New Zealand Books

The author, Gordon Atkinson, grew up on the West Coast of the New Zealand South Island and was introduced to deer stalking in the bush and mountains of the West Coast and Nelson in the early 1920s. He went on to become Chief Ranger at Egmont National Park before retiring and writing this book in 1974. The book itself is no biography altho there are a few snippets of Atkinsons life outside of deer hunting. But just a few. The book itself is a collection of stories of various hunting trips.

The stories are well told, they give you a very good idea of what deer hunting was like back in the 1920s and 1930s - transport and roading was primitive at best, gear was heavy and clumsy, no dehydrated foof to logten your pack and money for sport wasnt plentiful. Shooting was mostly done with cutdown .303s from WWI NZ Army surplus (used to have one myself so I know all about those). But the deer were plentiful back then in the days before commercial deer shooting.

The books well written - Atkinson was a good writer, and theres a fine collection of black and white photographes that illustrate variously the country he hunted in, some fine trophy heads, huts and camps in the NZ bush, and some of his hunting mates. All in all, if you have an interest in deer stalking, its a worthwhile addition to any library.

Judith Binney teaches history at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and has written a brilliant and monumental biography of Te Kooti, a Maori guerilla leader and (above all) prophet who lived in nineteenth-century New Zealand. American readers will probably have little awareness of the complexity and fascination of nineteenth century New Zealand history and may find the world the book describes bewildering and unfamiliar at first.

Te Kooti came from the East Coast of the North Island and was wrongfully exiled to a penal colony for a crime he didn't commit. Later he escaped from the island, returned home and led a force of Maori _whakarau_ (exiles) into the heart of the North Island. The government forces never succeeded in capturing him. Te Kooti had many enemies, Maori and Pakeha, and the complexity of the Maori world at this time is brilliantly conveyed. The book is very strong on Te Kooti as a religious leader and prophet and is methodologically extremely interesting as well. I don't agree with every detail of the story, but that is only to be expected in a work of such richness and scope. American readers and scholars interested in the interaction between colonial empires and indigenous peoples will gain most from this book, which compares in many ways with Noel Mostert's _Frontiers_ or Roger Milliss' _Waterloo Creek_.

I work with the government in Indonesia from time to time on financial matters. Very often, things that happen here are not understandable - parties start acting in ways that seem to run counter to our assessment of the situation. This book provided a level of detail and enough history so that, all of a sudden, seemingly arbitrary acts by gov't officals started making sense. I think that is the strongest compliment I can pay to this book.

It covers the politics, scandals and events from the tail end of Suharto to the election of Megawati. I think his assessment of the future is a little too gloomy, but his description of the past has been eagerly read by the Indonesian nationals I work with - most of whom hadn't ever gotten a full explanation of that time period.

to cultural poetics in timely, disjunctive, and importan ways from the interviews with Clifford and Said to the poems and stories and essays by indigenous peoples, settlers, interlopers, disciplinarians and a cast of thousands. I have used this text in a postcolonial writing course at Santa Cruz and it worked quite well to prod theory reflection and to thicken Pacific dimensionality. It is a well wrought text, finely made by editor and UH Press deserving broad circulation and use

This is authentic writing from a master of Maori Metaphysics. Incredibly valuable read if you would like an overview of the Maori view of the world. Stunning. Highly recommended.

This is a terrific recap of a life well led, so far, by an ordinary woman who's had some extraordinary times, from physiotherapist for the Washington Redskins to First Lady of the Aussie consulate in New York (including during 9/11). Great warmth, humor, common sense, and sense of family.

This is a great map of New Zealand. Its unfortunate that it is becoming hard to find.

The map was printed a few years ago, so some things have changed, but for 95% of the areas you would be traveling to it is very accurate. Most of the changes are not the addition or changing of streets but rather the condition of the roads. Many roads that are said to be unsealed are now sealed, especially in the North Island.

The map is also made out of a plastic type material that is waterproof. You could dump a bucket of water on the map and it would still be fine, maybe just cleaner! Wish they made all maps out of this material.

Great map if you can find it, and its worth the hunt!

In American histories of the naval battles in the Pacific during World War II there are often little side messages such as the Australian Navy cruiser 'Canberra' lost at the Battle of Savo Island. In general, the activities of the Australians have been ignored (as has the Australian Army's fight along the Kokoda trail).

It is nice to see that Allen and Unwin, one of the premier publishers of military history now has their books sold through Amazon. These books show a side of the war in the pacific from somewhat of a different attitude than the typical American book.

While not the largest navy in the war, the Australians made significant contributions to the war effort. They build, repaired and operated ships of all sizes from torpedo boats to aircraft carriers. They were involved in almost every battle in the Pacific from Coral Sea to the end. Indeed they started their war before the US got involved. As part of the British Commonwealth they were first placed on a war footing when England went to war with Germany.

This is a well written and informative book that describes a little known (in the US) part of the history of World War II.

This book details the history of Australian Mining, but don't be put off by the seemingly dry subject-it is anything but dry. Stories are told of the romantic gold rushes, the lucky, the unlucky, the schemes, plots, the deceptions, the clouded histories, the despair of the many, and the fortune of the few. For students of both human nature and history it has interesting insights, such as how plain luck plays a significant part in human events, and how apparently small innocuous irrelevancies can lead to profound outcomes.

An interesting example is that of the Mount Morgan Mine in Queensland. Black boulders, which cattle shied from, formed a low hill in the ranges. There was a gold rush a few miles away, but nobody thought to test the black hill, as the rocks were all wrong. Farmers sold the useless land the cattle didn't like. A lazy miner was sacked from his job, his wife pleaded for his re-employment, in return for the locale of a "silver mine" in the hills. A few savvy mine managers wandered into a black innocuous hill. They chipped away, took out leases over the whole hill (a wise move), kept it very quiet (another wise move). When samples were broken, there was more gold than black earth-it was assumed it wasn't gold but something else. They began to mine quietly away until a local newspaper noticed there was a phenomenal amount of gold leaving a nearby town. The word was out. Mount Morgan -the "freak lode" as described by geologists at the time-became one of the richest and mightiest gold mines on earth. It defied virtually everything known about gold mines at the time. Geologists were perplexed, but as long as shares repaid 413,000% of their value, the owners didn't care. The copper that got "in the way" of gold processing eventually amounted to about 250,000t of copper. It was mined for around 100 years, and money that came from the mine was used to find oil in the Middle East, which eventually formed the company BP. Mine owners declared in World War 1, that Mount Morgan money was used to fight the Germans. In the 1950s over half of Great Britain's revenue came from oil discoveries that were originally financed by one small black hill in the outback of Australia.

The world's largest resource of lead and zinc-the Broken Hill Lode-is another case in point. For some years in the 1800s a large, jagged hill of black boulders more than a mile long and 500 feet wide was ignored by local prospectors at the nearby silver rushes at Silverton. A surveyor's fence was put across it. A trig station crowned the summit. Samples were chipped which came back high in uninteresting lead, but little else. It wasn't near any main thoroughfares. The owner of the land wasn't interested in prospectors. It was too big to be a lode. A good lode was said to be five feet wide, Broken Hill was over 500 feet wide. The rocks were wrong. So numerous hopefuls mined the molehills, whilst the mountain was ignored.

When people finally got around to examining it, a few speculators bought and sold shares, making a few bucks, as the hill guarded its riches. Finally, when a shaft was sunk on the wrong rock type-white kaolin-bonanza silver assays came back and the hill was born. The first 48 tons produced about 36,000oz of silver, which in the 1880s, was a lot of dough. The ensuing stock market mania and mining development transformed Australian history. Over $AUS 70 billion has been taken from the hill to the 1990s.

There are many other similar tales, twists and turns- the vagaries and tides of history. Curiously and well written, it is recommended for those interested in history, particularly Australian, or those simply interested in curious human anecdotes of life.

Inglis took 15 years to write this book. The book has been written in easy to read non-academic style that makes for easy access by the casual reader. I read this book with ease finding it full of useful and interesting facts. Inglis does not attempt to analyse the theory behind memory or memory representation but does allow enough material for the investigative reader to develop his or her own thesis.

In short it is a long book, but a good book and certainly one that helps to remind us that there are those that we should not forget.