Political structure & processes Books

'A good pen can also remind us of the happiest moments in our lives, bring noble ideas into our dens, our blood and our souls. It can turn tragedy into hope and victory.' —FROM A LETTER TO ZINDZI MANDELA, DATED 10 FEBRUARY 1980   The first wholly accurate and authorised record of Nel...

There has never been a book about New Zealand politics like this before. Over a two year period, sources from inside the National Party provided Nicky Hager with an astonishing collection of internal reports, emails, appointment diaries, meeting minutes and face-to-face interviews, documenting the r...

Clint Hill will forever be remembered as the agent who jumped onto the car after President Kennedy was shot and clung to the sides of the car as it sped toward the hospital. Now, in Mrs. Kennedy and Me, he recounts those painful memories along with his fonder recollections of the First Lady's streng...

The first biography of Australia's first female Prime Minister. Julia Gillard has always been an exceptional figure in Australian politics, widely admired by her adversaries as well as in the electorate. And now she is also an exceptional figure in Australian history: the first woman to be thi...

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...

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...

Setting Nazi Germany in a European context, this text shows how the Third Reich's abandonment of liberal democracy, decency and tolerance was widespread in Europe at the time. It shows how a radical, pseudo-religious movement seemed to offer salvation to a Germany exhausted by war, depression and in...

The definitive biography of Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain and all-rounder -- the Oxbridge graduate and vociferous campaigner; the devout Muslim whose kaleidoscopic social life flooded the gossip columns; the man who raised $60 million for cancer research and who is now one of the m...

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir written at the age of 33, Barack Obama, son of a black African father and a white American mother, describes the search for meaning in his life as a black American. He begins in New York where he learns that his father, more a myth than a man...

This title presents Barack Obama's political vision for the future of America.If Barack Obama is successful in his quest to become President of the United States, he will dramatically change the face that his country presents to the world.In this bestselling book, Obama discusses the importance of e...

'Massey's Cossacks' - citizens called in to help break the 1913 General Strike - have long been cited as just one of the sins of William Ferguson Massey. One of New Zealand's longest-serving Prime Ministers, his political legacy has not always been treated kindly. However, recent work by historians ...

 Does free information mean free people? At the start of the twenty-first century we were promised that the internet would liberate the world. We could come together as never before, and from Iran's 'twitter revolution' to Facebook 'activism', technological innovation would spread democracy...

Alter, a native of Chicago who has known Obama and his circle for nearly a decade, provides a fast-paced inside account of the breakneck speed with which President-elect Obama, and then President Obama, began making critical decisions and assuming the burdens of office amid the greatest economic cri...

In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power and end 18 years of Conservative government. He has been one of the most dynamic leaders of modern times; few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Blair during his ten years ...

New Zealand is at a watershed in its constitutional and political arrangements. There are three events looming in the short term which suggest that the status of Maori in Parliament is in for significant challenge. The first is the impending review of constitutional issues and the Maori seats as par...

Robert James Lee Hawke is one of the great men of Australian public life. A Rhodes scholar, he rejected an academic career to commit himself to the trade union movement. Son of devout Christian parents, he had been reared to public duty and to the ambition of political leadership. Hawke first came t...

The Tizard political dynasty is headed by a woman many would consider a New Zealand matriarch, Dame Catherine Tizard, formerly mayor of Auckland and our first woman Governor General. Feisty, irreverent, shrewd, fun-loving and resourceful, she built the Aotea Centre and lifted Government House out of...

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy--tonight is your answer." Barack Obama Words That Changed a Nation is a concise co...

Weeping Waters is a must read for anyone who wants to be informed about the current debate regarding the Treaty of Waitangi and a constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand. The book features essays from eighteen well-known and respected Maori figures including Professor Margaret Mutu, Bishop Muru Walter...

Edward M. Kennedy is widely regarded as one of the great Senators in the nation's history. He is also the patriarch of America's most heralded family. In this landmark autobiography, five years in the making, Senator Kennedy speaks with unprecedented candour about his extraordinary life. He writes m...

This new translation of one of the great works of Western political thought is based on the assumption that when Plato chose the dialogue form for his writing, he intended these dialogues to sound like conversations - although conversations of a philosophical sort. In addition to a vivid, dignified ...

This title presents Barack Obama's political vision for the future of America.If Barack Obama is successful in his quest to become President of the United States, he will dramatically change the face that his country presents to the world.In this bestselling book, Obama discusses the importance of e...

In this, his most systematic and fundamental work, Hedley Bull explores three key questions: what is the nature of order in world politics?; how is it maintained in the contemporary state system?; and what alternative paths to world order are feasible and desirable? He argues that the system of sove...

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is the exhilarating story of an epic life; ...

"I put it to William, particularly, that if you find someone you love in life, you must hang on to that love and look after it. . . . You must protect it. "--Diana, Princess of Wales The book that surprised the industry, now updated with a new chapter on the wedding and 15 wedding photogr...

Robert F. Kennedy was the first conspiracy theorist about his brother's murder. In this astonishingly compelling and convincing new account of the Kennedy years, acclaimed journalist David Talbot tells in a riveting, superbly researched narrative why, even on 22 November 1963, RFK had reason to beli...

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the trut...

A richly illustrated volume presenting the biographies of twenty-four eminent statesmen of Hellas, Thrace and Macedonia, whose rule extended from the time of the famous Trojan War in the 13th century BC to the Roman conquest of the Balkans in 106 AD. Heirs to the rich political and cultural traditio...

In 2011 the world's population will exceed 7 billion. Each year we add nearly 80 million people and by mid-century we will require twice as much food and double the energy we use today. Australia will be deeply affected by these trends - we have the fastest growing population of any developed nation...

Superbly researched this uncovers the momentous and controversial career of New Zealand's second Governor.

"A Woman in Charge" reveals the true trajectory of Hillary's astonishing life and career. From a staunchly Republican household and apparently idyllic Midwestern girlhood - her disciplinarian father here revealed as harsher than she has acknowledged - we see the shaping of a brilliant girl whose cur...

In this abridged edition of John Campbell's two acclaimed volumes on Margaret Thatcher, we trace the life of Britain's only female Prime Minister, from her upbringing in Grantham to her unexpected challenge to Edward Heath for leadership of the Conservative party and her eventual removal from power....

A publishing event: the fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the best-selling and prize-winning "The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, "and "Master of the Senate." "The Passage of Power" follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and...

A ruthless dictator who saved his country from economic ruin only to nearly destroy it--and an entire people--in his quest for world domination, Adolf Hitler forever changed the course of history. In this masterful account of Hitler's life, biographer A.N. Wilson pulls back the curtain to reveal the...

Born in a small village in Cyprus, Niki Savva spent her childhood in Melbourne's working-class suburbs - frontiers where locals were suspicious of olive oil, and Greek kids spoke Gringlish to their parents. Only a few decades later, despite all the challenges of being a migrant woman in Australia, S...

Young Geoff Palmer from Nelson, son of a crusading newspaper editor, was a serious and purposeful child who latched onto the idea of being a lawyer when it was put to him by his well-read mother. He absorbed progressive ideas at the University of Chicago law school and planned to use legal means to ...

This rare 10th anniversary edition (published in 2007) contains a new introduction by expert Soviet historian David M. Glantz. In addition all maps and graphics have been enhanced from the 1996 edition. "When the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan, they evaluated their chances for success up...

"'I don't like the basic philosophy that everyone is on their own, out for themselves, a kind of social Darwinism. It's bad for society, especially now. . . . Call me crotchety, but I can't help asking, whatever happened to the social contract?'"The get-rich-quick exuberance of the late nineties may...

John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic...