The New Zealand Family From 1840: A Demographic History Ian Pool, Arunachalam Dharmalingam and Janet Sceats (eds) Auckland University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9781869403577 A demographic history of the New Zealand family? Well, that’ll be a short, sad story. Everyone knows…
Maori Peoples of New Zealand: Nga Iwi O Aotearoa Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand David Bateman, $49.99, ISBN 9781869536220 National encyclopedias bear some resemblance to national exhibitions in the way they sum up and present knowledge relevant to…
Women with a Mission: Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand Cathy Ross Penguin Books, $39.95, ISBN 0143020501 Be careful what you leave behind you. That unflattering photo could well be the one chosen for your obituary (should you be…
Nga Moteatea: The Songs, Part 4: Collected by Apirana Ngata, translated by Hirini Moko Mead Jenifer Curnow and Jane McRae (eds) Auckland University Press, $22.50, ISBN 9781869403867 This is the final instalment in the series of Nga Moteatea: The Songs,…
Logan Campbell’s Auckland: Tales from the Early Years R C J Stone Auckland University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781869403935 Wellington: Biography of a City Redmer Yska Reed, $44.99, ISBN 0790011077 Auckland illuminated through stories of the past; Wellington reconstructed through careful…
The Transit of Venus Marilyn Head (ed) Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 978095826972 A few years back, I had to review a self-published New Zealand novel. It was seriously rotten, and I wrote that it “tried to be bad, bold and…
The Story of a New Zealand River Jane Mander Random House, $29.99, ISBN 9781869413897 I have been a fan of The Story of a New Zealand River ever since my discovery of it in a secondhand bookshop in London in…
No ordinary son, Janet Hunt and Michael Morrissey
Biographer Janet Hunt and writer Michael Morrissey attend Hone Tuwhare’s tangi. In death, seen obliquely as he lay on the satin bed of his coffin, he was not himself. Oh, it was Tuwhare all right: there was the familiar…
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