NEW & NOTEWORTHY NON-FICTION

MYTH NEW ZEALAND

Justin Brown

Hurricane Press - Hardback - $39.99

 Justin Brown is a best-selling author, (three top ten non-fiction best-sellers last year), broadcaster and is also a very funny man. Just check out his website!

This latest book, published two weeks back, takes a humorous and provocative look at New Zealand and the way we see oursellves today. It comes complete with a CD of Justin's original songs.

The author puts some popular Kiwi myths through a 21st century reality chcek.

JAMIE'S ITALY

Jamie Oliver

Penguin - large format paperback - $45

 

Penguin Books continue to reissue Jamie's cookbooks in this handsome new paperback format. The hardcover edition of this title was first published in 2005.

I love this development as it means I can keep my orginal hardbacks at home and the paperback editions at the bach, saves carrying books back and forth!

 THE DOLLY VARDEN LEGACY

The history of the Wellington Rowing Club

Michael Grace

Wellington Rowing Club - $35

  

This meticulously compiled and profusely illustrated book rich in personal anecdote was published to observe and celebrate the Wellington Rowing Club's 125th anniversary. It records the development and history of the club from its inception to the present day and is a must-own by all with an interest in rowing particularly those who are or have been members of this famous old club.

  

COOLANGATTA A HOMAGE

Peter Macky with Paul Waite, photography by Sait Akkirman

Livadia Publishers Ltd. $65

  

"It was a truly lamentable day in this city's history when the ball and chain was wielded against this wonderful example of Edwardian architecture. The previous mayor and council stand condemned for their vandalism. Twenty minutes of madness destroyed a piece of Remuera's historic landscape."

Mayor John Banks, March 2009.

Throughout its 93-year existence, Coolangatta- which stood at 464 remuera Road from 1913 to 2006 - was probably Auckland's most admired home. When it was destroyed without warning in 2006, lawyer and author Peter Macky became determined to find out exactly how and why such a tragedy could have occurred. Who was responsible? Was it the woners, the Coutts family? Or was it the purchaser from the Coutts family? What role  did the Auckland City Council play?

Readers should be warned that this is ultimately a tragic story, and many like me are likely to be upset and pained reading it.

The book istelf is an exceptionally fine piece of publishing complete with French folds, numerous photographs complementing a readable and interesting text and even includes a copy of the architect's orginal floor plans dated 27 November 1912 tucked inside the cover by way of a bonus. I salute all involved.

THE DUKAN DIET

Dr.Pierre Dukan

Hodder & Stoughton - $34.99

Why are French women so much thinner than us?*

Here’s one explanation: Dr Pierre Dukan. Dr Dukan is the bestselling author of France’s favourite diet book. It’s sold over 1.2 million copies and has stayed in the French Amazon top ten consistently for three years. The phenomenon has spread to 20 countries, 9 languages, and now it’s in New Zealand.

Pierre Dukan is a medical doctor who has spent his career helping people to lose weight permanently. His book is an easy-to-follow diet which delivers fantastic results in the short term but then, crucially, shows readers how to maintain their ideal weight for life.

The Jimmy Choo Story
Power, Profits and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe
By Lauren Goldstein Crowe , Sagra Maceira de Rosen
Paperback, 240 pages, NZ$29.99 - Bloomsbury

Jimmy Choo was a London shoemaker with clients including Princess Diana when Tamara Yeardye, a London society girl, convinced him to launch a factory-produced luxury shoe line. Twelve years later, Jimmy Choo is a household name, and Tamara still presides over what is now one of the most successful luxury brands in the world – worth some £220 million. She has become one of the best-known business women in the country, but along the way she was tested at every turn. The story of how the Jimmy Choo brand got to where it is today is one of love, controversy, fashion, finance, celebrity, power, intrigue and, above all, intense ambition.

Postcards from Tukums

A Family Detective Story

Ann Gluckman

David Ling - $44.99

255 x 190mm, 288pp, full colour, paperback

  

In 2004, workmen demolishing the home that had housed three generations of Ann Gluckman’s family saved an old cardboard box hidden under the eaves. The letters inside proved invaluable to Ann’s painstaking 20-year work piecing together the family history, which had, like the letters, been largely concealed.

In 1904, Ann’s grandparents, Adolph and Yetta Manoy, and their three daughters left Tukums in Latvia, then part of Imperial Russia, to settle in Stratford, New Zealand. Their story was further revealed by the discovery of a set of beautiful postcards originally mailed to the Manoys from their homeland. These postcards sent Ann’s detective story on a wider and deeper search for meaning. Why did her family conceal their past with a lifetime of silence? Was there a mystery, something to hide, or were they shielding their descendants from past traumas?  

Ann Gluckman MSc, BA has held numerous positions in education and in community organisations. She was foundation principal of Nga Tapuwae College; a member of the Middlemore Hospital Ethical Committee; and the foundation Jewish co-president of the Auckland Council for Christians and Jews. Ann was awarded an OBE in 1993 for services to education and the community. Ann’s writing on comparative religion, multicultural education and travel has been widely published. She has edited and contributed chapters to a number of books and other publications, and was co-author of Ageing is Attitude: The New Zealand Experience. Ann Gluckman lives in Auckland. And here is Andrew Stone writing on the subject in the NZ Herald on Saturday

 YOUR 21st CENTURY CAREER

New Paths to Personal Success
Heather Carpenter PhD, New Holland - $29.99

Whether you are currently content in your job – or looking for a total career switch, Dr Heather Carpenter’s new book, Your 21^st Century Career, will give you the help you need to keep yourself one step ahead of a changing and competitive job market – and the inspiration to transform your career path.

Heather says that we need to understand how the workplace is shifting in our modern world and the effects this changed environment might have on our skills, our jobs and our future. We need to be clear about what we have to offer. According to Dr Carpenter, we can increase our employability by understanding how we work best, keeping ourselves flexible and creative in our approach and proactively taking the chance to up-skill.

In the 21^st Century, success is no longer limited to salary and position and in Your 21^st Century Career, Heather explains that we need to consider all areas of our lives. By re-assessing our individual concept of success, we can shape our work and life choices to achieve our own satisfying and successful career.

 About the author:

Dr Heather Carpenter is a New Zealand-based career consultant and holds a PhD in Career Management. She also owns a small vineyard with her lawyer husband Brett in the Hawke’s Bay region. Heather is the author of The Career Maze: guiding your children to a successful future published by New Holland in 2008. Her work involves training career practitioners and advisors, developing tertiary education programmes and counselling clients. She has a website at www.thecareermaze.com. 

On This Day in New Zealand

Ron Palenski

Hodder Moa -  $34.99

A comprehensive collection of New Zealand history for every day of the year from the early days up until 2009.

On This Day in New Zealand provides a comprehensive yet ready-reference view of all aspects of New Zealand history. It lists chronologically, by month and day, significant events that affected New Zealand and New Zealanders, but this is no mere shopping list of dates. Each entry is like a potted biography of how New Zealand developed as a nation and of the events that made the news at the time.

It begins with pre-European times (when definite dates were known) and traverses the exploration years, the colonial period, the changing times of the 1890s and 1900s, both world wars and up to the present. It is a self-contained history of New Zealand based on dates. It covers the great affairs of state but also includes events that touched the lives of all New Zealanders – a political and a social history rolled into one. The book also includes a unique index based on dates rather than pages so the reader can quickly find items of interest. On This Day in New Zealand will appeal to a wide audience from the serious researcher in need of a quick date to the casual inquirer or to the pub quizzer.

Ron Palenski has written about 40 books in a long and distinguished career. A number of his books — particularly his rugby and cricket books — have been massive bestsellers. More recently Palenski has specialised in accessible New Zealand history and he wrote the acclaimed ‘people’s history’ of World War II, How We Saw the War. This shift towards general New Zealand history has coincided with Palenski’s studies at Otago University. He has a master’s degree in history.

JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Adventures in the Arctic Wilderness

Billy Connolly

Headline $29.99

Last year's big selling hardback is now out in paperback. Billy travels the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific starting tin halifax, Nova Scotia and ending in Nootka Sound on the rugged western shore of Vancouver island (where as a matter of interest James Cook visited in 1778).

As usual Billy bumps into all sorts of weird and wonderful people on his travels. Highly entertaining, vintage Connolly.Includes index and colour photos. 340 pp.

THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL

Donald L. Pease

Oxford University Press - $48

I found this gem of a hardback at UBS Canterbury, the excellent bookstore on the University of Canterbury's campus at Ilam.

Ted Geisel was of course Dr.Seuss known to millions of readers around the globe over the past 60 years. I had the great good fortune to spend time with him, and his wife Audrey in New Zealand, courtesy of his then publishers William Collins, way back in my Napier bookselling days. During his NZ visit I conducted a series of five five minute interviews with him for TVNZ, as well as trout fishing with him on Lake Taupo and dining out at Wellington's famed Boulcott Brasserie where I was enormously impressed with Audrey's knowledge of culinary matters.

This new biography is an engaging, highly readable quite short but original piece of scholarship and I learned a good deal from it even though I have read other more substantial biographies of the great man.