Proportional Representation on Trial: The 1999 New Zealand General Election and the Fate of MMP Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Jeffrey Karp, Susan Banducci, Raymond Miller & Ann Sullivan Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402650 New Zealand’s voters have been…
Angela: A Wonderful Life Angela D’Audney and Nicky Pellegrino Penguin, $27.95, ISBN 0143018116 In spite of the desperate tabloid-celebrity culture currently fashionable, a New Zealand show-biz biography would seem to be dodgy commercial territory. Biographies of sportsmen: yes. Of politicians:…
Print and Politics: a History of Trade Unions in the New Zealand Printing Industry 1865-1995 Peter Franks Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864734158 I once heard a freezing worker talking about his healthy hatred of the boss and another say…
Maori Bird Lore Murdoch Riley Viking Sevenseas NZ Ltd, $89.95, ISBN 0854671005 The reissue of Elsdon Best’s Forest Lore of the Maori in 1977 coincided with my own first attempts at writing about the value of wilderness and the urgent…
Maori Battalion: A Poetic Sequence Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Wai-te-ata Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877159115 This sequence of 72 short narrative poems with nine photographs is a loose, anecdotal treatment of the Maori Battalion’s part in World War 2. It also…
Late Love Songs Rob Jackaman Hazard Press, $19.95, ISBN 1877161446 Music Therapy Peter Olds Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, $17.95 ISBN 1869420233 Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000 Stephen Oliver HeadworX, $26.95, ISBN 0473073889 I’ve never written a locomotive poem; not…
Kalik Jack Lasenby Longacre, $14.95, ISBN 01877135593 Why should I have to review Lasenby? After all, the guy’s beaten me far too often in far too many Children’s Book Awards. I’ll review him because his Travellers quartet of Young Adult…