Blog Archives
Matthew Wright reflects on the ethics of book reviewing. It’s some years since New Zealand Books published a wonderfully nasty litany of my supposed failures in a book I’d written on South Island settler society where, the reviewer insisted as…
Desert War: The Battle of Sidi Rezegh Peter Cox Exisle, $35.00, ISBN 9781921966705 Mention Sidi Rezegh to most New Zealanders today and there is a good chance they will look at you strangely. A few, probably, will nod and perhaps…
Man of Secrets: The Private Life of Donald McLean Matthew Wright Penguin, $40.00, ISBN 9780143572213 At the Margin of Empire: John Webster and Hokianga, 1841–1900 Jennifer Ashton Auckland University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9781869408251 Those of us interested in reading about…
Convicts: New Zealand’s Hidden Criminal Past Matthew Wright Penguin, $40.00, ISBN 9780143567646 We New Zealanders have always been complacent, even smug, about our nation’s origins. Unlike our nearest, much bigger, neighbour, New Zealand was never a penal colony, having been…
Guns and Utu: A Short History of the Musket Wars Matthew Wright Penguin Books, $42.00, ISBN 9780143565659 From the time the first accounts of New Zealand’s native inhabitants began to reach Europe, Maori pugnacity and military prowess have featured high…
Shattered Glory: The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front Matthew Wright Penguin Books, $45.00, ISBN 9780143020561 The Great Wrong War: New Zealand Society in WWI Stevan Eldred-Grigg Random House, $55.00, ISBN 9781869792633 In 2007 the…
Behind Enemy Lines Enemy Lines: Kiwi Freedom Fighters in WWII Matthew Wright (ed) Random House, $39.99, ISBN 9781869790691 A doggerel satire circulating among New Zealand troops in the desert campaigns of 1941-2 complained that General Rommel’s Afrika Korps “chased…
Old South: Life and Times in the Nineteenth-century Mainland Matthew Wright Penguin Books, $50.00, ISBN 9780143006510 Old South is a work that should be a welcome newcomer to the growing list of leading titles in New Zealand history. The book…
Two Peoples, One Land: The New Zealand Wars Matthew Wright Reed, $39.99, ISBN 079001064X Military fortifications, like oceanic navigation, the archaeology of New Zealand, and the commercial and maritime policies of the early modern Spanish and Portuguese empires, are a…
Love in Time of War: Letter Writing in the Second World War Deborah Montgomerie Auckland University Press, $35.00, ISBN 1869403363 Freyberg’s War: The Man, the Legend, the Reality Matthew Wright Penguin Books, $35.00, ISBN 0143019856 Western Front: The New Zealand…
Tagged with:
Auckland University Press,
Deborah Montgomerie,
HarperCollins,
Ian McGibbon,
Issue 71,
Jonathan King,
Les Cleveland,
Matthew Wright,
Megan Hutching,
Michael Bowers,
Pat White,
Penguin Books,
Random House,
Red Books,
Reed Books,
Spring 2005
Posted in
History,
Non-fiction,
Review,
War
Reviewing the reviewers
Posted in Comment