Coasting: The Sea Lion and the Lark Neville Peat Longacre Press, $29.95, ISBN 1877135577 Two centuries ago, sealers and whalers came to New Zealand to hunt marine mammals for their oil and skins. Millions were slaughtered, most of them on…
Recollecting Mansfield Margaret Scott Godwit, $29.95, ISBN 1869620763 It is hard to know whether Katherine Mansfield would have been delighted, amazed or appalled at the industry that has evolved since her death, at the academic careers she has sustained, at…
Black Oxen Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734093 From the first paragraph of Elizabeth Knox’s previous novel, Vintner’s Luck, the reader enters as complete and rich an alternative world as exists in contemporary fiction. It is a world…
An Explanation of Poetry to my Father Glenn Colquhoun Steele Roberts, $14.95, ISBN 18877228443 Hats Jenny Powell-Chalmers HeadworX, $19.95, ISBN 0473071487 Chrome Paula Green Auckland University Press, $22.95, ISBN 1869402405 Last year my husband’s Uncle Alec, a retired Edinburgh bricklayer,…
Intimate Stranger: reminiscences of Dan Davin ed Janet Wilson Steele Roberts, $29.95, ISBN 1877228249 Before I start on the book, I will allow myself a grumble about the cover. This shows in the foreground a highlighted profile of Dan, characteristically…
Whistle Blower: Abuse of Power in the Church: A New Zealand Story Louise Deans Tandem Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877178780 How dangerous men think and how to stay safe for life Brent Sanders Random House Australia, $24.95, ISBN 0091842093 Touchy Subject:…
Independence and after, Colin James
“Nothing is more important to a country,” one-time Australian Treasurer and Prime Minister Paul Keating told the Knowledge Wave conference in August, “than the way it thinks about itself.” Right now, this country, barely a nation, thinks it is small, far-away…
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