Buller’s Birds of New Zealand: The Complete Work of J G Keulemans Geoff Norman Te Papa Press, $150.00, ISBN 9781877385889 Kids in a sweet shop. Nineteenth-century naturalists given a brand new country to play in gobbled up the apparent endless…
Kakapo: Rescued from the Brink of Extinction Alison Ballance Craig Potton Publishing, $49.99, ISBN 9781877517273 The Tasman: Biography of an Ocean Neville Peat Penguin Books, $62.00, ISBN 9780143011385 Time was when “non-fiction” meant staid, largely black-and-white books on a…
The Carbon Challenge: New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme Geoff Bertram and Simon Terry Bridget Williams Books, $39.99, ISBN 9781877242465 You will remember Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was a French mathematical prodigy and philosopher who suggested that even if…
Melting Point: New Zealand and the Climate Change Crisis Eric Dorfman Penguin Books, $37.00, ISBN 9780143008682 There are several worthwhile reasons for a book such as this to exist. Firstly, there is no longer any serious scientific debate about whether…
Kauri Keith Stewart Viking, $60.00, ISBN 9780670045525 Keith Stewart’s Kauri is the latest in a succession of publications about this iconic tree, following books by esteemed natural history writers A H Reed, J G Erne Adams, Gordon Ell and others…
Going Bush: New Zealanders and Nature in the 20th Century Kirstie Ross Auckland University Press, $39.99, ISBN 978186904246 If I have read about 50 pages and still not been drawn into an author’s world, then I usually put the book…
Charles Fleming’s Cape Expedition Diary: Auckland Islands, 1942-43 Mary McEwen McEwen Associates, $40.00, ISBN 0473113848 Strange to think that the welcome swallow – a common sight everywhere in the North Island, and absent only in Fiordland and parts of Southland…
Looking for Darwin Lloyd Spencer Davis Longacre Press, $39.99, ISBN 0781877361227 Science has somehow acquired an almost inhuman reputation. Scientists are regarded as dry, dusty specimens, cut off from society and probably working on projects that will cause more harm…
How to Watch a Bird Steve Braunias Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 9780958262965 Steve Braunias is preaching to the converted in the case of this reviewer, who lives within cooee of native bush and shallow water. I can admire white-faced herons…
Ghosts of Gondwana: The History of Life in New Zealand George Gibbs Craig Potton Publishing, $49.99, ISBN 1877333484 Extinct Birds of New Zealand Alan Tennyson and Paul Martinson Te Papa Press, $64.99, ISBN 0909010218 Ghosts of Gondwana is a remarkable…