Bella: My Life in Food by Annabel Langbein

$39.99 NZD

$49.99 (20% off)

Category: New Zealand Biography | Reading Level: near fine

Bursting with tender and funny anecdotes and gorgeous recipes, Bella is Annabel Langbein's must-read memoir. For the first time, Annabel Langbein, New Zealand's most popular cookbook author, writes about her remarkable life and how food has shaped it, highlighting some of the recipes that have resonated most strongly with her over the years. From her childhood fascination with cooking to a teenage flirtation as a Maoist hippie, to possum trapping and living off the land as a hunter and forager, to travelling and starting her own croissant business in Brazil, Annabel's life has always been centred on food and nature. Out of this came an obsession with creating cookbooks, introducing a generation of cooks to her simple recipes for delicious, stylish meals. Annabel has lived a huge and varied life, and she writes vividly about her many adventures. From throughout this rich life in food she has chosen 60 key recipes, created with her signature style and flair that make cooking easy for everyone, sharing them in this beautifully photographed book. ...Show more

Tree of Strangers by Barbara Sumner

$35.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

A compelling memoir of adoption, loss and discovery  ‘I live at the end of a gravel road at the top of a valley consumed by bush. My husband is here, and my three girls. But the bush swallows them up like the road.’ I wrote those words at the kitchen table in 1983. A letter to the mother I’d never met . But how do you convey your life in a few sentences when almost every memory is missing? Barbara Sumner grew up in a family filled with secrets and lies. At twenty-three she decided she had to find her mother. Remarkable, moving, beautifully written, Tree of Strangers is a gripping account of a search for identity in a country governed by adoption laws that deny the rights of the adopted person. This remarkable, moving, beautifully written memoir explores Sumners conviction that everyone who loses their mother suffers some degree of physiological damage. They are all grafted onto the tree of strangers. ...Show more

Upstream on the Mataura: A Fly Fisher's Journey to Source by Dougal Rillstone

$39.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

Dougal Rillstone was born in Gore, close to the Mataura River, over seventy years ago. The river was both swimming pool and playground during his childhood. One summer's evening, while he stood chest deep in a long pool, facing downstream towards the fading light, he became mesmerised by the sight of ri ppling rings left by rising trout on the otherwise smooth surface. He has been haunted by moving water ever since. In Upstream on the Mataura, Dougal has captured the essence of his lifelong connection with the Mataura River. While angling, and fly-fishing in particular, anchor his attachment, the book is as much a meditation on landscape and moving water as it is about angling. It is also about the communities the river runs through, the friendships sustained by fly-fishing, and a love of the river and its tributaries. The first section of the book offers a clear-eyed view of the beauty, challenges and hardship involved in his 240-kilometre walk upstream from the coast at Fortrose to the source of the river, in the Eyre Mountains. Following are twelve stories that traverse his connection with the river, from his earliest recollections through to the present time. ...Show more

Merchant, Miner, Mandarin by Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew; Trevor Gordon Agnew

$49.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

In 1869, a businessman from China's Guangdong Province first set foot on New Zealand soil at Port Chalmers. It was the beginning of an illustrious career that would change the shape of commerce and industry in Otago and Southland. 'Merchant, Miner, Mandarin' depicts the fascinating life of Choie Sew Hoy - from his early days in China before emigrating to Australia and then New Zealand, to his death in 1901 as one of Dunedin's most prominent entrepreneurs. The store Choie Sew Hoy established in Dunedin's Stafford Street was a huge success, while his revolutionary gold-dredging technology improved the fortunes of the gold-mining industry in Otago and Southland. He backed dredging, quartz crushing and hydraulic sluicing ventures in the goldfields of Ophir, Macetown, Skippers, Nokomai and the Shotover. Sharp as a razor, Sew Hoy was a visionary, able to spot opportunities no one else could, whether sending vast amounts of unwanted scrap metal from New Zealand back to China, or joining famous Taranaki businessman Chew Chong's fungus export trade. Sew Hoy was also a local character, always elegantly dressed and with legendary success in horse racing. His self-assurance and charm gained him entry to the Chamber of Commerce, the Jockey Club, the Masons and even the Caledonian Society. A benefactor to many social causes, he supported hospitals and benevolent associations to help his fellow Chinese immigrants. When the success of the Chinese in New Zealand aroused hostility, he fought the prevalent racism and unfair government legislation of the day. A man of two worlds, Choie Sew Hoy was a success in both. Richly illustrated and deeply researched, 'Merchant, Miner, Mandarin' is both the compelling biography of one of the most distinguished figures of New Zealand business and an intriguing account of late 19th-century society, industry and race relations. ...Show more

Pull No Punches - Memoir of a Political Survivor by Judith Collins

$36.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

A candid and revealing memoir from one of politics' great survivors - National MP, and leader of the opposition, Judith Collins.

Believer - Conversations with Mike Moore by Peter Parussini

$39.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

Michael Kenneth Moore was probably the country's last working class Prime Minister and while the book is inevitably political, it is also a remarkable New Zealand story about an ordinary kiwi achieving extraordinary things. This book is based on conversations held with Mike Moore over the past 12 months and reflections on his life and career involving people who were part of it. The chapters focus on key moments in his life - growing up partially crippled in poverty in rural Northland, moving to Auckland and becoming a trade unionist and New Zealand's youngest MP, losing his seat and fighting the Labour Party to get another one only to be diagnosed with cancer, helping make David Lange Prime Minister and beating Muldoon, the turmoil of the fourth Labour Government including becoming Prime Minister for only 59 days, taking Labour to within two seats of Government and being cruelling deposed as leader by Helen Clark in 1993, the years in wilderness when he came close to setting up a new party and not participating in a coup against Clark, his audacious campaign to become Director General of the World Trade Organisation, becoming New Zealand's Ambassador to the US and the stroke that cut it short, and his hopes for the future. In a country that celebrates sporting success Moore's story is also heroic because he has the same traits of smarts, hard work and determination to achieve at the highest levels - despite numerous setbacks - that all New Zealanders admire in the successful. ...Show more

Fridays with Jim - Conversations about Our Country with Jim Bolger by David Cohen

$45.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

A FORMER NEW ZEALAND PRIME MINISTER CANDIDLY REVIEWS HIS LIFE AND THE STATE OF THE NATION. A self-taught son of Irish immigrants, devout Catholic, rough-hewn King Country farmer and farming lobbyist, Jim Bolger entered New Zealand political life in the 1970s. He was a flinty Minister of Labour under Rob ert Muldoon and Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997. As ambassador to Washington, he helped create warmer relations with the United States. In recent years, he has chaired boards, served as the chancellor of the University of Waikato and marked more than a half-century of marriage to Joan, with whom he has nine children. Never given to orthodoxies, yet staunchly National in his politics, in his stillenergetic eighties he remains an impressively brisk progressive thinker. For six months he regularly sat down on Fridays with the writer David Cohen to reflect on his life and times, our nation and world. Fridays with Jim reveals a quintessential man of the old New Zealand who is fully in synch with the new New Zealand, and with plenty of ideas about where its all heading. ...Show more

Under the Covers: Secrets of a Magazine Editor by Jenny Lynch

$38.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

Former editor Jenny Lynch takes the wraps off the unreported side of life in print, explodes myths, unearths secrets and shows that even on seemingly conservative publications such as the New Zealand Woman's Weekly things were seldom exactly as they seemed. Her memoir, aptly titled "Under the Covers", i s a revealing account of what went on behind the closed doors of various editorial offices and newsrooms during one of the most colourful periods in magazine and newspaper history. Lynch's 30-year path to her top job was full of drama and off-beat activities. But nothing she had experienced before she became editor of the Weekly prepared her for the challenges that lay ahead. Indeed, the magazine's battle for dominance in what became known as The Magazine Wars was fought against a backdrop of management turbulence and ownership changes. Peppered with the names of those who have touched the author's life, including the famous and the fleeting, "Under the Covers" will appeal to everyone who enjoys reading about the ever-changing world of print media. ...Show more

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

$49.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand 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

One Minute Crying Time by Barbara Ewing

$39.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography | Reading Level: near fine

This vivid memoir by well-known New Zealand actor and novelist Barbara Ewing covers her tumultuous childhood, adolescence and young-adulthood in Wellington and Auckland in the 1950s and early 1960s - a very different time - and ends in 1962, when she boards a ship for London, to study at the Royal Acade my of Dramatic Art. It draws heavily on the diaries she kept from the age of twelve, which lead her to some surprising conclusions about memory and truth. Ewing struggled with what would now be diagnosed as anxiety; she had a difficult relationship with her brilliant but frustrated and angry mother; and her decision to somehow learn te reo Maori drew her into a world to which few Pakeha had access. A love affair with a young Maori man destined for greatness was complicated by society's unease about such relationships, and changed them both. Evocative, candid, brave, bright and darting, this entrancing book takes us to a long-ago New Zealand and to enduring truths about love. ...Show more

Edmund Hillary: A Biography by Michael Gill

$29.99 NZD

$59.99 (50% off)

Category: New Zealand Biography | Reading Level: near fine

This new and important biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, a truly great New Zealander, breaks new ground among previous accounts of his life. The author, Michael Gill, was a close friend of Edmund Hillary's for over 50 years, accompanying him on many expeditions, and becoming heavily involved in his Himal ayan aid work. He was also granted access by Sir Edmund's children to a large archive of private papers and photos that were deposited in the Auckland Museum after his death. Building on personal experience, and this new unpublished material, Michael Gill has written a wonderfully insightful and illuminating biography. He describes the uncertainties of the first 33 years of Edmund Hillary's life, as well as the always-fascinating stories of the early attempts on Mt Everest, all a prelude to the first ascent which brought him instant world-wide fame. But too, this biography reveals, in part through personal letters, the tender and loving relationship he had with his wife Louise. Her importance to him during their 22 years of marriage only underlines the horror of her death, along with that of their youngest daughter, in a plane crash in 1975. Sir Edmund eventually pulled out of the subsequent depression to continue his life's work building schools and hospitals in the Himalayas. Affectionate, but scrupulously fair, Michael Gill has gone further than anyone before to reveal the humanity of this remarkable man. Edmund Hillary's life was shaped by both triumph and tragedy, and while he became famous through his mountaineering achievements, ultimately it was his humility and great compassion for the people of Nepal that has become his enduring legacy. ...Show more

The Quick and the Dead by Cynric Temple-Camp

$39.99 NZD

Category: New Zealand Biography

Dr Cynric Temple-Camp's suspense-filled, often Gothic story-telling ability captivated readers in his debut book, The Cause of Death. In the Quick and the Dead, New Zealand's self-confessed aficionado of death is back with more mysterious illnesses, gruesome murders, baffling crimes, and the other curio us, scarcely believable ways people meet their demise.The Quick and the Dead is also a book about life and the margins of survival - why some people live and others don't when faced with a seemingly similar peril. How much does luck, fate and chance play its part? What is the difference between life and death? What separates the quick and the dead? ...Show more