Blog Archives
In Present Company (1966), Charles Brasch wrote: A new society like our own, still undefined, un‑characterised, unidentified, with no values quite settled and no common ends generally acknowledged, will cast about vainly to know what it thinks and believes until…
A Shakeup Anyway ‑ Government and the Universities in New Zealand in a Decade of Reform Ruth Butterworth and Nicholas Tarling Auckland University Press, $34.95 Universities are amongst the most enduring of all social institutions ‑ a state of affairs…
Edward Stafford: New Zealand’s First Statesman Edmund Bohan Hazard Press $49.95 Years of exposure to the drama and rhetoric of the performing arts and a professional lifetime of meticulous attention to accuracy and detail have enabled Edmund Bohan to bring…
Captain James Cook: A Biography Richard Hough Hodder & Stoughton, $54.95 Explorers do not always present easy subjects for biographers. Often the central achievements take up a relatively small portion of their lives and the doggedness and perseverance required for…
Suffrage and Beyond ‑ International Feminist Perspectives Caroline Daley and Melanie Nolan (eds) Auckland University Press, $39.95 The movement for women’s suffrage can be said to have begun at the World Anti‑Slavery Convention held in London in 1840, where American…
The Vision And The Reality: Equal Employment Opportunities in the New Zealand Workplace Janet Sayers and Marianne Tremaine (eds) Dunmore Press, $42.95 For those of us who teach and research in subjects that discuss the practice and theory of equality…
Catholic Girls Jane Tolerton Penguin, $24.95 Jane Tolerton’s new book is a series of interviews with 17 Catholic-educated women ranging from lawyers and businesswomen to politicians and other entertainers. Tolerton’s premise for these nostalgic reminiscences is that “the Catholic women…
Lost Property: The Crash of ’87…and the aftershock Olly Newland HarperCollins, $19.95 The mid‑1980s ‑ Allan Hawkins and Equiticorp, Fay and Connor slogging it out in Fremantle, Chase Corporation and mirror‑glass buildings, Bruce Judge, share clubs and investment seminars, Bob…
Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings Iain Buchanan, Michael Dunn, Elizabeth Eastmond Auckland University Press, $79.95 Do we have any right to claim Frances Hodgkins? Famous expatriate artists, to be regarded as properly belonging to their land of birth, normally continue…
In 1987 I was rash enough to publish a slender volume of essays with the title The Withering of the State. It was written in the months preceding the biggest stock market crash for a generation and fully two years…