History and People
History
Illustrated History of the Treaty of Waitangi, Claudia Orange, (Bridget Williams Books, 2004)
Contemporary New Zealand is being shaped by the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by over five hundred Maori chiefs and representatives of the British Crown. Few subjects in recent years have created as much debate as this document.
An Illustrated History of the Treaty of Waitangi begins before the signing, and tells the story of the Treaty to the present day.
Claudia Orange is an acknowledged authority on the Treaty of Waitangi. The history is clear and informative; the recent decades are summarised with a crisp analysis.
The Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King, (Penguin, 2003)
Finalist, History category, Montana Book Awards, 2004
Winner of the Readers' Choice Award, 2004
Michael King’s general history of New Zealand has become a bestseller. The Penguin History of New Zealand tells the story of New Zealand in all its colour and drama. The narrative that emerges is an inclusive one about men and women, Maori and Pakeha. It shows that British motives in colonising New Zealand were essentially humane; and that Maori, far from being passive victims of a 'fatal impact', coped heroically with colonisation and survived by selectively accepting and adapting what Western technology and culture had to offer. The latter part of the book reveals how an insulated and dependent British colony transformed itself into an independent nation, open to and competing with technological and cultural influences sweeping the globe.
Taua: ‘Musket wars, ‘land wars’ or tikanga? Warfare in Maori society in the early nineteenth century, Angela Ballara, (Penguin, 2003)
Taua is the first major study of Maori warfare for decades. It asks the question: what if the nature of Maori society itself was the cause of the wars - not the introduction of new and destructive military technology? Only after prolonged contact, argues Angela Ballara, did the cultural context of Maori warfare change.
Drawing on Maori writers and sources and not just on earlier Pakeha scholars, this book re-examines some fundamental questions. Ballara's fascinating new analysis is of vital importance at a time when issues of Maori land loss and redress are being debated in the public arena.
Icons Ngā Taonga: From the Collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, (Te Papa Press, 2004)
Shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2005 – Illustrative category
Te Papa is home to New Zealand’s rich national collections. Here are taonga (treasures) prized by many iwi (tribes), centuries of art from Europe and New Zealand, significant historical items, treasures from the Pacific, and many of the extraordinary animals and plants that make up our natural environment.
Almost 400 items from these collections are presented in Icons Ngā Taonga. From McCahon’s paintings to the Britten motorbike, from a waka taua to the engravings of Banks and Solander, from Phar Lap’s mighty skeleton to a rare embroidered sampler from 1853 - each treasured item has a story to tell. Together, they depict Aotearoa New Zealand and its people.
Iron-hearted Trees: The Story of New Zealand's Pohutukawa and Rata, Philip Simpson, (Te Papa Press, 2005)
This book celebrates New Zealand’s unique ‘big red trees’ – their place in the natural world, their importance to Māori, their role in symbolism, art, and design, and their many remarkable uses – as well as the threat they face today from possums, progress, and people.
Philip Simpson is the author of the best-selling Dancing Leaves: the Story of New Zealand’s Cabbage Tree – Tī Kouka. Here he brings the same exhaustive research, wide-ranging knowledge, and infectious enthusiasm to these great red trees.
With sections on how to grow and care for the trees and a breadth of new research, this book really does contain everything you ever wanted to know about pohutukawa and rata – and more. An essential resource for those committed to conservation, for teachers and tourists, for gardeners and students, and for lovers of the history and colour of these iconic beauties.
The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, Anne Salmond, (Penguin, 2003)
Winner of the History Category
Winner of the Montana Medal for Non-fiction 2004
James Cook sailed across perilous tropical seas, survived hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, discovered unknown lands and peoples and became an icon of imperial history.
Yet, as Anne Salmond shows, the story of these epic South Sea journeys is far more than one of conquest and control. She has devoted a lifetime to the study of relations between Europeans and Polynesians, and this startling, rich, stylish book is the result.
In Salmond's account, Cook's great voyages regain their dreamlike quality as they encounter the last major human communities untouched by wider worlds. Far from being little wooden islands of Englishness in a Polynesian sea, his ships and the men in them are as much changed by what happens as the islanders they meet.
Great New Zealand Argument: ideas about ourselves, edited by Russell Brown, (Addenda, 2005)
This is a collection of some of the most important writing about who New Zealanders are and how we are changing, spanning 70 years of our history.
It includes the first published transcript of David Lange's momentous 1985 Oxford Union debate speech, arguing the proposition that 'Nuclear weapons are morally indefensible'.
Other works include Robyn Hide's lyrical 1938 essay on the emergence of a New Zealand literature, 'The Singers of Loneliness'; Bill Pearson's uncompromising 1954 critique of his country, 'Fretful Sleepers'; Bob Gormack's tart satirical poem 'New Zealand: A Maori Lament'; Sir Keith Sinclair's remarkably prescient 1963 lecture, 'The Historian as Prophet', which encapsulates the young historian's nation-shaping ideas; and Jim Traue's poignant and inspiring reflection on identity, 'Ancestors of the Mind: A Pakeha Whakapapa'. Most of these works have been out of print for years.
A contemporary perspective is added by Tze Ming Mok's 2004 Landfall prize-winning essay 'Race You There' and editor Russell Brown's introductory essay, 'Bringing Argument to Life'.
Biography
Wrestling with the Angel: life of Janet Frame, Michael King, (Penguin, 2001)
Janet Frame, born in 1924, is New Zealand's most celebrated and least public author.
Her early life in small South Island towns seemed, at times, engulfed in a tide of doom: one brother stillborn, another epileptic; two sisters dead of heart failure while swimming; Frame herself committed to mental hospitals for the best part of a decade.
All this propelled Frame into a territory resembling that ‘where the dying spend their time before death’. Those who return alive from such a place, she would say, bring a point of view ‘equal in its rapture and chilling exposure [to] the neighbourhood of the gods and goddess’.
To enable her biographer to write this book scrupulously and honestly, Janet Frame spoke for the first time about her whole life. She also made available her personal papers and directed her family and friends to be equally communicative.
He Tipua: the Life and Times of Sir Apirana Ngata, Ranginui Walker (Viking, 2001)
Shortlisted for the 2002 Montana Book Awards, Biography section
Apirana Turupa Ngata (1874-1950) of Ngati Porou was one of the most important and illustrious New Zealanders of the twentieth century. Ngata was the first Maori to obtain a university degree. He was a Member of Parliament from 1905 to 1943 and a hugely influential Minister of Maori Affairs from 1928 to 1934.
This book, the first-ever full biography of this major Maori leader, describes in detail the huge impact Ngata had on the social, cultural, economic and political landscape of New Zealand. Scholar, author, farmer, churchman, developer of Maori farming, builder of meeting houses, father of the Maori Battalion, supporter of Maori sport, promoter of the Maori cultural revival, teacher, poet, promoter of Maori broadcasting, developer of Maori education, fundraiser extraordinaire – Sir Apirana Ngata created a new path of reconciliation between Maori and Pakeha, and helped build an enduring Maori recovery.
Mason: The Life of R.A.K. Mason, Rachel Barrowman, (Victoria University Press, 2003)
Winner – Biography category, 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards
The story of how R.A.K. Mason dumped 200 copies of his first book, The Beggar, into Auckland harbour, in disappointment, disgust or despair because no-one would buy it, is a legend in New Zealand literary history: a symbol of a time – the 1920s and 1930s – when a true, vital, native literature struggled to be written or heard in a provincial and puritanical country.
The full story of the gifted but troubled man behind the legend is told for the first time in this elegant and accessible biography. Rachel Barrowman investigates the puzzle of why, after his extraordinary beginning Mason almost completely stopped writing poetry. Was it because of ‘the failure of a gift’, to quote C.K. Stead?
Mason’s political beliefs prompted him to turn his creative energies to left-wing theatre movements in the 1930s; for ten years after the war he worked for the Auckland General Labourers’ Union, on the militant left-wing of the labour movement; he became heavily involved in the NZ China Society.
Mason is a major contribution to New Zealand literary history, and the deeply moving story of a life.
Autobiography
My Life, David Lange (Penguin, 2005)
Former Prime Minister David Lange ushered in revolution when he and his government came to power in 1984. Lange was just 41. A rapid climb to the top meant he was involved in the final days of the Cold War, met with other leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan saw the remarkable change taking place in South Africa and India, whilst at home he established the world's first nuclear free state and set in motion an economic agenda that rocked New Zealand.
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