Whale Oil
Margie Thomson
Potton and Burton, $40.00,
ISBN 9780947503819
The authors of certain books published in this country deserve medals. Not literary prizes, although they might merit these, too. But I mean authors who devote themselves to uncovering connections and truths that would otherwise remain hidden, because those implicated have the power to hide their tracks and intimidate.
Truthteller
Stephen Davis
Exisle Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9781925335897
“Aren’t we all investigative journalists?” my colleague asked, as we lamented the quality of the coffee at an early hour in the newsroom kitchen.
“We’d all like to think so,” I replied. “But some of us are more investigative than others, perhaps.”
It was one of those innocent, non-committal exchanges prompted by the question, “What are you up to?”
At the base of my colleague’s question, of course, was the presumption that all journalists ask questions, investigate, probe, take nothing for granted, look for the spin, the obfuscation, the smokescreens … the bullshit.
Now When it Rains – A Writer’s Memoir
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Steele Roberts, $35.00,
ISBN 9780947493776
A boy needs a father, but things can go badly wrong if the father is not good at fathering. This seems to be one of the main ideas implicit in Jeffrey Paparoa Holman’s “writer’s memoir”.
Lasting Impressions: The Story of New Zealand’s Newspapers, 1840–1920
Ian F Grant
Fraser Books, in association with the Alexander Turnbull Library, $69.50,
ISBN 9780994136046
At a time when journalism is in crisis, with collapsing revenues and governments and elites indifferent to and even resentful of its role in a healthy democracy, there is much to learn from this landmark addition to New Zealand’s journalism historiography.
The Camera in the Crowd: Filming New Zealand in Peace and War: 1895-1920
Christopher Pugsley
Oratia Books, $80.00, ISBN 9780947506346
Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen
Annabel Cooper
University of Otago Press, $50.00, ISBN 9781988531083
As most contemporary movie-goers around the world would know, despite its small population, when it comes to film New Zealand punches well above its weight. What is perhaps less known to most is that Aotearoa has a rich film-making tradition which harks back to the last years of the 19th century, when Auckland-based photographer Alfred H Whitehouse started producing the first films ever made in the country. During the silent period, New Zealand was home to a relatively vibrant film industry; however, in the late 1920s, a number of factors, such as the transition to synchronised sound, the economic depression and the government’s lack of interest in film, marked the decline of local cinema production. New Zealanders would have to wait until the establishment of the New Zealand Film Commission in the late 1970s to witness the emergence of a sustainable local film industry. The resurgence of New Zealand national cinema culminated in the mid-1990s with the international success of films such as The Piano (1993), Once Were Warriors (1994) and Heavenly Creatures (1994), which put the country on the world cinema map. The production and release of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the early 2000s gave the New Zealand film industry even wider global media exposure, cementing the country’s reputation as a major film production hub.
Surviving 7.8: New Zealanders Respond to the Earthquakes of November 2016
Phil Pennington and Radio New Zealand
HarperCollins, $35.00,
ISBN 9781775541103
New Zealanders, Cantabrians in particular, have, over the last half-dozen years, become reluctant experts in earthquakes. We have experienced the wobbly ones, the shuddery ones, the bumpy ones, the noisy ones that just go whack – a whole hitherto unknown taxonomy of geomorphological effects. The Richter scale has become as familiar as the bathroom scales and referred to as often. One of our favourite websites is Geonet, and glib, hackneyed epithets like earth-shattering and world-shaking have taken on a whole new oh-so literal meaning.
Thus, when, just after midnight on November 14, 2016, we were woken by a long rolling shake that seemed to go on and on forever, my wife and I knew at once that we were experiencing another Big One, but we knew, too, that it wasn’t Christchurch this time; it was farther away. Our first thought was the Main Divide, our second thought was Wellington, and we were immediately concerned for friends and family in the capital.
Hit and Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the Meaning of Honour
Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson
Potton & Burton, $35.00,
ISBN 9780947503390
As someone who has been around the political traps a fair while, my heuristic for judging political actors in and outside party politics is not the colour of their political stripe. Rather, there are people one would want to share a trench with; others, one would not – and, although rare, the odd person best sent to the enemy trench for the chaos they would cause. My trench is very multi-partisan as a result, and Nicky Hager, a friend, is emphatically in it. He’s exhibited, over a long time, courage and commitment when challenging the unequal power of the state over matters mostly concerning their coercive powers, as well as showing strength of character to withstand the blowback for doing so.
Māori Television: The First Ten Years
Jo Smith
Auckland University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781869408572
The birth of the Māori Television Service in March 2004 coincided with nationwide protests against the Labour government’s plan to entrench, legislatively, Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed (in response to a Court of Appeal decision legitimising prospective claims based on Native Title). A 13-day hikoi beginning in Northland arrived in Wellington on May 5. Over the same period, Tariana Turia announced that she would oppose the legislation and resign her ministerial portfolio. The formation of the Māori Party two months later appeared to signal a political resurgence of the pan-Māori Te Tino Rangatiratanga principles which had been advanced through the language and land rights struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, and by the Mana Motuhake Party in the 1990s. In this context, the establishment of a Māori Television Network was an historic accomplishment. The New Zealand “colony-to-nation” myth, which had informed mass-mediated constructions of national identity, could now be openly contested. Māori journalists, broadcasters, and programme-makers could foreground and develop their own cultural knowledges in contradistinction to assumed monoculturalism.
Murdoch: The Cartoons of Sharon Murdoch
Sharon Murdoch (with commentary by Melinda Johnston)
Potton and Burton, $40.00,
ISBN 9780947503239
Anne Tolley crouches watchfully inside a beneficiary’s uterus, high heels digging into the soft pink flesh, her two fists blocking the fallopian tubes. The cartoon is startling, funny and elegant. Labelled “Reproductive Politics”, it illustrates the Health Minister’s remark that she wanted to find ways to stop “at risk” beneficiaries having more children. I used to believe that most of us women do not have the bite to be successful editorial cartoonists. But I was wrong. The editorial cartoons of Sharon Murdoch have plenty of bite and anger, which she manages to combine with elegance and subtlety. In seven years, Murdoch has gone from being the cartoonist of her popular crossword cat Munro to being represented as editorial cartoonist in major New Zealand papers, notably the Press, Dominion Post, Waikato Times and Sunday Star Times.