New Zealand Books

This fabulous book fills a hole in Australian Aboriginal history in the 1930's when Aboriginal girls were taken away from their families to be "integrated" into white society. The book tells the story of "Ming", a white lady who had several of these Aboriginal servants, and of her fight with the ruling white classes in Australia at the time, to give the women their money, their rights, their dignity etc.
WONDERFUL book indeed!
Anyone who is seriously interested in Aboriginal history and politics will find this book fascinating reading.

Organisational Behaviour by Stephen Robbins is an enlightening book about the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behaviour within organisations. After reading the book, one should know how to use the knowledge gained to ensure the effectiveness of their organisations, whether commercial entities or not. The author includes self-assessments that should reinforce what one would have learnt about skills, beliefs, attitudes and interests.

The author presents in a simple and straightforward way the main organisational behaviour theories and concepts that relate to individuals, groups and structure of organisations. The reader will be able to understand the operation of organisations at micro and macro levels.

This book is highly recommended for all those who wish to know about individual and group behaviour well. This is particularly the case for industry leaders as well as those studying organisational behaviour at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The book is up to date and suitable and relevant to readers from any part of the world.

Oswald Chambers packed a lot of living in his short live span, i.e., 43 years. One contemporary described him as a "preacher, teacher, artist, humorist, philosopher, and poet." He lived out the well-examined life. This life-long student traveled extensively and read eclectically.

Jim Reimann points out that since Chambers believed that God engineered our circumstances, he accomplished his designated tasks and lived until he completed his mission. The phrase "divine completion" is used to note the closure Chambers attained before departing this life.

Two nuisances that did not diffuse his energy were worry and criticism. He frequently refocused and cast down those distractions by two pithy reminders to himself: "I refuse to worry." "Wherefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come."

It seems he had a premonition of what was in store for him as he recorded early in his journal, "I feel I shall be buried for a time, hidden away in obscurity; then suddenly I shall flame out, do my work, and be gone."
Chambers gained friends from numerous countries in his international travels. Like Louis L'Amour he coupled traveling with reading and learned through both means.

His love of books is captured in a letter to his sister, written from a Holiness campmeeting in the USA:
"My box has at last arrived. My books! I cannot tell you what they are to me--silent, wealthy, loyal lovers. To look at them, to handle them, and to reread them! I do thank God for my books with every fiber of my being. Friends that are ever true and ever your own. Why, I could have almost cried for excess of joy when I got hold of them again. I see them all just at my elbow now--Plato, Wordsworth, Myers, Bradley, Halyburton, St. Augustine, Browning, Tennyson, Amid, etc. I know them; I wish you could see how they look at me, a quiet calm look of certain acquaintance." (p. 70)

Chambers studied the Bible on a constant basis. He was an intercessory prayer warrior who built his intercession on his relationship with Jesus Christ. As a missionary based in Egypt during WWI he confronted tragedy daily and ministered to men faced with death every day. He lived a pracitcal faith, a faith based on reality, but with a fully engaged mind. He was well able to give an answer for the hope that resided within him.

This is a well written, easy to read set of short stories by one of Indonesia's finest contemporary writers and social critics. Reading these stories gives one an insight into the plight of Indonesia under Suharto. Mr. Lubis writes in the voice of the common man . An excellent read for anyone wishing to know more about Indonesians as people and as a culture.

Sir Edward Elgar is, arguably, England's greatest composer (remembering that Handel was actually a German living in England)but is scarcely given his place among the greats. This well-written, quite readable biography is recommended to spark interest in this great figure and inspire those unfamiliar with his music to explore its richness.

The Pacific islands sure look different when viewed from Down Under than they do from up here in Hawaii. That makes "The Pacific Islands" a valuable effort both absolutely and relatively.
Absolutely, because it offers a coherent overview of the Pacific islands, of which there have been several over the years, but none quite like this. Douglas Oliver's two-volume "Oceania," published nearly two decades ago and based on a book he first published in 1942, can be regarded as an extended essay on the Pacific.
Brij Lal and Kate Fortune's "The Pacific Islands," if read through, has somewhat the same feel -- less elegantly put than Oliver's, because it is organized by topics -- but updated by several years, in which much has changed.
Though Hawaii's status in the Pacific is paramount in economics, culture and modernity, it occupies a relatively small portion of this encyclopedia.
There could be two reasons for this, both sensible.
One, unlike the small nations of the Pacific, just about anything you want to know about Hawaii (including a great deal that isn't so) is already available, so it makes sense to devote relatively more space to the lesser known areas.
Two, Lal and Fortune are scholars at the Australian National University, and their encyclopedia was financed by Australian foreign aid, so it follows that the South Pacific gets more attention. Micronesia is also skimped, relatively.
Scarcely one earthling in a thousand is a Pacific islander, and most of them are poor, isolated and, by any likely evolution of the world economy, foredoomed to remain so.
In an economic discussion, contributor John Overton writes "the prospects of successful competition by Pacific commodities on open world markets are poor indeed."
Similar instances of such beady-eyed caution are uncommon. The tone of "The Pacific Islands" is upbeat.
Too upbeat in the case of Fiji's fraught constitutional troubles. (Lal was personally involved in trying to sort these out. When this book was written, her optimism was not hopeless. Things have deteriorated.)
In fact, sometimes the articles have more the character of sermons than of reference reports. The outstanding example is the article on "Higher education for Pacific islanders" by 'I Futa Helu, a revered figure in Pacific islander education.
Throughout, one gets a close feel for how compressed the modern story of the islands is. The first colony to gain independence, Samoa, did so as recently as 1962. In places like Solomon Islands, modern institutions of various sorts did not arrive until the 1970s, '80s or even '90s.
It is a testimony to the strong cultural and kinship values of Pacific islanders -- a recurrent theme of Lal and Fortune's -- that the various communities have held up as well as they have. Seldom have so few had to put up with so much in such a short time.
The importance of organized sport also comes as something of a surprise. Here in Hawaii, we tend to receive more news of culture, one way or another, from the small island states. In this encyclopedia, sports receives nearly as much space. The "Hong Kong Sevens" (an islander variant of rugby) are a major event down south. Few in Hawaii, except immigrants, have ever heard of the sport.
That the book was written from an antipodean perspective shows up in occasionally amusing phrasing: National Football League games are called "matches," for example.
But there is also plenty of input from Hawaii. This is most noticeable on a particularly touchy subject, the constitutional history of Palau, which is related in three places. One article, by the well-known ax-grinder Stewart Firth, manages to be misleading by selective presentation without making statements that are factually incorrect. The same subject treated by Robert Kiste of the University of Hawaii is more balanced. The brief statement in the nation profile (by Kiste and Fortune) is so bland that the sizzle of this topic would be missed by the unprepared reader.
Another example of how perspective affects perception comes in the profile of Hawaii. The principal export earners for the state are listed as tourism, fishing, sugar and pineapple.
This was just reflex. Fishing is the principal -- in several cases, the only -- meaningful export of several of the two dozen or so island states. But it is trivial in Hawaii and will become even more trivial now that the best grounds, in the Northwestern Islands, are being put off limits, a new development since this book was published.
The Hawaii State Data Book is not helpful on fish exports, but total catch in state waters is valued at only a little over $50 million a year. Hawaii is a net seafood importer.
The encyclopedia comes with a CD-ROM which is searchable and has more maps than the printed text. It is supposed to be compatible with both Macs and PCs. It worked fine on a Mac, not at all on a PC with the same (Adobe) software.

The book is the best bible you can find to inform you of the designs and meanings of the Maori culture. This is by far the best book we have in our Maori collection. This would be great for anyone wishing to learn ta moko or for many other forms of Pacific art culture. For many years this book has not been available. This may happen again. Get them while you can.
Ka kite & Good luck on your journey,
NZT Designs

The concluding volume of distinguished New Zealand historian James Belich's general history of New Zealand is an engaging, tightly bound look at the 20th century. It certainly lives up to the expectations generated by the first academic history of the country by a single author since Keith Sinclair's work of the 1960s.
Belich writes with an engaging style, mixing humour and deft usage of example with the broad brushstroke of well formed arguments. Dividing the period into three large bites (1880s-1920s, 1920s to 1960s and 1960s to today), the first part of each 'bite' provides a chronological mix of primarily political and economic analysis. This useful framework informs the less-chronologically restricted second part of the section, dealing with social history. The format works very well, allowing a logical structure where the histories of government, popular culture, racial issues, economics and social structure sit neatly together without jumping back and forth as in a conventional narrative.
Of particular delight for me are the 'revisionist' reexaminations of a number of events, emphasising and casting them in a new light. Examples include the 1913 labour crisis and a very good look at the 'Protein' industry which places it in its political, economic and social context superbly.
The two core arguments are those of Recolonialism and The Great Tightening, tying our history to our relationship with Britain, and the populist quest for conformity and harmony. The points are both deftly argued, with every theme being tied to them, usually quite convincingly. As with any argument seeking to provide coherance, however, at times there is a danger that other causes and effects can be understated and ignored. One instance of this was in dealing with the dour 'safeness' of the early postwar era. Belich quotes Jame Mander; [New Zealand was] "afflicted with the 'awful disease' of puritanism and conformism - 'barren wastes of Victorian philistinasm', 'brain-numbing, stimulus-stifling, soul-searing silence'". Although this is convincingly linked with the concept of 'tightening', another important factor, that of the search for security and safety in the aftermath of World War II is scarcely touched upon.
Belich's broadsweeping approach also uncovers the many holes in New Zealand historiography, however his guesswork in these areas, for instance in sport, is usually convincing and far more informative and thought provoking than ignoring them completely!
The first chapter/s of each chronological chunk give a fair overview of the narrative of that era, particulaly polically and economically, however the book is not a survey in the American sense. I feel that there is a need for such a work in New Zealand history, combining narrative with academic insight in the style of Henretta et al's excellent "America's History", (perhaps the NZ market is too small?). That said, anyone with a passion for history, or studying New Zealand history in particular will be very well served and stimulated by "Paradise Reforged"'s superb arguments and bibliography to explore our history in further depth. Can't wait to see Mr Belich's next project, perhaps a TV adaptation in the Simon Schama mode?!!!

New Zealand has produced a disproportionately high number of the world's most successful romance writers. In this collection of 15 interviews, writers such as Daphne Claire, Robyn Donald, Susan Napier, and the late Essie Summers talk openly about their personal lives as well as their careers, telling us how they have become published authors and what they think their writing means to others as well as to themselves.

This book is not a cookbook in the standard sense. It is the story of the pavlova (the iconic Kiwi / Aussie national dessert -- although it documents many variants from the "standard" pav). As any good story, it has a subject (the pavlova) but also a theme and a message. In this case the theme is the irrepressible creativity of the New Zealand housewife. But the take home message of the book is that the origins of the pavlova were a cooperative evolution, not a competition and any attempt to cast this history as a competition dishonors the many contributions that were made on both sides of the Tasman sea.

As for how to make pavlovas, the book goes beyond "just do what I say" recipes (although there are dozens of recipes given, both historical and adapted for modern ingredients such as the change in composition of baking powders). There are many helpful tips and it documents as much as is known of the mechanisms involved. As soon as my diet (triggered by my recent trip to New Zealand) is over, I have every intention of seeing if I can add my own wrinkle to the pavlova story. A great read that offers the promise of many "just desserts".