Australasian & Pacific history Books

All royalties from the book are being donated to the Christchurch Family Help Trust. The Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011 was one of the worst natural disasters in New Zealand's history. The quake devastated New Zealand's second biggest city and caused significant damage to infrastruc...

Powerfully and movingly written by a number of Press staffers and illustrated with striking images from the Press team. DVD includes footage taken 10 minutes after the quake, many personal stories plus the incredible footage that screened at the Day of Remembrance. Content includes: * ...

In this celebration of New Zealand rugby a number of NZ rugby matches are remembered, and presented with the match programmes that were printed for them. The selection mixes famous test and provincial games with less well-remembered but equally fascinating matches. It includes classic games such as ...

This rich and vivid, highly illustrated social history gives an insight into the world of the New Zealand hunter. Hunting is central to many New Zealanders' lives - whether it's to feed their families, earn a living or to explore the country's amazing wilderness. Hunting: A New Zealand history de...

New Zealand in the 1820s had no government or bureaucratic presence; no newspapers were published; the literate population was probably no more than a couple of dozen people at any one time. Early explorers' assessments of New Zealand were haphazard at best - few knew what to make of this foreign la...

Parihaka has become a byword for Maori refusal to yield land, culture and dignity to New Zealand's colonial government. Well after the end of the New Zealand Wars, the people of this small settlement at the foot of Mt Taranaki held out against the encroachments of Pakeha settlers in a struggle that ...

New Zealand was the last country in the world to be discovered and settled by humankind. It was also the first to introduce full democracy. Between those events, and in the century that followed the franchise, the movements and conflicts of human history have been played out more intensively and mor...

The late Michael King was one of New Zealand's most respected and popular historians. The author of the bestselling The Penguin History of New Zealand and many other significant works, he was a writer of remarkable skill, sensitivity and importance. The Silence Beyond is a wide-ranging and often p...

In September 2010 and in February 2011, Christchurch was struck by earthquakes of such force that the landmarks and landscape of the city and its surrounds were forever altered. The essence of Christchurch, its elegance and charm, are captured evermore by artist Gwenda Turner in this truly memorabl...

For more than 100 years, New Zealanders have fought in foreign wars. Kiwi Battlefields is the first New Zealand war book devoted entirely to the major battles including Kiwis. It shows not just what happened, but how each battle was reported and the thoughts of the soldiers themselves.

The New Zealand Wars of the nineteenth century still cast a long shadow over the twenty-first. Three decades of fighting across much of the North Island ensured Pakeha rule, but also enabled Maori survival. This guidebook, heavily illustrated with photographs, artwork and maps, takes you on a jou...

Published in conjunction with the New Zealand Herald, AUCKLAND HARBOUR BRIDGE - 50 YEARS OF A CITY ICON is a wonderful celebration in photographs of the bridge's creation, development and anniversary. Broken into sections, the book covers construction; the opening; extension (the clip-ons); toll boo...

Generation after generation of New Zealanders have been fascinated by Auckland's West. Dynamic and distinctive, it's a unique region, ranging from a dramatic and rugged coastline to bush-clad ranges to fertile hill slopes nurturing orchards and vineyards. Its people have always been industrious, fro...

In the rest of the world they say that if you can remember the sixties you weren't really there - but what was it like in New Zealand? For us the decade began with conservative prosperity - the establishment knew best and most Kiwis knew their place. Doors were left unlocked in postwar 'golden weat...

The technical side of what happened on Mt Erebus on that fateful November day back in 1979 has been brilliantly explained by Justice Mahon, the Royal Commissioner appointed to investigate the crash of the Air New Zealand DC-10. His magnificent investigation and conclusions were rubbished by a Prime ...

 This Volume is the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War and was originally published in 1955 by the Government of New Zealand, through the Department of Internal Affairs. This is a reprint of that original title, which was printed in the United States of America 1997 with in...

 This Volume is the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War and was originally published in 1955 by the Department of Internal Affairs, Government of New Zealand. This is a reprint of that original title, which was printed in the United States of America 199...

The Gallipoli campaign looms large in New Zealand's cultural memory. For the first time in this book, historian Glyn Harper tells the story of the campaign in the words of the New Zealand soldiers who were there.Having worked through archives in New Zealand and overseas, combed newspapers, and condu...

This account begins before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and tells the story to the present day. This edition covers the challenges and settlements of the last decade of the 20th century, and includes photographs, paintings and drawings. Copies of the Treaty are included.

This lively survey tells the story of a major New Zealand city, the capital of Canterbury province and the South Island's largest metropolitan centre. Why was the city established in the middle of a swamp? What was it like to live in Christchurch in the 1850s, the 1870s or the 1940s? What has change...

Why revisit Minqar Qaim? Some writers ignore it; some regard the action as merely part of a broader canvas. Others, using it as an example of unrestrained brutality, seek to place it in a context from which to make a political argument. The artillery battle at Minqar Qaim on 27 June and subsequent ...

Bible & Treaty: Missionaries among the Maori is a complex and colourful adventure of faith, bravery, perseverance and betrayal that seeks to recover lost connections in the story of modern New Zealand. It brings a fresh perspective to the missionary story, from the lead-up to Samuel Marsden's fi...

Maori form a significant proportion of the modern New Zealand Army, and Maori officers have achieved the very highest commands, Their unique culture is deeply embedded in its tradition and daily routines; celebrated by Maori (indigenous) and pakeha (non-indigenous) soldiers alike. The exploits of...

Did you know that New Zealand is one of the last habitable parts of the Earth to be settled, or that Aoraki / Mt Cook raises its height by 7mm per year, but lost 10 metres from the top in 1991 when about 10 million cubic metres of rock and ice fell off the top? Every region of this beautiful cou...

Now the inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC. This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands...Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try ...

There are 100 double page spreads looking at subjects as diverse as glaciation, Maori horticulture, the journeying of the Tama Pokai Whenua, the pakeha invasion of the Waikato in 1863-64, Presbyterians and the 'demon drink', the world of Women in the paid workforce, small town New Zealand. Accola...

'O si Manu a Ali'i is the first comprehensive guide for teachers of Samoan oratory and the Samoan language of respect. It is also an authoritative resource book for students of the language. The author's insightful descriptions of Samoan culture provide the necessary social contexts for learning the...

Absolute Power: The Helen Clark Years is an unauthorised biography by Investigate magazine Ian Wishart. What you are about to read will go further than anyone has gone before – digging up a Prime Minister you didn’t even know existed. The Helen Clark we see today is a carefully ma...

In A Fair Sort of Battering, thirteen New Zealanders tell of their experiences and reactions in the Italian campaign of World War Two. Day-to-day life and major historical events are described from the perspective of members of the army, including the Maori Battalion, engineers, artillery, nurses an...

New Zealand's isolation began over 80 million years ago when, powered by mighty geological forces, the land mass rifted away from ancient Gondwana and drifted into the Pacific with its precious cargo of wildlife. The natural history of the shaky isles and their surrounding seas, the dramatic geology...

In this remarkable sequel to his ground-breaking Tohunga: Hohepa Kereopa (2003), historian Dr Paul Moon again travels deep into Tuhoe territory - and deep into its past - to uncover a wealth of material. This time he reveals his discussions with Hohepa Kereopa on traditional plants, cultivation, gar...

Nga Iwi o Tainui is a classic work of New Zealand and Maori history, first published in 1995. A bilingual collection, in 67 chapters, of the histories, genealogies, songs and chants of the Tainui people, it represents the culmination of a life's work by the scholar and historian Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jo...

David Lange's Fourth Labour Government was a watershed in New Zealand history. Whether it was international politics (ANZUS, Mururoa tests, Oxford Union debate) or domestic economics (Roger Douglas's reforms), New Zealand was a vastly different country in 1990 than it had been when Lange won in 1984...

Titirangi, probably Auckland's most beautiful suburb and on the edge of the dramatic Waitakere Ranges, is truly the 'fringe of heaven'. This richly illustrated book, compiled over many years by the West Auckland Historical Society, tracks the area's evolution from successive Maori settlements, the f...

 This Volume is the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War and was originally published in 1957 by the Government of New Zealand, through the Department of Internal Affairs,. This is a reprint of that original title, which was printed in the United States of America 1998 with i...

 Much of New Zealand's history since the arrival of Europeans has been captured through photographs. Historic Photos of Otago is part of a series that showcases many of the provinces's important places as well as events, both great and small, beginning with its role as New Zealand's economic po...

Judith Binney's work spans nearly forty years of historical endeavour that began with the award-winning biography of the missionary Thomas Kendall, The Legacy of Guilt (1968). Her magisterial publication of 2009, Encircled Lands, is the culmination of many years' work on the history of the Urewera -...

New Zealand's Vietnam War provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of New Zealand's involvement in the Vietnam War, one that will remain the standard reference work on the subject for decades. Its publication will complete the programme of official war history production that began in 1945...

The story of Te Rauparaha and his times continues to intrigue, provoke and inspire Maori and Pakeha alike. Heni Collins describes Te Rauparaha's life from the time his birth was foretold, through inter-tribal conflict, migration, settlement in the south (Kapiti Island), and into the period of coloni...