Thursday, August 06, 2009

AN EXCEPTIONAL PIECE OF NON-FICTION PUBLISHING

Graham Stewart and his boutique publishing house, Grantham House, set exceptionally high production standards with their non-fiction list and their latest handsome tome is testament to that. New Zealand – Portrait of a Nation with nearly a thousand photographs, colour and black & white, is a stunning pictorial parade of New Zealand since European settlement. I have spent the last three hours happily reading and looking at the book and I am not yet half way through.
Illustrated are the times of celebration and tragedy; engineering feats that tamed the rugged landscape, the Raurimu spiral for example, and Stewart cleverly provides the reader an instant recognition of the archival pictures featured by placing beside them colour photographs of the same scene today.

Graham Stewart’s father was W. W, Stewart, a well known Auckland photographer in the years before World War Two, a specialist in the area of transport. Graham Stewart was illustrations editor of the Daily Telegraph in Napier and of the New Zealand Herald, and later a pioneer in the processing of colour photography.
He is the author of 15 books including The End of the Penny Section, The Tangiwai Disaster – a Christmas Eve Tragedy, and Auckland Before the Harbour Bridge. Publisher, author, photographer, designer and international print broker.
A busy, multi-talented man who has obviously devoted a huge amount of time to his latest publication. I doff my hat to him.

2 comments:

Penny said...

Sounds great, Graham - does this book have an RRP?

Beattie's Book Blog said...

Yes, NZ$60