Unquiet Time: Aotearoa/New Zealand in a Fast-changing World Colin James Fraser Books, $39.50, ISBN 9780994136015 Last year, Colin James published his final weekly column with the Otago Daily Times, after over 50 years of work as a journalist. In a…
The Tie That Binds: The Relationship Between Ministers and Chief Executives Colin James Institute of Policy Studies and the New Zealand Centre for Public Law, Victoria University of Wellington, $25.00, ISBN 0908935676 Public service reform was not a major election…
The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives 1854-2004 John E Martin Dunmore Press, $59.95, ISBN 0864694636 Parliament is a brutal place. Only the idealistic, the ideological, the hard-nosed and the ruthless gather there. No person is inviolate, no secret safe,…
Holyoake’s Lieutenants ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Press, $29.95, ISBN 8864694369 I came across Norm Shelton a day or two after Jack Marshall sacked him in February 1972 at the end of the Holyoake era. He had a pile of complimentary…
Waltzing with Matilda: Should New Zealand join Australia? Bob Catley Dark Horse Publishing, $29.95, ISBN 0958214611 A chilling graph presented to Auckland business leaders on 14 May undermines Bob Catley’s thesis. Auckland, the graph showed, lost 3.4% in GDP per…
Building the Constitution ed Colin James Institute of Policy Studies, $45, ISBN 090893548X Some time in 1997, with the prolonged aftermath of the first MMP election still agitating the establishment and mightily diverting the rest of us, the idea gained…
The Demon Profession Michael Laws HarperCollins, $29.95 ISBN 1 869502 57 4 Winston Peters emerged from obscurity in the 1980s on the strength of attacks on Maori social services organisations like Maccess. His surge in 1996 was on the backs…
Bovver boys
What they wrote A taste of contributor comments over our first 20 years On New Zealand Books My hope is that New Zealand Books will provide a forum for frank discussion that dares to rise above the suffocating confines…
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