Blog Archives
The Elegant Universe of Albert Einstein: The Collected Lectures of the Royal Society of New Zealand E=mc2 Series Broadcast on National Radio Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 0958262926 Are Angels OK? The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scientists Paul…
A modest makeover With this, its 77th issue, New Zealand Books reverts to a quarterly, and one with a new look: notably, a striking front cover, a fresh typeface and an elegant new page design. It is, of course, common…
The Wrong Horse The pleasures of the text are the pleasures of spring. Halter tops, tanned skin, buttocks sashaying past an open office door. You pack your books away. The self is conceived as a structure of signifiers. Thirty…
Volume 17 | Number 1 | Issue 77 | Autumn 2007 Editorial: A modest makeover Letters Patrick Evans: Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip Linda Clark and Raymond Miller: Nicky Hager, The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception…
The Plot to Subvert Wartime New Zealand Hugh Price Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864735383 One Sunday morning at the end of March 1942, a safe-breaker fresh out of Waikeria Prison rang Cabinet Minister Bob Semple at home from a…
Spy C H Kit Bennetts Random House, $37.00, ISBN 186941831X Spy is about the claim that Bill Sutch spied for the KGB. I was well-acquainted with Sutch, and we met from time to time in the 70s to talk about…
The 1929 Essex Six Our first car, bought for a fiver, from a farmer who’d dumped it decades before under thick gorse in a corner paddock where mushrooms sprouted on the back seat. After days of tinkering we got…
Down Boy Joe Bennett Hazard Press, $20.00, ISBN 1877393258 Hillsides: The Best of David Hill Mallinson Rendel, $25.00, ISBN 0958262608 The American sportswriter Red Smith, who produced a daily column for 22 consecutive years, reckoned being a columnist was easy:…
Judith Binney reflects on the origins – and intended readership – of her prize-winning Maori histories. Every book I have written had its origins in a gift – in some form, from someone. It might have been an unexpected conversation,…
Black Saturday: New Zealand’s Tragic Blunders in Samoa Michael Field Reed, $34.99, ISBN 0790011034 Samoa-New Zealand relations are nothing if not complex. Michael Field in Black Saturday, while presenting an overview of Samoan history, focuses on a not only complex…