Blog Archives

Looking forward, Tim Hazledine

The Big Questions: What is New Zealand’s Future? 
Various authors
Penguin Random House, $38.00
ISBN 9780143772378

I’ve been worrying about Trump. Not the man – a lost cause, that – but the movement: Trumpism – the apparently bigoted, intolerant, resentful roilings that are driving apart, not just nations, but people within nations. Why has this happened? What, exactly, has happened? Could something similar arise in New Zealand?

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Dangerous confusion, Tim Hazledine

The Fire Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning
Jane Kelsey
Bridget Williams Books, $50.00,
ISBN 9781927247839

“Imagine,” said the great physicist Richard Feynman, “how much harder physics would be if electrons had emotions!” Harder still, if not just emotions but consciousness, memory and reasoning power. Perhaps they do – I don’t know. I do know that people have these attributes and more, and I have come to appreciate just how difficult that fact makes life for those of us who study the human or social sciences, such as economics.

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Posted in Economics, Non-fiction, Review

The inequality divide, Tim Hazledine

Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis Max Rashbrooke (ed) Bridget Williams Books, $40.00, ISBN 9781927131510 Judgements of All Kinds: Economic Policy-Making in New Zealand 1945-1984  Jim McAloon Victoria University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9780864738974 Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis is more than

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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review, Sociology

Doing our fair share, Tim Hazledine

The Carbon Challenge: New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme Geoff Bertram and Simon Terry Bridget Williams Books, $39.99, ISBN 9781877242465   You will remember Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was a French mathematical prodigy and philosopher who suggested that even if

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Posted in Natural History, Non-fiction, Review

More management, less education, Tim Hazledine

Crisis of Identity? The Mission and Management of Universities in New Zealand Wilf Malcolm and Nicholas Tarling  Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 9781877399275 Clark Kerr, a great president of the University of California at Berkeley, once defined the university as “a

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review

Rethinking ourselves, Tim Hazledine

Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand Laurence Simmons (ed) Auckland University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781869403799 I was thrilled to be asked to review this book. You see, I am a bit of a public intellectual myself, yet

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Crack in the consensus, Tim Hazledine

The Democracy Sham: How Globalisation Devalues Your Vote Bryan Gould Craig Potton Publishing, $29.99, ISBN 1877333506 “Nobody told us we could do that!” So said the Fabian Sidney Webb in 1931 when the new National government of which he was

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Posted in Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Slow readers, Tim Hazledine

Economist and member of the 2000 Heart of the Nation Taskforce on the Arts Tim Hazledine asks if we’re feeding public money to the wrong end of the literary food chain.  The New York Times once ran a competition for

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Posted in Comment

Absolutely positive it’s dead? Tim Hazledine

Muldoon Revisited ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864694652 What were you doing the day Robert Muldoon died? I was in Auckland, very recently returned to this country after 20 years overseas. I watched the coverage of the death

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

When Moore isn’t less, Tim Hazledine

A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance Mike Moore Cambridge University Press, $75, ISBN 0521827019 The cover of Mike Moore’s new book about his three years as director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) shows a

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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
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