Icons Nga Taonga: From the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Te Papa curatorial team Te Papa Press, $79.99, ISBN 090901096X On a recent visit from his Tasmanian hideaway, art museum guru Daniel Thomas expressed amazement that Te Papa’s…
Taua – Musket wars, land wars, or tikanga? Warfare in Maori society in the early nineteenth century Angela Ballara Penguin, $59.95, ISBN 0143018892 Reviewing R D Crosby’s The Musket Wars: A History of Inter-iwi Conflict 1806-1845 (New Zealand Books, March…
Good Luck Anna Livesey Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 086473459X The Adulterer’s Bible Cliff Fell Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734603 Both these collections of poetry come from recent graduates of Victoria University’s creative writing programme. The publisher is Victoria…
Gallery: A Selection Mark Pirie Salt Publishing, $29.95, ISBN 1876857242 Toku Tinihanga: Selected Poems 1982-2002 Michael O’Leary HeadworX, $26.95, ISBN 0473090066 Walking the Land Kevin Ireland Hazard Press, $21.95, ISBN 1877270520 We live in the age of celebrity. This has…
Rosalie Gascoigne: Plain Air City Gallery/Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864734727 As I shelved Rosalie Gascoigne: Plain Air among my treasured collection of exhibition catalogues, it set me thinking about the reasons we buy catalogues, and the various pleasures they…
Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings ed Roger Robinson Streamline, $34.95, ISBN 0958210624 Everyone knows about Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), described by a contemporary as “a spirit intense and rare” and immortalised by Samoans as Tusitala (the teller of…
Chronicle of the Unsung Martin Edmond Auckland University Press, $34.99, ISBN 1869403118 Martin Edmond, son of Lauris, played a role in two iconic cultural phenomena of my formative years in 70s and 80s Auckland – he wrote the screenplay for…
Paste Up – A Century of New Zealand Poster Art Hamish Thompson Godwit, $39.95, ISBN 1869621042 In February, Auckland Mayor Banks found himself compelled to tell immigrants not to spit in public. “Many of them come from countries where spitting…