New Zealand Books

A well-documented scholarly translation from the original French of Jean Bodin's masterpiece of political theory. Though of immense influence in its day, divine right sovereignty has certainly gone out of fashion (thank goodness!) unless perhaps you are living in Saudi Arabia or Lesoto. Nonetheless, for college students and the curious this is as nice a translation and abridgement as one is likely to find.

Robin Hyde's _The Book of Nadath_ is a striking poetic work. Her use of imagery is often on par with that of later, Pullitzer prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath, yet her work as a whole is not nearly as tortured; one of the most captivating aspects of _Nadath_ is its concurrently beautiful and bleak awareness of place and time, often with perceptable reference to the world war (the poem was written around 1937). The sophistication and boldness of _Nadath_ sets Hyde apart from many better-known female poets of the 1930s and ensures that interest in her poetry will grow, not only among scholars, but among casual lovers of poetry as well. If you are looking to branch out and discover something new and beautiful, whether to inspire and direct your own writing, or to expose your mind to unique perspectives, _The Book of Nadath_ may be just what you need.

Great book for introducing you to the wonders of trout fishing in the South Island of New Zealand. The photos illustrate well the information in the book and the conditions you are likely to encounter.

The BUG guides are simple to read, a lot thinner, less bulky and heavy than their competitors who keep adding fine dining, five star hotels and other stuff we backpackers never use (which makes a lot of difference when you have to lug the thing around an entire continent, or even in this case just New Zealand) and much better value. They give a description and rating on each hostel (they claim they do not accept free nights or money but who knows), as well as maps of hostel locations and travel company information.

You obviously won't agree with all their reviews of the accommodation but that's the backpacking scene. You can have a terrible experience at somewhere where someone else had one of the best stays of their life. Don't rely on this guide alone, ask other backpackers who have been to the destinations you are going where they stayed and what it was like. The more opinions you get the more likely you are to get a clearer picture.

Definitely get this over Lonely Planet and Let's Go, at least until they clean up their acts.

All I have to say is that it was the best book! Cohen is a great writter

This book caught my eye at Pearl Harbor on my first significant visit to Hawaii a few weeks ago. Had to order it as soon as I got home. Outstanding digest of Cook's lifetime of exploration. Excellent format with its mixture of concise narrative and outstanding maps. Fascinating "read", I couldn't put it down. Excellent level of detail -- enough to be truly educational -- not so much as to overload. Emotionally moving to recall standing on Hawaiian soil and try to imagine the worlds meeting in the explorations of Cook's time. This book helped stitch my own experience to the history of the explorations.

I came across this title in researching an answer for Askville. I found the topic interesting and ordered the book. I'm glad that I did.

The book deals with the histories of European women captured in warfare by the Maori. The author does an excellent job of pointing out the factors that made their accounts less than totally credible--fear of ostracism; sexism and cultural myths and expectations.

I recommend the book highly to anyone interested in the history of women in frontier life; cross cultural interaction; Anthropology or the history of New Zealand.

The book was far better written and more insightful than most histories, which is why I gave it the highest possible rating.

In 'The Carpathians', Janet Frame is in complete control of all of her greatest gifts; her majestic imagination, her mastery of language and cadence, and her ability to tell a story that works on a number of different levels. Written in 1989 and winner of a number of literary prizes, Frame's vision of the future is still chilling and poignant today. A truly brilliant work by an original thinker.

This is an absolutely fascinating book. It tells how the men of Ilahita, a village in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, consciously and deliberately destroyed their secret men's cult (the Tambaran) by revealing its secret artifacts to the women. The book describes in a detailed but incredibly readable way how a prophecy contained at the end the Ilahita creation myth (involving the local lake and a Cassowary Woman) foretold the destruction of the cult, enmeshing the men and women of Ilahita on a downward spiral that even involves the anthropologist author in the second coming of the Cassowary Woman's "youngest son". It also describes the resulting damage to the village's gender dynamics, its cultural destruction at the hands of the Revival Christianity (now run by the women in a similar way to the method used by the men in the old Tambaran system), and the village's final loss of local power and land. Quite a tragic story, and one which has relevance to our own society's gender dynamics.

This book is classic good company on a lonely evening; this is the real mccoy of survival story-telling