Dared to Speak

OUT OF PRINT: This is the story of a spirited and courageous woman who was driven by a concern for the welfare of ordinary people. Written by her daughter, it has a liveliness and immediacy which would be difficult for an outsider to achieve. Connie Birchfield grew up in Lancashire – working in a cotton mill from the age of thirteen – and emigrated to New Zealand in the 1920s. She became involved in unions and the Labour Party as a hotel worker, and joined the Communist Party as an unemployed worker in the 1930s.

Shifting Centres

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealand is an immigrant society, but little has been written about the diverse migrant experiences of women to and within New Zealand. Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History, edited by Lyndon Fraser and Katie Pickles, links the lives of very different women through their experiences of migration. This is a multicultural study. It includes migration from north to south, from country to country and from rural areas to town. Much of the material is from the twentieth century. Subjects range from Maori urban migration, to refugees from Nazism, and recent Chinese migration. Some of the essays are life stories.

Shifting Nature

Shifting Nature: Photographs by Wayne Barrar, with an essay by Geoff Park

Slippery Jim or Patriotic Statesman?

This is a biography of one of New Zealand’s most colourful and persuasive politicians, James Macandrew – a devoted family man, a staunch Presbyterian and a consummate politician. It examines the numerous local institutions that benefited from Macandrew’s touch – the University of Otago, the Art School (now Otago Polytechnic School of Art), the Normal School (later the College of Education) – along with his contributions to the building of roads, railways, wharves, harbours, schools and churches. Macandrew made plenty of enemies along the way, and has been severely judged by history. This re-examination of his life and political work reveals a man who both inspired and infuriated the citizens of Otago, and New Zealand, for almost four decades.

Southern Lakes Tracks & Trails

OUT OF PRINT: Essential guide to the many tracks and trails of the beautiful inland regions of the lower half of the South Island, with an emphasis on foothills and forests.

Southern Land, Southern People

OUT OF PRINT: This book celebrates Otago Museum's major new Southern Land, Southern People gallery, opened at the end of August 2002. It offers a comprehensive insight into the character of the region - its astonishing landforms, lost fauna and flora, fossil record and boisterous climate - and the way people have explored this challenging landscape and utilised its natural resources.

Southern Seas

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealand sits in a very watery part of the world. The Pacific stretches out to the north and east, while to the south is continuous ocean. It has the fourth largest Exclusive Economic Zone, with a band 200 nautical miles wide around the country, including its offshore islands. Only a fraction of this vast area has been explored. From what is known already, it is clear that these seas harbour a fascinating diversity of marine life.

Spiders of New Zealand and their Worldwide Kin

Spiders colonised the Earth long before Gondwanaland began to drift into separate continents. New Zealand spiders have links with spiders worldwide. The authors of this book have pioneered discoveries that have been found to apply to spiders in other parts of Australasia, southern America and southern Africa.

Stained Glass Windows of Canterbury, New Zealand

OUT OF PRINT: Stained glass is a public art form of immense visual appeal. The region of Canterbury contains a collection of nineteenth and twentieth century windows of international significance, including works by Arts and Crafts Movement artists.

Standing My Ground

For more than five decades, Alan Mark has been a voice for conservation in New Zealand. From his call in the 1960s for the establishment of tussock-grassland reserves in the South Island high country to his involvement in the 2011–13 campaign to save the Denniston Plateau from mining, he has been a passionate and effective advocate for the preservation of areas of ecological importance. In 'Standing My Ground', Alan describes the challenges and achievements, the frustrations and successes that have made up his remarkable life, now in its ninth decade. As well as providing an important record of New Zealand’s conservation battles and documenting the life of an outstanding New Zealander, 'Standing My Ground' is an inspiring reminder of the power of individuals to make a difference.

Stewart Island

Stewart Island is an increasingly popular holiday destination for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation, with many bush walks and a wealth of natural features to enjoy. Neville Peat introduces the attractions of the island – what to see and do, its walks and tramps, its national park, wildlife, history and magnificent scenery.

Studying New Zealand

OUT OF PRINT: Who made Lane's Emulsion? Where should we look to find out? No matter how obscure your question, if it's about a New Zealand topic, there's a new book to help you find the answers.

Sālote

OUT OF PRINT: Queen Sālote ascended the throne of Tonga in 1918, at the age of 18, to lead this Pacific nation through the hazards of the 20th century until her death in 1965. She led this Pacific nation through the hazards of the twentieth century until her death in 1965. An outstanding figure of her time, she was dubbed 'Queen of Paradise' by the British press during her visit to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Tackling Rugby Myths

OUT OF PRINT: The All Blacks' 'failure' to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup led many devotees to question old certainties and the current direction of the 'national game' in the age of professionalism. Central to these debates has been a sense that the continuity and invincibility of New Zealand rugby has been somehow eroded, mirroring similar changes within society as a whole.

Tarara

OUT OF PRINT: At the turn of the twentieth century, Croatians were migrating from Dalmatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Maori, having become part of the British Empire, were losing much of their land. All were looking for work. They came together on the gumfields of the far north, digging up kauri gum resin for export.

Te Papa to Berlin

Ken Gorbey is a remarkable man who for 15 years was involved with developing and realising the revolutionary cultural concept that became Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Then in 1999 he was headhunted by W. Michael Blumenthal to salvage the Jewish Museum Berlin, which was failing and fast becoming a national embarrassment. Led by Gorbey, a young, inexperienced staff, facing impossible deadlines, rose to the challenge and the museum, housed in Daniel Libeskind’s lightning-bolt design, opened to acclaim. As Blumenthal writes in the foreword: ‘I can no longer remember what possessed me to seriously consider actually reaching out to this fabled Kiwi as a possible answer to my increasingly serious dilemma ...’ but the notion paid off and today the JMB is one of Germany’s premier cultural institutions.

The Broken Decade

The Depression of the 1930s was a defining period in New Zealand history. It had its own vocabulary – swaggers and sugarbags, relief work and sustenance, the Queen Street riots and special constables – that was all too familiar to those who lived through that tumultuous decade. But one generation’s reality is another’s history. The desperate struggles experienced by many for work, food and shelter during the 1930s eventually gave way to the sunny postwar years, when the Depression was no more than an uncomfortable memory. And now, for the children of the twenty-first century, it’s just a word. While the lives of those most affected by the Depression have been admirably documented in oral histories in various forms, the political and economic context, and the manoeuvrings and responses to the unprecedented conditions have not, until now, been given the extensive analysis they deserve. 'The Broken Decade', Malcolm McKinnon’s detailed and absorbing history of this period, unpicks the Depression year by year. It begins by introducing the prosperous world of New Zealand in the late 1920s before focusing on the sudden onset of the Depression in 1930–31, the catastrophic months that followed and, finally, on the attempt to find a way back to that pre-Depression prosperity. Informed by exhaustive research, relevant statistics and fascinating personal accounts, and made accessible and meaningful by insightful analysis, this important book will become New Zealand’s definitive study of the 1930s Depression.

The Catlins and the Southern Scenic Route

Neville Peat introduces the Catlins region – its flora, wildlife, bush walks, caves and waterfalls – before tracing the journey along the stunning Southern Scenic Route linking Otago, Southland and Fiordland.

The Duel on the Creek

OUT OF PRINT: New Zealanders enjoy a good yarn – and here are some of the liveliest tales told in magazines and newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s. In turn salty, ironic, mildly naughty, exotic and realistic, they are as engaging today as they were to readers a century ago.

The Enderby Settlement

This book is a history of the British Enderby settlement on the Auckland Islands 1849–52 and its associated whaling venture. Isolation, a stormswept climate, unproductive soil, inexperienced crews, drunkenness and above all an unexpected shortage of whales meant the raw colony ran into trouble and the parent company found itself facing disaster.

The Face of Nature: An environmental history of the Otago Peninsula

An important new book by Jonathan West, The Face of Nature: An environmental history of the Otago Peninsula, explores what people and place made of one another from the arrival of the first Polynesians until the end of the nineteenth century.

The Far Downers

OUT OF PRINT: At the end of the road on the southwest coast of the South Island, Jackson Bay is today a fishing village. In 1874, it was established as a special settlement for European immigrants, some of whom refused to disembark from their ships, such were the harsh and isolated conditions of life they saw before them. Those who remained were a feisty lot, living a pioneering life while elsewhere in New Zealand people went to the movies, listened to the radio and drove cars. No road link to the area existed until 1960. This book introduces the reader to the Maori and European history of the Haast district, and shares the life stories of nine people who grew up there in the first half of the twentieth century.

The General and the Nightingale

Dan Davin was the author of the only substantial body of war fiction written by a New Zealand soldier during any of the wars of the 20th century in which the nation was engaged. The General and the Nightingale brings together Davin’s 20 war stories.

The Gorse Blooms Pale

The Gorse Blooms Pale gathers together twenty-six stories and a selection of poems reflecting his experiences while growing up in an Irish–New Zealand family in Southland.

The Governors

OUT OF PRINT: Grey, Jervois, Fergusson, Bledisloe – their names adorn buildings, streets, entire towns, even hills and rivers. But little has been written about the occupants of Government House. The Governors tracks the evolution of an office that says much about New Zealand's constitutional journey. In Crown colony days, governors ruled personally; with responsible government came uneasy adjustment and, from the late 1880s, a new breed of aristocratic governors who presided ceremonially. Since 1972, all governors-general have been New Zealand residents, two have been female and more recently the office has acquired a new international dimension.

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals

The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals is the only definitive reference on all the land-breeding mammals recorded in the New Zealand region (including the New Zealand sector of Antarctica).

The Heather and the Fern

OUT OF PRINT: This book brings together essays on many aspects of Scottish settlement in New Zealand, including individual stories. It covers both nineteenth and twentieth-century migration, and includes chapters on the Scottish diaspora, bagpipes and Burns.

The Hong Kong Health Sector

OUT OF PRINT: Since the 1990s, the Hong Kong public health sector has been under constant review: there has been increasing emphasis on the need for major changes in its structure and funding, and traditional Chinese medicine has received formal recognition. This book covers the period from British colonisation of Hong Kong in 1841 through to the present day. It looks at the way in which the health sector developed, the structural arrangements that resulted, and the manner in which the heath system functions today. For those involved in the sector, this will be essential reading. With the system's colonial origins, and the presence of complementary therapies, the book makes an interesting case study for anyone working in public health.

The Land Girls

OUT OF PRINT: This book tells the story of New Zealand's land girls during the Second World War. Drawing on the oral histories of 130 women and the written interviews of 90 others, it uncovers what has been a hidden history, overlooked in most surveys of New Zealand's war experience.

The Liverworts of New Zealand

OUT OF PRINT: This is the first comprehensive book on the liverworts of New Zealand. Nearly 200 species are dealt with in detail, with notes on habitat and distribution, as well as description of the features which can be recognized in the field with a hand lens.

The Lives of Colonial Objects

The Lives of Colonial Objects is a sumptuously illustrated and highly readable book about things, and the stories that unfold when we start to investigate them. In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Māori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand’s colonial past, and their examinations open up our history in astonishingly varied ways.

The Mosses of New Zealand

EBOOK: The Mosses of New Zealand describes in detail the life and structure of these fascinating plants, enabling both the enthusiastic amateur and the professional botanist to identify their many and diverse forms.

The Natural History of Southern New Zealand

Bringing together this environment and the scientists who study it, The Natural History of Southern New Zealand is a major new book published by Otago University Press in association with the Otago Museum. Fifty-three authors, most from scientific disciplines and leaders in their specialist fields, combine hundreds of years of collective expertise and research to describe the nature of the region in thirteen chapters.

The Pavlova Story

While Australians and New Zealanders have long debated which country invented the pavlova (a large meringue dessert cake said to emulate the lightness of the famous ballerina, Anna Pavlova), the real story of the ballerina’s visit to the Antipodes and the emergence of three different pavlovas was neglected.

The Politics and Government of New Zealand

OUT OF PRINT: The Politics and Government of New Zealand: Robust, Innovative and Challenged is an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the New Zealand political system. This book is a useful source for understanding current political controversies, such as the role of the Treaty of Waitangi, republicanism and coalition politics.

The Politics of Indigeneity:

The period 1995 to 2004 was the UN's International Decade of World Indigenous Peoples. This reflected the increasing organisation of indigenous peoples around a commonality of concerns, needs and ambitions. In both New Zealand and Canada, these politics challenge the colonial structures that social and political systems are built upon.

The Prickly Pair

OUT OF PRINT: The Iraq war found Australia and New Zealand in deep disagreement. It was not the first such serious strategic difference and is unlikely to be the last. Despite having so much in common and intertwined interests, the two are often at odds. In this highly readable book, Denis McLean draws the stories of the two countries together. Rifts in the ANZAC relationship, the political and economic disconnects, even the sporting rivalry, are explained in the light of nationalism. He suggests that a more concerted, shared approach is needed. Might New Zealand merge with Australia? Or are there other ways to work together in a globalising world?

The Prison Diary of A.C. Barrington

A.C. (Archie) Barrington was a leading New Zealand pacifist during World War 2. Incarcerated in Mount Crawford Prison for his beliefs in 1941, he kept an illicit diary, scrawled in the margins of books. Many years later his son John happened across the diary and painstakingly reconstructed it. Barrington vividly and compellingly recorded the squalid, rundown conditions, monotonous and exhausting labour, the intense cold from which there was little protection, and the strategies he and his fellow pacifists adopted to enable them to cope with prison life. John Pratt has edited the diary and provides a fascinating commentary on the issues it raises in relation to prison life then and now.

The Real McKay

OUT OF PRINT: The Scot Alexander McKay arrived in New Zealand in 1863 at the age of twenty-six with just two full years of schooling. Seeking his fortune on the goldfields of the South Island, he developed an eye for the structure and history of the land. Ten years later, he attracted the interest of the pioneer geologist Julius Haast, founder of the Canterbury Museum, who offered him his first job in geology, as a field assistant and collector of fossils for the displays of the fledgling museum.

The Takahe

OUT OF PRINT: Polynesian settlement of the islands of New Zealand about 1000 years ago and large-scale European colonisation in the 19th century caused massive environmental changes for indigenous animals. Fifty-five species of endemic birds, or 41 per cent of land and freshwater species, were lost. In response to these extinctions and the marked population decline of many extant species, national government agencies supported conservation initiatives throughout the 20th century.

The Twelve Cakes of Christmas: An evolutionary history, with recipes

EBOOK: Festive cakes have been made in December for at least two thousand years. Using archaeological evidence and ancient books, the authors define the key ingredients of the cakes that would eventually be served on Twelfth Night, at the end of the Christmas season.

The Watchdog

OUT OF PRINT: In a global economic climate troubled by the consequences of a dearth of fiscal accountability and transparency, the importance of independent auditing bodies, whether in the public or private sector, is not to be underestimated.

The Welcome of Strangers

Two hundred years ago Maori in the south of New Zealand had a lifestyle quite distinct from that of their northern cousins, and different experiences of contact with Europeans. This book provides an insight into those times. While it ranges from Marlborough to Stewart Island, its emphasis is on the far south.

The World's Din

The arrival of radical new audio technology from overseas in the late 19th century led to a 'sonic revolution' that changed New Zealanders lives forever, says author Peter Hoar.

Thomas Potts of Canterbury

Thomas Potts of Canterbury will appeal to anyone interested in the early history of Canterbury, in environmental change, and in early efforts in New Zealand towards conservation. It is a story of conflicting goals, magnificently exemplified in the life and writings of a man who strove, 150 years ago, to be both colonist and conservationist.

Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Māori

Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Māori was the major field project undertaken by journalist James Herries Beattie for the Otago Museum in 1920. For twelve months, he interviewed people from Foveaux Strait to North Canterbury, and from Nelson and Westland. He also visited libraries to check information compiled by earlier researchers, spent time with Māori in Otago Museum recording southern names for fauna and artefacts, visited pā sites, and copied notebooks lent to him by informants. His work was later produced into a manuscript for the Hocken Collections, and then edited into a book by Professor Athol Anderson. With a striking new cover, this new edition of an essential resource continues to impart it’s knowledge of historical lifestyles and customs of Te Waipounamu.

Travels in Oceania

OUT OF PRINT: First published in Paris as Journal d’un balenier, this translation focuses on Dr Thiercelin’s travels and does not include chapters on whaling operations. It takes the reader to New Caledonia, the Chatham Islands, the South Island of New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii. Thiercelin made two voyages in the Pacific, twenty years apart, on the Ville de Bordeaux 1837–41 and the Gustave 1861–64. He provides a rare point of view – that of a well informed, educated European who was neither a missionary nor a government official. While his ideas were limited by the ethnocentricity of the time, his commentary on the French and English colonisation of the Pacific is insightful and often critical.

Treaty-Based Guidelines and Protocols for Tertiary Education Institutions

OUT OF PRINT: What are the implications of tertiary education providers committing to the Treaty of Waitangi? Treaty-Based Guidelines and Protocols for Tertiary Education Institutions seeks to clarify what exactly a Treaty relationship means for tertiary institutions. It is written by Te Maire Tau, David Ormsby, Marjorie Manthei and Tahu Potiki.

Tuhituhi

This study of the art of William Hodges opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early paintings produced in the South Pacific. Following Pacific Island historians of the 1960s, it argues that it is possible to read the texts and visual material produced from early South Seas encounters against the grain, as moments of cross-cultural exchange that challenge postcolonial complacencies.

'Unfortunate Folk'

From electro-convulsive therapy to epilepsy, from criminal lunacy to community care, 'Unfortunate Folk': Essays on Mental Health Treatment, 1863-1992, opens windows on to the history of mental health treatment in New Zealand. 'Unfortunate Folk' is edited by Professor Barbara Brookes of the University of Otago's history department, and independent editor Jane Thomson. It is one of the few books available on the history of mental health in New Zealand.

Unearthly Landscapes

By the nineteenth century the ancient urban churchyards of Britain, burdened with gener­ations of dead, were unable to cope with rising numbers of corpses. Partially decomposed bodies were regularly disinterred and dumped in pits to free up room for the newly dead. Fears about the danger to public health eventually put an end to the urban churchyard burial grounds, and by the time settlers set sail for New Zealand large ‘modern’ cemeteries were being established on the edges of towns and cities. Migrants therefore brought with them a range of burial practices. The land they arrived in already had a long tradition of Māori burial ritual and places, which would be transformed by this contact with the European world. The migrants’ own traditions were adapted to their new environment and society, creating burial places unique to New Zealand. Today, old cemeteries dot the countryside, but are often ignored. Yet the resting places of the dead are a reflection of the life of the surrounding community, and New Zealand’s early cemeteries have fascinating stories to tell. In this beautifully written and illustrated book, Stephen Deed sets out to reconnect the historic cemeteries we see today with the history of this country and its people.

Unpacking the Kists

Historians have suggested that Scottish influences are more pervasive in New Zealand than in any other country outside Scotland, yet curiously New Zealand’s Scots migrants have previously attracted only limited attention. A thorough and interdisciplinary work, Unpacking the Kists is the first in-depth study of New Zealand’s Scots migrants and their impact on an evolving settler society.

Vastly Ingenious

Reflecting in 1769 on the manners and customs of the South Sea islands, Joseph Banks remarked that ‘in every expedient for taking fish they are vastly ingenious.’ Hence the title of this book on Pacific material culture, past and present, with broad themes of origins, the movement of peoples and the development of their technologies.

Wai Pasifika

In this beautifully written and stunningly illustrated book, David Young focuses on the increasingly endangered resource of freshwater, and what so-called developed societies can\nlearn from the Indigenous voices of the Pacific.

We Will Not Cease

We Will Not Cease is the unflinching account of New Zealander Archibald Baxter’s brutal treatment as a conscientious objector during World War I.

White Ghosts, Yellow Peril

White Ghosts, Yellow Peril is the first book ever to explore all sides of the relationship between China and New Zealand, and the peoples of China and New Zealand, during the whole of the seven or so generations after they initially came into contact. The Qing Empire and its successor states from 1790 to 1950 were vast, complex and torn by conflict. New Zealand, meanwhile, grew into a small, prosperous, orderly province of Europe. Not until now has anyone told the story of the links and tensions between the two countries during those years so broadly and so thoroughly.

Wild Central

OUT OF PRINT: For the people who know it, 'Central' Otago conjures up images of a diverse landscape - snow-clad peaks, rocky outcrops in a parched terrain, the mighty Clutha River carving its way through the land to the sea, and the wide, windswept Maniototo. Goldrush history, high country farms, Roxburgh apricots, skiing and bungy-jumping and the burgeoning wine industry all combine to give the region a unique flavour. While the region provides many attractions, its natural history has often taken a back seat.

Wild Dunedin

Dunedin city and its environs are home to an amazing range of habitats and landscapes, of plants, animals, birds, insects and geological features. From the ocean, with its albatrosses and penguins, to the high alpine zone of inland ranges, this book introduces a magnificent natural environment.

Wild Fiordland (Out of print)

OUT OF PRINT: This is a paperback edition of this book, which was shortlisted for the Montana NZ Book Awards in 1997. It is a major work of regional natural history introducing a New Zealand World Heritage Area, Fiordland National Park.

Wild Heart

OUT OF PRINT: Images of pristine forests, mountain ranges, untameable rivers and empty expanses of coastline are the key attraction in how we promote Aotearoa New Zealand internationally: '100% Pure' no less. Such wildness is at this nation's psychological and physical core.

Wild Rivers

OUT OF PRINT: The story of the ever-changing landscape of the area bounded by the Waitaki River in the south and the Rangitata in the north, stretching from the Alps to the east coast. This is the first book to describe in detail the natural history of this large region. A main focus is the braided rivers, which in world terms are rare and remarkable. They occur only in New Zealand, northern India, Tibet, Siberia and Argentina. Two things make these rivers remarkable: their ever-changing nature, and their nurturing of a diverse and unique community of plants, birds, fish, lizards and invertebrate life.

William Colenso

OUT OF PRINT: Born in Penzance in 1811, Colenso was perhaps the most interesting of New Zealand's early missionaries. A Church Missionary Society printer, he established the first printing press, was our first printer and printed the first book, 5000 copies of the New Testament in Maori, 365 pages in extent, in 1837. Next came 27,000 copies of the Book of Common Prayer in Maori.

Windows on a Women’s World: The Dominican Sisters of Aotearoa New Zealand

In this moving and beautifully written book, author Susannah Grant chronicles the astonishing transformation of the New Zealand Dominican sisters from a strictly enclosed body of religious teachers to a congregation of religious women working in the wider community

Women and Children Last

OUT OF PRINT: A sea voyage in the nineteenth century was not for the faint-hearted. The hazards were many and accidents commonplace. Of the ways a ship might meet its end, destruction by fire was perhaps the most feared. Wooden sailing vessels were particularly vulnerable and without breathing apparatus it was next to impossible to fight a fire below decks.

Women Mean Business

New Zealand’s nineteenth-century towns were full of entrepreneurial women. A surprising number ran their own businesses.

Working Lives c. 1900

For the men and women of the skilled trades in the early 20th century, the skills and knowledge of their respective crafts were a source of identity and pride. Together with the so-called unskilled, who built the infrastructure for the new society, these workers laid the cultural and social foundations of a new and fairer society. This book uses photographs to show two processes fundamental to creating a new society: the transformation of swamp into farmland then cityscape, and the transplantation of the knowledge and skill acquired in the Old World that were essential to building a new world.