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NZ Biography

Large 9780143775157

Ralph Hotere- The Dark is Light Enough: A Biographical Portrait by Vincent O'Sullivan

$45.00 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

Vincent O'Sullivan's compelling, nuanced portrait of the great New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere brings the man and his art to life. Ralph Hotere (Te Aupouri and Te Rarawa; 1931-2013) was one of Aotearoa's most significant modern artists. Hotere invited the poet, novelist and biographer Vincent O'Sullivan to write his life story in 2005. Now, this book - the result of years of research and many conversations with Hotere and his fellow artists, collaborators, friends and family - provides a nuanced, compelling portrait of Hotere: the man, and the artist. ...Show more

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Large 1

Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins

$40.00 NZD

Category: NZ Biography | Reading Level: near fine

Linda Collins gets up on a Monday morning, dresses for work, makes coffee and goes into her daughter Victoria’s bedroom. Why hasn’t Vicky got up yet? It’s an important day: the start of the second term of her final year at school. Today she will hear her latest exam results. The bedroom is empty. So be gins every parent’s worst nightmare. Collins, a New Zealand journalist based in Singapore, writes with startling candour about her daughter’s suicide: the secrets she kept from her parents, the revelations in the personal journals she left behind, and the struggle of Collins and Malcolm McLeod, Victoria’s father, to find answers in the midst of enormous grief. How, they ask themselves, could they have missed the signs? What did the counsellors at Victoria’s school know about her state of mind? Did her school friends have any idea how desperate she was? And above all, why would a beautiful, talented, much loved young woman take her own life? Loss Adjustment is a wake-up call. New Zealand has the highest suicide rate for teenagers among the world’s wealthy developed countries. Most of those who kill themselves are, like Victoria McLeod, aged 15 to 19. Linda Collins examines the tragedy of teenage suicide from her profoundly personal viewpoint, while Victoria’s journals, uncovered after her death, give an incredibly valuable insight into the unseen stresses and anxieties suffered by many teenagers.  ...Show more

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Large 9781775541523

Tough Country: Tall tales of bushmen, bulldozers and back-country blokes by Mike Bellamy

$36.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

Mike Bellamy's father Barry is as tough as they come. Widely credited as the inspiration for Barry Crump's back-country character Sam Cash, Barry was a roving worker in rural North Island during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Tough Country is a book about a father by a son, about a bygone era of bushmen, scrub-c utters, hunters and shepherds. It's also a book about the author's own life working the land, and the characters of the 80s and 90s, from tradies and digger-drivers to drain-layers and wharfies. ...Show more

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Large 9781775594321

A Life of Extremes - The Life and Times of a Polar Filmmaker by Max Quinn

$49.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography | Reading Level: near fine

Max Quinn's filmmaking career has taken him to the ends of the earth; from his native New Zealand to Alaska; Antarctica to the Arctic. A Life of Extremes is a personal account of his travel and work in these remote locations. It focuses on Max's polar filmmaking experiences, which started in 1991 when h e spent 11 months filming the wildlife of Antarctica. The illuminating text and stunning images illustrate 20 years of subsequent adventures in polar climates. The stories in this book capture experiences that can only be had in the most extreme places on earth. Whether it be travelling 80 kilometres over crevassed ice to a lonely colony of Emperor penguins who have evolved to live and breed in temperatures as low as -50 degrees, or figuring out how to keep bodies and cameras warm in the coldest places on earth, Max Quinn has a story to tell about it. The historical background given to the tales will enthral any natural history buff, while filmmaking enthusiasts will wonder at the methods behind capturing life on the edge. Become inspired to leave the tourist trail behind with this unique book about what life is like behind the camera, beyond public transport and even human inhabitation. Learn about dog sled racing, the last great ice age, penguin colonies, and everything else that happens in the immensely beautiful landscapes where the temperature is permanently below freezing.   ...Show more

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Large thispakehajacket

This Pakeha Life: An Unsettled Memoir by Alison Jones

$39.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pakeha. Every Pakeha becomes a Pakeha in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Maori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pakeha - and other New Zealanders - curious about their sen se of identity and about the ambivalences we Pakeha often experience in our relationships with Maori. A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pakeha and Maori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.       Author Biography: Alison Jones is an educational researcher and a Professor in Te Puna Wananga, the School of Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland. Her first book with Kuni Kaa Jenkins, He Korero: Words Between Us - First Maori-Pakeha Conversations on Paper (Huia, 2011), won the Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards, the PANZ Book Design Award, and the Best Book in Higher Education Publishing (Copyright Licensing New Zealand) in 2012. Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds, co-authored with Kuni Kaa Jenkins, won best illustrated nonfiction book at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. ...Show more

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Large 9781988547398

The Girl from Revolution Road by Ghazaleh Golbakhsh

$37.00 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

A young first-generation Iranian immigrant in New Zealand speaks powerfully of displacement, being different and living between two worlds. Based on Ghazaleh Golbakhsh's experience as an Iranian immigrant growing up in New Zealand, these essays range from a childhood in war-torn Iran, including the trau ma of a night spent in prison as a six-year-old, to learning English so she could make friends, to dating in the days of Corona. This is about growing up as a young woman torn between her immigrant roots and her desire to be like everyone else.   The humour is sometimes offset with the more sombre reminder of the racism that has always existed in this country, from misguided quips to more serious stories of harassment. The impact of recent world events shows that, more than ever, marginalised voices are needed in our cultural discourse. ...Show more

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Large 9781775541547

Taking the Punches: The Life of Legendary Boxing Promotor Mike Edwards by Mike Edwards

$36.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

A story of the cut-throat world of promoting in New Zealand boxing, from the 1960s to the modern era, as told by legendary trainer and promoter Mike Edwards. 'Who would want to be a boxing promoter? It's like being on a treadmill you can't get off, as you forever chase the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.' Taking the Punches is legendary trainer and promoter Mike Edwards' story, from an Otahuhu gym in the 1960s through to the height of modern era. It's a world of showmen, superstars, larger-than-life characters, brawlers, shysters, fraudsters and out-and-out criminals. Anyone who is anyone in the story of New Zealand boxing has worked with (or against) Mike, including Tuna Scanlan, Kevin Barry, Lance Revill, David Tua, Monty Betham Snr, Paul Murdoch and Joseph Parker, to name but a few. Taking the Punches is an incredible chronicle of some 60 years in boxing. '...life is always made easier by having a good man in your corner, and there are none better than Mike.' - Monty Betham Jnr ...Show more

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Large 9780473374310

From the Blitz to the Burmese Jungle & Beyond by Karen McMillan

$29.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography | Reading Level: Near Fine

One man's memoir of World War II which took him from the Blitz to the jungles of Burma, to the devastation of Hiroshima.'I consider myself lucky to have survived the global carnage still myself - a reluctant soldier who had to go to war, who only ever wanted peace for everyone.' Brian HennessyBrian immi grated to New Zealand after the war and lived there until his death aged ninety-two, but he never forgot his extraordinary war adventures. This is his story.Born in Germany to English parents, Brian Hennessy came from a family who served in the army. He was seventeen years old and living in London when war broke out. He experienced the Blitz first-hand. Brian joined the British Army and upon graduating, he became the youngest armament artificer. What follows is a true adventure story as Brian journeys via South Africa to India and the remote jungles of Burma. Danger was always present, and his narrative is sometimes humorous, at other times poignant. At the end of war, he went to Japan and saw first-hand the devastation at Hiroshima. This is his story, a sweeping journey though the landscape of war and far more fascinating and exciting than any fiction. ...Show more

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Large 9781869409128

You have a Lot to Lose - A Memoir, 1956 - 1986 by C. K. Stead

$49.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography | Series: C. K. Stead Memoirs Ser.

New Zealand's most extraordinary literary everyman - poet, novelist, critic, activist - C. K. Stead told the story of his first twenty-three years in South-West of Eden. In this second volume of his memoirs, Stead takes us from the moment he left New Zealand for a job in rural Australia, through study a broad, writing and a university career, until he left the University of Auckland to write full time aged fifty-three. It is a tumultuous tale of literary friends and foes (Curnow and Baxter, A. S. Byatt and Barry Humphries and many more) and of navigating a personal and political life through the social change of the 1960s and 70s. And, at its heart, it is an account of a remarkable life among books - of writing and reading, critics and authors, students and professors. From Booloominbah to Menton, The New Poetic to All Visitors Ashore, from Vietnam to the Springbok Tour, C. K. Stead's You Have a Lot to Lose takes readers on a remarkable voyage through New Zealand's intellectual and cultural history. ...Show more

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Large 9781925935998

Relentless - How a Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds by Lisa Tamati

$34.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a brain aneurysm and a stroke, resulting in massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. Relentless tells a sto ry of despair, hope, love and the incredible insights found in the darkest of moments. It not only shares the difficulties of going against the medical fraternity, but provides information on the treatments used, expert advice, and key principles in overcoming obstacles. ...Show more

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Large 9781776562893

All Who Live On Islands by Rose Lu

$30.00 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

All Who Live on Islands introduces a bold new voice in New Zealand literature. In these intimate and entertaining essays, Rose Lu takes us through personal history a shopping trip with her Shanghai-born grandparents, her career in the Wellington tech industry, an epic hike through the Himalayas to explo re friendship, the weight of stories told and not told about diverse cultures, and the reverberations of our parents' and grandparents' choices. Frank and compassionate, Rose Lu's stories illuminate the cultural and linguistic questions that migrants face, as well as what it is to be a young person living in 21st-century Aotearoa New Zealand. ...Show more

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Large 9780473488406

Still Lives : A Memoir of Gaza by Marilyn Garson

$34.99 NZD

Category: NZ Biography

Four years, two wars and one most unlikely social enterprise. Marilyn Garson was an experienced aid professional who created jobs at the edge of war. In 2011, she was invited to move to the Gaza Strip. Friends warned her that nothing worked behind the Gaza blockade. Unable to resist that challenge, Mari lyn became the Economic Director of a large NGO programme, leading an ambitious young Palestinian team. Gaza's business owners, technology graduates, and job-seekers (facing the highest unemployment on earth) overturned Marilyn's understanding of aid and justice. Then she volunteered to join the United Nations' emergency team that would remain inside Gaza through the 2014 war. Marilyn witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's urban assault and massive civilian displacement. The UN was prepared to shelter 35,000 displaced Gazans, but 293,000 arrived. Locked in beneath the bombs, they had nowhere safer to go, and nothing but the United Nations flag and international law to protect them. Neither Marilyn's team nor Gaza itself was the same after fifty days of bombardment. But the team was still determined to launch their social enterprise. On her last day, Marilyn's final task was to tell her Gazan colleagues that she is a Jew. ...Show more

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Bay Plaza
221, Russell St, Hastings 4122
books@plazabooks.co.nz

06 878 4082

 

 

 

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