History Recent Picks

February 2011

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Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Historic Otago / Gavin McLean.
"Much of New Zealand's history since the arrival of Europeans has been captured through photographs. Historic Photos of Otago is part of a series that showcases many of the provinces's important places as well as events, both great and small, beginning with its role as New Zealand'' economic powerhouse in the 1860s, and the first known photograph of Dunedin taken 1858. While historic sites such as Gabriel's Gully, the harbour at Oamaru, Elderslie (one of Otago's grandest houses), the mining township of Kaitangata and the Waitaki Dam, so too are the everyday city streets and rural countryside where Otago people lived and worked. These beautifully reproduced black-and-white images tell the story of Otago, its people and places, with a vividness only historic photographs can offer. The character of Otago is reflected in the images presented in this book which is a must-have for the personal, academic or reference library." (Global Books In Print)

Villages of Britain : the five hundred villages that made the countryside / Clive Aslet.
"Britain's villages are world famous for their loveliness and idiosyncratic charm. Each village is different; travel across the country and you will unearth a joyous variety, from straggly Leintwardine in Herefordshire to BBC-film-perfect Askrigg in Yorkshire to higgledy-piggledy tourist hub Polperro in Cornwall to Miserden in Gloucestershire, with its staggeringly beautiful gardens, to Pittenweemin Fife, still eking a living from fishing, to the warring villages of Donhead St. Mary and Donhead St. Andrew in Wiltshire. History and architecture account for some differences—the memorials in churches, the details of door frames and chimney stacks—but there are also differences of spirit, and in how life is lived there today. What are the thriving local businesses? What are they selling in the shops—or are there shops at all? What are the traditions, old or invented? Who are the people who make these communities work?
In this captivating volume, Clive Aslet draws on thirty years of travel in the countryside working for Britain's Country Life magazine to give us a living, personal, and opinionated history of five hundred of Britain's most beautiful and vibrant villages. Meticulously researched and drawing from conversations with local residents, publicans, and vicars, this book is both an indispensable gazetteer for anyone planning to tour the countryside and a portrait of rural Britain in a time of change." (Amazon)

The Treaty of Waitangi companion : Māori and Pākehā from Tasman to today / edited by Vincent O'Malley, Bruce Stirling and Wally Penetito.
"The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 has profoundly shaped relations between Māori and Pākehā in New Zealand from the New Zealand Wars to the 1975 Land March, from Kīngitanga to the Waitangi Tribunal, from Te Whiti to Don Brash. Sourced from government publications and newspapers, letters and diaries, poems, songs and cartoons, this book introduces the many voices of that relationship over the past 200 years. The Treaty of Waitangi Companion is an important book for students and general readers alike." (Auckland University Press)

Decision points / George W. Bush.
"President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions of his presidency and personal life. Decision Points is the extraordinary account of America's 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. In gripping, never-before-heard detail, President Bush brings readers inside the Texas Governor's Mansion on the night of the hotly contested 2000 election; aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America's most devastating attack since Pearl Harbour; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq; and behind the Oval Office desk for his historic and controversial decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iran, and other issues that have shaped the first decade of the 21st century. President Bush writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his accomplishments reforming education, treating HIV/AIDS in Africa, and safeguarding the country amid chilling warnings of additional terrorist attacks. He also offers intimate new details on his decision to quit drinking, discovery of faith, and relationship with his family. A groundbreaking new brand of memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on one of the most consequential eras in American history---and the man at the centre of events." (Global Books In Print)

Gold diggers : striking it rich in the Klondike / Charlotte Gray.
"To mine the stories of the last great Gold Rush (1896-1899), Gray (Sisters in the Wilderness), who lives in Ottawa, spent three months living in the Canadian Yukon and sifting through the archives there. Gray focuses on diverse individuals whose paths crossed during the Gold Rush days. Recovering from scurvy, novelist Jack London left with "a gold mine of stories." Energetic London Times journalist Flora Shaw explored honky-tonk dives after midnight: "It was not Flora's world," says Gray. "She cast a cool eye on the professional gamblers, the blowsy hookers, the long-nailed barmen... and the throng of boozy miners." Lawman Sam Steele saw the boomtown Dawson City and its 400 prostitutes as "simply a hell on earth, gamblers, thieves and the worst kind of womankind," while Father Judge, a gentle Jesuit priest, sought souls rather than gold. At age 25, businesswoman Belinda Mulrooney arrived to get rich and departed a multimillionaire as the mining camp of 400 became a raucous, raunchy city of 30,000 in only two years. Writing about "the wildest, noisiest, roughest frontier town, in the middle of the bleakest landscape on the American continent," Gray has hit pay dirt with this hardscrabble history, a vibrant, detailed recreation of the frenzied boomtown of Dawson City. Photos. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved" (Publisher Weekly)

Crete : death from the skies : New Zealand's role in the loss of Crete / David Filer.
"CRETE: DEATH FROM THE SKIES takes a fresh look at one of the most controversial events in our country's military history. Many books about New Zealand's war experiences tell stories of heroism and sacrifice and of plucky soldiers going beyond the call of duty, with blame for failure usually placed squarely on the shoulders of British commanders. But this book tells a different tale; of how many of the blunders that led to the deaths or imprisonment of thousands of New Zealand, Australian, British and Greek soldiers fighting on Crete were a direct consequence of the actions of our own commanders. Led by Major General Bernard Freyberg, these men made the key decisions in the defence of Crete against a daring invasion by German paratroops. Although the Allied forces fought well, certain commanders, in part through confusion, exhaustion and incompetence, made a series of mistakes which cost dearly, leading to a humiliating defeat. This book, which marks the upcoming 70th anniversary of the battle of Crete (May 1941), pointedly questions some reputations and will undoubtedly be controversial, yet it also puts the record straight, telling a story of the chaos and cock-ups that reveal the true face of war." (Global Books In Print)

Rejoice, rejoice! : Britain in the 1980s / Alwyn W. Turner.
"The Eighties may seem to many of us like yesterday, but they are already two decades ago. Not only have we already become nostalgic for them (witness the recent reunions of eighties bands from Spandau Ballet to Ultravox), but in many ways the decade does seem like a thoroughly foreign country. A naval Task Force sailing to re-take an insular outpost in the South Atlantic (with the QE2 converted to a troopship!)...Almost a quarter of Britain's heavy industry wiped out by savagely monetarist policies, laying waste to whole heavy industries like coal mining and shipbuilding. Boy George sweetly crooning "Karma Chameleon". The extraordinary pitched battles of the miners' strike. The panic of the early stages of AIDS. Now, Alwyn Turner has written the first full-length, in-depth history of this most fascinating of decades. If the Seventies, the subject of his previous book, were the last gasp of the old Britain, the Eighties were a truly transitional, politically revolutionary decade, when Thatcherism remade Britain's economy and its society, but when Britain's social fabric also changed in many infinitely more encouraging ways: the response to famine in Ethiopia with the global Live Aid concert; gay rights. Witty, formidably well-informed, on political intrigue as well as every last soap opera and rock album, this is a piece of genuinely new history. Alwyn Turner is the author of Crisis? What Crisis? - Britain in the 1970s and Cult Rock Poster, both published by Aurum, as well as The Biba Experience. He lives in London." (Amazon)

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