Whether or not you have heard of pioneering nutritionist Muriel Bell, she has had a profound effect on your health. Appointed New Zealand’s first state nutritionist in 1940, a position she held for almost a quartercentury, Muriel Bell was behind ground-breaking public health schemes such as milk in schools, iodised salt and water fluoridation. The first woman in New Zealand to be awarded the research degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD), in 1926, her subsequent pioneering research on vitamins and minerals helped to prevent deficiency diseases, and later, optimise health. Bell’s early research into fats and cholesterol tackled the complexity of nutrition-related aspects of coronary heart disease. At the base of her commitment to science lay a deep social concern, especially for women and children. In service to this cause Muriel Bell worked tirelessly. As a lecturer in physiology from 1923 to 1927, she had been one of the first women academics at Otago Medical School. In 1937 she became a foundation member of the Medical Research Council, serving for two decades while simultaneously she was the sole woman on the Board of Health. Her nutritional advice – common sense to us today but revolutionary at the time – was to eat more fruit, vegetables and milk products and to cut down on sugar, fat and meat. Muriel Bell was a trailblazer by anyone’s definition, unswervingly committed to the understanding that we are what we eat; that nutrition is a cornerstone of individual and public health. Diana Brown tells the story of this extraordinary woman in this long-overdue biography.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 196

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 01-11-2018

Roger Evans, Britain's favourite dairy farmer, is back with his popular diary telling his fans about his farm, his dogs, his daily ups and downs and his views on everything from the characters in his local pub to the price of milk. This new volume is as witty and entertaining as ever.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 192

Dimensions: 138 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 20-09-2018

In 1939, Georgia O'Keeffe, who at 51 was among the most famous artists in the United States, accepted a commission from the Hawaiian Pineapple Company to produce two paintings for advertising campaigns. Her nine-week trip to Hawai'i resulted in more than 20 paintings, which reveal that O'Keeffe-most commonly associated with the stark deserts of New Mexico- was profoundly inspired by what she saw and experienced on the lush, tropical Hawaiian Islands. The exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe: Visions of Hawai'i, and this accompanying volume, explores this little-known chapter in the artist's career. Glowing with color and feeling, these paintings demonstrate O'Keeffe's unique ability to make any place she happened to be in her own, and this groundbreaking volume offers a unique perspective by foregrounding the ecological complexity of the Hawaiian Islands-one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth- that is hidden behind O'Keeffe's depictions.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 128

Dimensions: 240 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 01-05-2018

Sue Bradford is half American and sixth generation Kiwi on her father’s side -- her European missionary genes date from 1820s Northland. Despite her grassroots New Zild twang, she was raised in Auckland by middle class, bohemian intellectuals and survived a childhood made difficult by her brilliant but domineering father. Fast forward through the tumultuous Vietnam War protest era, the 1981 Springbok Tour and 16 years in the invisible community sector where she became, with husband Bill, a loud voice and a highly effective organiser for society’s marginalised, and Sue suddenly and unexpectedly found herself in Parliament. From December 1999, as a hardworking, and much admired Green MP she managed a hefty portfolio and succeeded in getting three member’s bills into legislation, including her contentious bill to amend section 59 of the Crimes Act. Her mainstream political career ended, abruptly and disappointingly, five months after she lost the May 2009 Green Party co-leadership contest. Subsequently she achieved a PhD and transformed herself into Dr Sue Bradford -- activist and academic. Her readable thesis on the need for a major left wing think tank in Aotearoa has been downloaded in full almost 3,000 times and Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA), the infant left think tank she set up as a result, is growing lustily. Sue Bradford is still evolving but in terms of what matters most, her core social justice principles, she remains constant. -----------------Quotes from Review by Bronwyn Elsmore, Flaxroots Productions - "Jenny Chamberlain’s writing is fluent, polished, and definitely not dry to read.... It needed all those pages to give a full appreciation. Having read them, it leaves me wondering how one woman has fitted so much into her life. My respects to both the subject and the author".

Bind: paperback

Pages: 400

Dimensions: 170 x 240 x 25 mm

Publication Date: 03-07-2017

The continuing myth that Canterbury was born in December 1850 with the arrival of the First Four Ships has to be dispelled. Canterbury did not, like the legendary Athena, spring 'fully-armed from the head of Zeus' (in this case, John Robert Godley) as succeeding generations after 1851 have been led to believe. So much of the initial work was carried out by the Canterbury Association Chief Surveyor Captain Thomas; so much of this effort, intentionally or unintentionally, was obscured by the settlers of the 1850s, Thomas deserves recognition as a Canterbury founder.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 210 x 297 mm

Publication Date: 24-04-2017

At the end of the first volume of Elspeth Sandys’ absorbing memoir, What Lies Beneath, an adult Elspeth has solved the riddle of her birth parents and begun to piece together the events of her early life and find her place in the world. Casting Off begins on the eve of Elspeth’s first marriage. She and her husband will soon depart New Zealand for England, joining a throng of Kiwis who chose to uproot themselves from their native land. New attachments will be formed: new loves – of people; of places – will take the place of the old. But the home country will continue to exercise a pull. Backgrounding the personal story in this deeply satisfying memoir is the story of the Thatcher years and the creeping virus of neo-liberalism, the sexual revolution of the sixties, the beguiling world of books – reading and writing – and theatre. Elspeth Sandys’ refreshing honesty and her skill as a writer of fiction and drama propel the reader through an absorbing life story that is equally a commentary on the meaning of memoir and the peculiarities of memory.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

This book recounts the life and loves of artists and writers, Leonora Carrington, Peggy Guggenheim, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Meret Oppenheim, Gala, Luise Straus and Marie-Berthe Aurenche during their years with Max Ernst. Beginning in Cologne at the outbreak of war in 1914 and the eruption of Dada, it describes the birth and heyday of Surrealism in Paris in the 1920s and ends with its demise in New York in the 1940s. The years in between were a whirlwind that shredded the artists dreams and scattered them around the globe from Cologne, London and Paris, to Saigon, Marseille, Lisbon and New York. Their saga contains episodes of searing passion, madness and betrayal when they made great art and lost, found and abandoned one another in the process.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 376

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 24-04-2017

This definitive portrayal of Tina Modotti brings to life the iconic artist who throughout her life vacillated between the purity of inspired creativity and the struggle for social justice. Incorporating extensive archival material, interviews with Modotti’s contemporaries and many rare photographs, this illustrated biography magnificently portrays Tina Modotti, her contemporaries and their tumultous times.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 145 x 220 mm

Publication Date: 28-03-2017

Polly Plum is a biography of one of New Zealand’s earliest feminists, Mary Ann Colclough, whose publicly voiced opinions saw her described in the nineteenth century as ‘our own little stray strap of a modern female fanatic’. English-born Mary Ann Barnes came to New Zealand in 1857, and soon gained notoriety for her outspokenness on issues relating to women’s position in society. A teacher and also a journalist for the Daily Southern Cross and the Weekly News under the nom de plume ‘Polly Plum’, she also engaged in public debates through the letters to the editor columns, undeterred by becoming ‘the best abused woman in New Zealand in the present day’. In this fine biography, Jenny Coleman argues that Mary Ann Colclough’s contribution to the women’s movement in nineteenth-century New Zealand is at least equal to that of Kate Sheppard. A good two decades ahead of the organised women’s movement, ‘Polly Plum’ began politicising women by writing about the realities of their daily lives, what needed to change and how. Coleman here reclaims Mary Ann Colclough’s place in New Zealand’s feminist history by bringing her life and contributions to a wider audience.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 296

Dimensions: 165 x 230 mm

Arranged chronologically, this book follows the arc of Gehry's later career, during which he has focused mainly on public and cultural facilities. The book explores how Gehry has overcome technological setbacks and aesthetic backlash, never wavering from his vision. It examines his work in the context of the urban environment, showing how Gehry continually strives to make cities "less boring" and to create urban buildings that echo their surroundings. The buildings profiled here - including the Vitra International Furniture Manufacturing Facility and Design Museum in Switzerland, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the 8 Spruce Street Skyscraper (Beekman Tower) in New York, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton - are represented in dazzling colour photographs as well as preparatory drawing, plans and models. From his early years working within the L.A. Art Scene, to his Pritzker-winning stardom, to his current fascination with the application of computer-aided-design in such areas as cancer research, Frank Gehry, now in his ninth decade, continues to surprise and inspire the public. This informative, fascinating volume is a must-have for his ardent fans and anyone interested in architecture.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 256

Dimensions: 242 x 289 mm

Publication Date: 05-03-2015