The Christchurch Fiasco: The Insurance Aftershock and its Implications for New Zealand and Beyond Sarah Miles Dunmore Publishing, $38.00, ISBN 9781927212035 Given New Zealand’s reputation as The Shaky Isles, together with its accompanying history of deluges, hurricanes, landslips, tsunamis and…
Samuel Marsden: Altar Ego Richard Quinn Dunmore Publishing, $34.95, ISBN 9781877399350 As a New Zealand schoolboy in the 1960s, I knew the Rev Samuel Marsden (1765-1838) as the great and good man who introduced Christianity to the Maori in 1814.…
The Bolger Years 1990-1997 Margaret Clark (ed) Dunmore Publishing, $37.95, ISBN 9781877399336 I have to confess to having taunted Margaret Clark in the past for her incuriosity. A few years ago she demanded in a newspaper answers and explanations from…
Crisis of Identity? The Mission and Management of Universities in New Zealand Wilf Malcolm and Nicholas Tarling Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 9781877399275 Clark Kerr, a great president of the University of California at Berkeley, once defined the university as “a…
The Problem of Prisons: Correction Reform in New Zealand since 1840 Greg Newbold Dunmore Press, $49.95, ISBN 9790187399213 Mt Eden Prison in Auckland speaks of an era when punishment and incarceration were very visible. Its turreted buildings of black volcanic…
For the Record: Lange and the Fourth Labour Government ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Publishing, $34.95, ISBN 1877399108 The hold-a-conference, publish-a-book industry continues in full swing with the appearance of For the Record: Lange and the Fourth Labour Government. This volume,…
Those Who Can Teach: A History of Secondary Education in New Zealand from the Union Perspective David Grant Steele Roberts, $39.95, ISBN 1877338214 Welcome to the Campus of Struggle: Dispatches from the International Student Academic Front 1999-2004 David Cohen Dunmore…
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,…
Muldoon Revisited ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864694652 What were you doing the day Robert Muldoon died? I was in Auckland, very recently returned to this country after 20 years overseas. I watched the coverage of the death…