Social history Books

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...

Winner of the 2011 New Zealand Post "Book of the Year" Award "Come up to Paekakariki in the land of the tiki where you spend all your days at the beach." It's another Saturday night in 1950s Auckland. Downtown, nightclubs are banning the jive because the exuberant couples disturb the cautious fox...

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...

This book answers the most obvious, the most important, yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. Geography and biography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and...

The census tells us that 8000 New Zealanders actively identify as Jewish and it is estimated that the broader population is probably around 25,000. There has never been an authoritative history of this country's Jewish population and yet people of Jewish descent (both secular and religious) have pla...

Shear Hard Work tells the story of shearers and brings to life the world of the shearing shed for the first time. From the 1860s, when shearers were first identified as the 'very dregs of the colonial democracy', to the present day, when Kiwi shearers set world records and shear sheep around the glo...

Pie carts are a much-loved kiwi institution. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the days of the six o'clock swill and long before the advent of sophisticated cafe culture, where else could you be assured of a hot feed and a warm welcome, in any sizable New Zealand town? Colourful characters gathered aro...

All that cooking, cleaning, darning, sewing, looking after sick children, looking good for your hubby when he came drifting in after a day at the office...it's always been a tough life as a housewife. This affectionate romp through women's toil and trouble over the past 120 years puts housework u...

For much of the twentieth century New Zealand Truth was this country's most popular newspaper, and by the mid-1950s claimed a readership of half a million people. Not surprisingly Truth gained a position of considerable influence within New Zealand. This highly readable history tells the story of ho...

Long before DVDs, long before plasma screen TVs and home theatres, New Zealanders went out to escape and be entertained. In an often stuffily suburban little country at the bottom of the world, the local picture theatres were their places of dreams, where they went to see Garbo and Gable, Monroe and...

New from the best selling author of WHYKICKAMOOCOW and RETURN TO WHYKICKAMOOCOW. Were Ches and Dale real people? Is a Swanndri named after a waterproof water bird? Why not Lemon & Thames? Does Speights really stand for Superb P*** Enjoyed In Great Hotels Throughout Southland? And what's so o...

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to e...

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to e...

An innovative, interdisciplinary study of why leprosy, a disease with a very low level of infection, has repeatedly provoked revulsion and fear. Rod Edmond explores, in particular, how these reactions were refashioned in the modern colonial period. Beginning as a medical history, the book broadens i...

Downton Abbey has captured the imagination of the nation. Written by Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes the show has become the benchmark for quality drama, and a commentary on all things British. Downton Abbey portrays a world of elegance and decadence, a world of duty and obedience and a worl...

James May's Toy Stories is much more than just a TV tie-in. Inspired by James's exploits, the book covers both the stories behind a number of classic toys and the adventures in summer 2009 as James and his helpers, children and adults of all ages, build and recreate a range of toys in a series of To...

In this follow up to CALL THE MIDWIFE, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s tells more stories about the people she encountered. There's Jane, who cleaned and generally helped out at Nonnatus House - she was taken to the workhouse as a baby and was alle...

This book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions. Gulag is the only major history in any language to draw together the mass of memoirs and writings on the S...

The Duncans have been farming Otiwhiti in the Turakina River valley since the 1880s, when they purchased the land from the local iwi. The backstory of this station is rich and fascinating. The remarkable, generous family that has farmed this unforgiving Rangitikei hill country has also directed the ...

Stamps are more than just a payment for postage. The best and most memorable are gems of graphic design and encapsulations of our history. They celebrate landmark events, famous New Zealanders, sporting and creative achievements; our natural heritage, enterprising spirit and ingenuity. Looking back ...

An extraordinary love story between a Maori man and an American woman, that inspires a graceful, revelatory search for understanding about the centuries-old collision of two wildly different cultures. Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between We...

In the tradition of Dava Sobel and Longitude, award-winning writer Martin Edmond uses his extraordinary intellectual breadth and imaginative reach to elegantly and lucidly execute his most ambitious project to date - the history of 4,000 years of the Western imagination and the Antipodes, Great Sout...

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 co...

Mad, bad and sad. From the depression suffered by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to the mental anguish and addictions of iconic beauties Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. From Freud and Jung and the radical breakthroughs of psychoanalysis to Lacan's construction of a modern movement and the new ...

Renowned historian Michael King (1945- 2004) presents a comprehensive and searching documentary of Maori culture and society, and Maori-Pakeha contact, conflict and co-operation. From the earliest daguerreotype around 1852 to the strong protest images of the 1990s, King records and analyses changes ...

A thousand years ago, the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori travelled to Aotearoa in giant sea-going canoes. Here they developed a rich and complex culture, with an artistic output unparalleled in the Pacific. In this easily understood introduction to all 'things Maori', Don Stafford explains the or...

This gorgeous book presents the broad spectrum of ballet and dance historically in this country - where it has come from, what has influenced the art-form, who has been involved, and who are the present movers and shakers. It's beautiful to look at, with striking photos and ephemera, attractive p...

Prising open 1860s court records and leafing through 1880s albums showing photos of men posing languorously with their male companions confirmed historian Dr Chris Brickell’s view that same-sex desires and intimacies have pretty much been written out of New Zealand’s national story and i...

A source of pride or a source of controversy, the haka is an integral part of New Zealand's culture. The haka has always been a vital part of Maori culture and tradition. Today it has a growing influence on the lives of all New Zealanders. It provides a powerful and dramatic vehicle for welcoming vi...

Flora Thompson's immortal trilogy, containing "Lark Rise", "Over To Candleford" and "Candleford Green", is a heartwarming portrayal of country life at the close of the 19th century. This story of three closely related Oxfordshire communities - a hamlet, the nearby villa...

This text provides a richly evocative exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Vast in scale and woven though with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendour of 18th-century St Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiati...

Fifteen years on since it was first published, Old Heroes is regarded by many as a classic in the annals of New Zealand sports publishing. Some critics, in fact, regard the book as the finest sports book ever published in New Zealand.2006 marks 50 years, since the mighty Springboks suffered their fi...

Kiwiana is a name that identifies quirky objects and images that have endured changing fads and trends to become our icons, stored in the memories of generations of New Zealanders and recalled with amusement and affection. This book from the authors of the very first Kiwiana Book, New Zealand, New Z...

Sex, intrigue and adultery in the world of high politics and huge wealth in late eighteenth-century England. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was one of the most flamboyant and influential women of the eighteenth century. The great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, she was various...

This is an enlightening and entertaining social history of how we have tried (and failed) to battle the bulge over two millennia. Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perce...

What does history really consists of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around ...

This remarkable collection of letters provides a rare female perspective on life in colonial Canterbury, when letter writing was the only way to keep a close relationship with family members on the other side of the world. The writers were four women of the Hall family. Unlike Charlotte Godley and L...

A revolution has been taking place in the New Zealand countryside, the number of smallholdings tripling in the past two decades. The Smallfarming Revolution provides amnd absorbing and realistic view of the smallfarming life. It covers the great range of farming activities carried out on smallholdin...

It still amazes me what they they allowed us to do without their supervision or help. Climb trees, from the age of four or five? No problems. Drive the tractor from the age of six or seven onwards? Good luck to you. Peter FitzSimons' account of growing up on the rural outskirts of Sydney, in the ...