An Atlas of Countries that Don't Exist: A compendium of fifty unrecognised and largely unnoticed states by Nick Middleton $49.99
Most of us think we know what a country is, but this book will make you think again! Slippery borders, unrecognised leaders, contested histories – this book is fascinating, and illustrated with exquisite maps.
A career-spanning survey of New Zealand artist Paul Hartigan, painter of the original Phantom, icon in New Zealand art. He is also the creative mind behind some of New Zealand's best-known public sculptures: the neon works Colony (Auckland), Whipping the Wind (Wellington) and Nebula Orion (Christchurch).
A piquant, frank, open, wistful, tender, funny personal poetic memoir marbled with social history and conjuring a very recognisable New Zealand.
Fascinating insights into chance, luck (if there is such a thing), risk and probability. Is there such a thing as coincidence? What are the chances of winning Lotto, or of there being extraterrestrial life? Some things are random but others, surprisingly, are not random at all!
Sheep-shearing galas, Antarctic ponies, human clones, the Queen’s visit to Dunedin, a pounamu decoder, a childhood in the pubs of the South Island, the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson—Bill Manhire is New Zealand literature's backyard inventor, devising stories in which the fabulous and the everyday collide.
Piercing the meniscus that overlies New Zealand (and French) literature, Percutio is a journal of irregular poetry and other uncompromising verbiage from Edward Jenner, Richard von Sturmer, Cilla McQueen, David Eggleton, William Direen, Jenny Powell, Jack Ross, Jacques Coulardeau, Lynley Edmeades, Lisa Samuels and Nelson's David Karena-Holmes, among others.
>> Find out more about Percutio.
>> Direen has been an eminence grise in the New Zealand underground for over three decades.
What if someone made a catalogue and photographic record of everything you touched in a twenty-four hour period? What would this reveal about you? Zuccotti did this to people around the world and made this fascinating, simple, intriguing book. A wonderful piece of quotidian anthropology of the modern world.
Barry Lopez meditates on language and seeing; Kathleen Jamie travels to the Alaskan wilderness; Fred Pearce describes the effort to keep Sellafield safe; Adam Nicolson investigates murder in rural Romania; Robert MacFarlane introduces unpublished extracts from the notebooks of Roger Deakin; Rebecca Giggs witnesses the monumental death of a stranded whale.
Beginning with lessons from our ancient geological past, this BWB Text draws on current observations and increasingly sophisticated climate models to explain a range of climate change impacts and possible end-of-century scenarios for New Zealand. Distorted ecosystems, extreme weather, new landscapes and adapted foods are just some of the likely changes that amount to a radically different future for our country.
An absolutely exhaustive, absolutely thorough, absolutely clear and beautiful 4-volume slip-cased survey of New Zealand fishes of both fresh and salt water. Unprecedented and unsurpassable.
You will love immersing yourself in all the wonderful maps of what can best be described as the landforms of literature. You need to come and look at this one (be quick, though).
Whilst living in exile on St Helena, Napoleon exerted an extraordinary influence on young Betsy Balcombe. How did she get from Napoleon's side to the Australian bush? Betsy Balcombe as a young woman lived with her family on St Helena. They befriended, served and were ruined by their relationship with Napoleon. To redeem the family's fortunes, William Balcombe, Betsy's father, abandons Napoleon and accepts a job as the colonial treasurer of NSW, bringing his family with him. William never recovers from the ups and downs of association with Napoleon. His family however flourish in Australia and remain renowned pastoralists in Victoria. Keneally brings these historical characters vividly to life.
The polemical essay raised to an art form! The last of the last of his works: previously unpublished essays on literature, religion and politics (and combinations of these).
There is a widespread tendency to regard anti-Judaism - whether expressed in a casual remark or implemented through pogrom or extermination campaign - as somehow exceptional: an unfortunate indicator of personal prejudice or the shocking outcome of an extremist ideology married to power. But, as David Nirenberg argues in this ground-breaking study, to confine anit-Judaism to the margins of our culture is to be dangerously complacent. Anti-Judaism is not an irrational closet in the vast edifice of Western thought, but rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.
"A truly monumental book. Dark as its subject may be, it is full of delights. This is a book that will - and should - stop you in your tracks." - The Sunday Times
This sumptuous book is a wide-ranging yet accessible overview of the making, design, and use of textiles from the Indian subcontinent. Focusing on individual objects, it explores in great detail the materials and techniques used in their manufacture and discusses centres of production, patronage, markets and designs. It features lavishly illustrated chapters interspersed with analysis of 18 unique objects of world-historical importance, including a Kashmir map shawl, Tipu Sultan's tent, and a remarkable eighteenth-century temple hanging from South India and an Abraham & Thakore sari.
Miriam hasn't left her house in three years, and cannot raise her voice above a whisper. But today she has had enough, and is finally ready to rejoin the outside world. Meanwhile, Ralph has made the mistake of opening a closet door, only to discover with a shock that his wife Sadie doesn't love him, and never has. And so he decides to run away. (They meet, of course).
"Engaging and accomplished.' - Irish Times
>> Listen through an earphone.
Winner of the Prix Goncourt.
"A big, swirling tale that reads like a 19th-century novel. Heavy on extravagant characterization, kaleidoscopic description, third-person omniscient analysis, occasional first-person authorial digression, moral accounting and dissections of the motivations, thoughts and prejudices of its protagonists, this book is thick with detail, immersing the reader in its elaborately bleak world." - New York Times
"In autumn 1944, Yael, a 6-year-old Jewish girl, is transported by train to a concentration camp. Unlike so many others, she doesn’t die in the camp but is chosen for experimentation. This ensures her survival but the cost is her identity. Twelve years later, Yael takes on the identity of Adeline and enters a gruelling cross-continental motorcycle race with the goal of winning and then bringing down the ruling Hitler. The ensuing adventure is exhilarating and perilous. This is a fast-paced, intriguing young adult novel, in which a variety of important issues are explored. Graudin uses an alternative history and shape-shifting as fictional mechanisms to provide the reader prompts to consider ideas around racism, power and identity." - Sarah
The story of the French Resistance is central to French identity, but it is a story built on myths. 'La Resistance francaise' was not simply a national effort to free the country from German occupation, but a wider struggle, filled with conflicts and division. It included Spanish republicans, Italian and even German anti-Nazis. The defence against the Holocaust brought in Jewish resisters and Christian rescuers. It involved a civil war for the French Empire in Africa and the Near East. The movement itself was split between those on the far right and the far left, fighting for very different visions of the world.
"Trust wasn't something you could have in degrees; it was all or nothing." Greg and Amanda are happy. They've been together thirteen years and have two young daughters. They're very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions and they're just staying together for the sake of their son. When one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: trust. (What?)
On 10 July 1941 a horrifying crime was committed in the small Polish town of Jedwadbne. Early in the afternoon, the town's Jewish population - hundreds of men, women and children - were ordered out of their homes, and marched into the town square. By the end of the day most would be dead. It was a massacre on a shocking scale, and one that was widely condemned. But only a few people were brought to justice for their part in the atrocity. The truth of what actually happened on that day was to be suppressed for more than sixty years.
"A terrifying and necessary book." - Julian Barnes
A wonderfully whimsical and sometimes rather snide alphabet book.
In June 2015, Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt resigned from the Faculty of Life Sciences at University College London after making a dismissive remark about female scientists.The incident is just the tip of the iceberg...
There’s nothing like the charm, elegance and downright authenticity of old boats, lovingly made and, where necessary, lovingly restored. This book contains enough classic and vintage craft to keep any enthusiast or dreamer happy.
A history that manages to recreate the mindset of 17th century Massachusetts and brings new understanding to the events behind the witch trials.
Pakenham’s books are always sought after because they convey his passion for, and knowledge of, majestic plants - and because they have outstanding photographs. This lovely book tells of a year in his arboretum, his travels hunting rare tree-seeds, and his work to preserve historic woodlands.
What is it to be human and to share this planet? How can we live together as a global community? Arthus-Bertrand moves easily from the personal to the local to the global in this challenging and hopeful book, full of his perceptive photographs.
The general theory of relativity describes the behaviour of very large things; quantum theory the behaviour of very small things. In this landmark book, John Gribbin presents his own version of the Holy Grail of physics, the search that has been going on for decades to find a unified 'Theory of Everything' that combines these ideas into one mathematical package, a single equation that could be printed on a T-shirt, containing the answer to life, the Universe and everything.
(Oh, and the answer is 13.8 billion years).
Fourteen taxi drivers born in almost as many countries tell where they came from, why they came to New Zealand, and their experiences, both good and bad, on settling here. Some came as refugees; others to make a better life for their families. Fascinating and revealing.
As we age, our present (and our future) is increasingly wagged by our past. When Juan Diego visits the Philippines, his experiences fall more and more under the influence of his childhood and adolescence in Mexico.
A surreal apocalypse novel tackles domestic strife and fragile friendships.
"Brain-smooshing work. As if John Updike were to write a Philip K Dick novel." - Neil Gaiman
A very good book on the subject, authoritative and specific to New Zealand conditions (the only such book currently available).
There are places in the city - in red-zoned suburban streets and downtown blocks - that seem to be frozen in time. Officially deemed too dangerous to occupy, many are in a kind of suspended animation - the people are gone but everything they left as they fled remains there, in the same place, moved only by the thousands of aftershocks.
The story of Riccarton Bush and its association with the Deans family encapsulates the natural and social history of Canterbury. This story began several thousand years ago with an ancient floodplain forest, followed by its long use by Maori. The arrival of the Deans brothers in 1843 to establish the first successful farm on the Canterbury plains near this forest and the following efforts of early-widowed Jane Deans ensured the Deans family had a role in the history of the settlement of Canterbury. The family's gift of Riccarton Bush to the people of Canterbury 100 years ago started a new chapter: the forest's recovery and the restoration of both historic houses. When the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes badly damaged Riccarton House, this special place returned to prominence with the Riccarton Bush Trust's heroic efforts to secure the house's future.
Meet Marius Myerdorf, the newest recruit of Schwartzgarten's most secret of societies. His is a tale of adventure and abduction, friendship and fearlessness, as The Band of Blood race against time to unmask two of the foulest fiends in the history of the Great City. The deeds are DASTARDLY. The twists are TERRIFYING. And happy endings are NOT always guaranteed. If you prefer cleavers to kittens and fiends to fairies...then welcome to the gruesomely funny Tales from Schwartzgarten.
1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured by local partisans and shot in a summary execution. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain shrouded in confusion and controversy. 1992, Milan. Colonna, a depressed writer picking up hack work, is offered a fee he can't refuse to ghost-write a memoir. His subject: a fledgling newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As Colonna gets to know the team of journalists, he learns the paranoid theories of Braggadocio who is convinced that Mussolini's corpse was a body-double and part of a wider Fascist plot. It's the scoop he desperately needs. The evidence? He's working on it. Colonna is sceptical. But when a body is found, stabbed to death in a back alley and the paper is shut down, even he is jolted out of his complacency.
...and 60 artists have drawn (bits of) it in a variety of styles and ended up included in this book.
