New Zealand > NZ History/Society

Pull up a bar stool, and listen to the life story of beer in New Zealand . . . Highly illustrated, meticulously researched and warmly told, Beer Nation recounts the early history of beer, exposes the modern age of commerce and big business, and charts the rise of contemporary boutique breweries – through interviews and... read more

80% of crime in New Zealand occurs under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This book is about how the New Zealand justice system perpetuates criminal behaviour and the Corrections Department fails to rehabilitate - maintaining a vicious cycle of addiction and substance abuse that inevitably leads to re-offending and recidivism.

Ponsonby is one of New Zealand's most famous suburbs, the place where social and political change has fermented and fomented since its origins over 160 years ago. From Michael Joseph Savage to Che Fu, from the Hero Parade to the Polynesian Panthers, the fashion industry to cafe society, Ponsonby has led the way. This lively, ... read more

Fighting to Choose chronicles one of the most important yet neglected chapters in New Zealand’s recent political history. More than thirty years ago, at the height of the second wave of feminism, New Zealand passed one of the most regressive abortion laws in the Western world. How did this happen in a country that prid... read more

Dr O'Leary's PhD thesis on three decades of discrimination against women writers preaches what he has practised in the next three decades and reintroduces writers worthy of attention Few women writers are prominent in the period 1945 to the late 1960s, deliberately under-represented and trivialised by male writers and publish... read more

2010 NZSA E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award for Non-Fiction. Imagine being a middle-class, university-educated young Pakeha woman from Wellington'™s leafy suburbs and turning your back on all that to live in a house with Black Power gang connections in the rundown inner-city. Imagine organising the young women who come to ... read more

"It was interesting what people in the checkout line were buying: It was all comfort food. The man in front of me had eggs, bacon, cigarettes, beer. And here we were buying pink buns. No one was buying sensible emergency rations like baked beans..."
 
"It was just the most wonderful feeling. A sense of hope, ... read more

A stunning, fully illustrated guide to the country and times that shaped our greatest short story writer -- a feast of images and relevant excerpts from Mansfield's stories and journals. Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington in 1888 and died in France in 1923, regarded as one of the finest short story writers of her ... read more

A classic novel following a real 19th century migration from Scotland to NZ via Nova Scotia and Australia. In 1853, a group of settlers established a community at Waipu in the northern part of New Zealand. They were led there by a stern preacher, Norman McLeod. The community had followed him from Scotland in 1817 to found a s... read more

'I thought it would be a great adventure, and it'd be real fun. And so it was – up to a point. Past that point it wasn't funny at all.' — SYDNEY STANFIELD What was it like to be a New Zealand soldier in the First World War? What impact did the war have on those who returned? Let them tell you. An Awfully Big Ad... read more

In this touching book, unpublished letters from the Lowe collection are brought together for the first time to describe the day-to-day moments of the historic 1953 Everest expedition. Lowe met Hillary while working in New Zealand's Southern Alps just after the war and struck up a friendship. Little did he know it would be the... read more

Pat Hanly's paintings are about passion and protest, light, love and life. He painted with many different styles and subjects but this book focuses on the work made in fear or protest about nuclear weapons. In the story of New Zealand's struggle to be nuclear-free no artist is more important than Pat Hanly. Pat Hanly was a sm... read more

'When Maori and Pakeha do these things together the double rainbow begins to shine.' In 1969, New Zealand's best-known poet, James K. Baxter, moved to Jerusalem on the Whanganui River and established an intentional community under the mana of the local hapu, Ngati Hau. The Jerusalem commune proved a magnet for disaffected and... read more

An Englishman's home is his castle, but for the first European settlers who came to New Zealand, their first priority was to create a productive and, later, ornamental garden. Bee Dawson traces the development of gardening in New Zealand, from the Maori gardens of pre - and early contact times through the optimistic efforts o... read more

"I love doubters: of a truly honest doubter I have great hope." Printer, botanist and missionary, William Colenso was a nineteenth-century maverick, a true original. He protested at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that Maori did not fully understand its implications. He became a troubled conscience during the ... read more

Imagine you are 23 years old, newly arrived in a country on the other side of the world where there are only a handful of other white men to keep you company. Imagine that you are fearless, bursting with energy and entrepreneurial resolve. Imagine that you are also well educated, a shrewd observer and a gifted writer. Four de... read more

The inside story of New Zealand’s diplomatic wives and daughters over a hundred years of diplomacy, including the part played by the spouses in Baghdad during the first Gulf War, and the perils faced by diplomatic wives in Saigon and Tehran. Based on private letters, MFAT archives and personal interviews, this book give... read more

More than 6,000 New Zealanders served in the Korean War during the early 1950s. Many were volunteer members of Kayforce in search of adventure. Others sailed on the six navy frigates that plied Korean waters as part of the United Nations forces. Forty-five Kiwis lost their lives in this Cold War conflict that, decades later, ... read more

In Migrations Rod Edmond traces the journeys of his Scottish forebears as they separately made their way to New Zealand. The migration story begins with Charles Murray leaving Aberdeenshire in 1884 to become a missionary on the island of Ambrym. On the other side of Scotland, Catherine McLeod and her family had already abando... read more

When an exhibition of Wellington Media Collective’s work opened at Adam Art Gallery in Wellington in October 2012, a list of clients and associates between 1978 and 1998 was unfurled as a newsprint banner the height of a double-storey wall. People stood reading it and were astonished. Any cause or organisation worth fig... read more