Biography (243)

Call Of The White

ISBN: 9781849531344

Author: Felicity Aston    Publisher: Summersdale Publishers

Could you ski to the South Pole? That was the challenge that British Adventurer, Felicity Aston put to women from around the Commonwealth as she set out to crea...


Could you ski to the South Pole? That was the challenge that British Adventurer, Felicity Aston put to women from around the Commonwealth as she set out to create the most international all-female expedition ever to the South Pole. The team would not be experienced explorers but `ordinary' women who wanted inspire others to follow their dreams or make a change for the better in their lives. She received more than 800 applications and embarked on a three-month journey around the world to interview candidates. `What is skiing?' was the question that greeted her in Ghana. At the close of 2009, Felicity led a team from places as diverse as Jamaica, India, Singapore and Cyprus - some of whom had never even seen snow or spent the night in a tent before joining the expedition - on a 900 km skiing trek across the Antarctic, one of the toughest and most notoriously hazardous journeys on the planet. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds ripped through base camp; frostbite and injuries were an everyday occurrence; deadly crevasses emerged from the cracking ice beneath their feet. But they also shared beliefs, ideas, philosophies and laughter, made lasting memories and broke no less than six World Records.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 320


Dimensions: 130 x 198 x 22 mm


$27.99
The Hero From Nithdale Station

ISBN: 9780473462291

Author: Dick Trip    Publisher: Wild Side Publishing

Be inspired by the courage of this hard-working Southland farmer who led the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas in World War II. My parents were an exceptional coup...


Be inspired by the courage of this hard-working Southland farmer who led the First Commando Fiji Guerrillas in World War II. My parents were an exceptional couple. Their characters and influence in the local community, the farming world and in a much wider sphere were significant. My father’s contribution to the war effort in the Solomon Islands, and the well-deserved Silver Star awarded to him by the Americans, is a unique story that you will not find in many of the war histories. My mother also made a huge impact in her community and was awarded a QSM for her work. ~DICK TRIPP A more enjoyable glimpse into the life and times of one of this community’s cornerstone families I haven’t ever experienced. ~Tracy Hicks, Gore District Mayor What better way do we have to learn other than from those who have gone before us. ~Ian (Inky) Tulloch, former Mayor of Gore District What an interesting and unique book this is! It combines two things that New Zealand readers love: tales of how our back country was tamed, and action adventures of our modest war heroes. ~Dr Bob Robinson, Laidlaw College


Bind: paperback


Pages: 86


Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 15-03-2019


Tags: Biography   History   New Zealand
$24.99 $17.99
Living Among The Northland Maori

ISBN: 9781988503028

Authors: Peter Tremewan, Giselle Larcombe    Publisher: Canterbury University Press

A French Marist priest, Father Antoine Garin was sent to run the remote Mangakahia mission station on the banks of the Wairoa River. Living Among the Northland ...


A French Marist priest, Father Antoine Garin was sent to run the remote Mangakahia mission station on the banks of the Wairoa River. Living Among the Northland Māori is Garin’s diary recording his experiences from 1844 to 1846 as he gets to know the Māori in the region. The diary provides vivid accounts of contemporary events, as Garin came dangerously close to the action of the Northern War, and wrote of such prominent figures as Hōne Heke and Kawiti as they opposed the new colonial authorities. Above all, the diary is an intimate record of life in a Māori community in which Garin describes the close relationships he formed with his new neighbours – from his young followers and local families to the chiefs who offered him protection while he lived among them. This is the first full English translation of Garin’s surviving Mangakāhia journals and letters. Frank, open-minded and often humorous, Garin’s diary is a major contribution to the early history of European settlement in Aotearoa and a compelling insight into Māori customs, values and beliefs of the time.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 620


Dimensions: 190 x 258 mm


Publication Date: 29-03-2019


Tags: History   New Zealand   Biography
$89.99
Living With Earthquakes and Their Aftermath

ISBN: 9780994133427

Author: Rosie Belton    Publisher: Renaissance Publishing

“I am reminded of what Harold Nicholson wrote about London during the Blitz: the same uncertainty as to what horror was going to happen next…” – Michael...


“I am reminded of what Harold Nicholson wrote about London during the Blitz: the same uncertainty as to what horror was going to happen next…” – Michael Palin Always an acute observer of people and the environment, in this new book Rosie Belton once again uses her diarist style to capture with intimacy and immediacy the events as they happened around her, in this case the earthquakes experienced by the people of Canterbury. Nothing could have prepared her, she says, for the severity of the quakes, starting with the first one in 2010, and then the ongoing disruption over the next six years: the grinding reality of living through so many months of shaking and the after-effects. Like many creative individuals, Rosie found that writing about those terrible events as they unfolded developed into a coping mechanism. And now, the result of her careful record-keeping and reflections can be read and appreciated by so many others whose lives have been affected by similarly large- scale natural disasters. It also makes excellent reading for anyone with an interest in knowing more about what it can be like to live in a seismically active country. Dedicated to all who face and survive unwanted change, Living with Earthquakes helps us, as well-known author and actor Michael Palin said after reading Rosie’s writings, ‘to comprehend the incomprehensible, conveying the mixture of bewilderment, hope and desperation very effectively’.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 156


Dimensions: 150 x 208 mm


Publication Date: 06-03-2019


Tags: Biography   History   New Zealand
$34.99
Hunt The Banker

ISBN: 9781846893032

Author: Alexander Lebedev    Publisher: Quiller Publishing

Alexander Lebedev is best known as the Russian businessman and public figure who bought the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers in the UK. A former ...


Alexander Lebedev is best known as the Russian businessman and public figure who bought the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers in the UK. A former KGB intelligence officer in the USSR’s London Embassy, his book covers the years from his birth in 1959 to 2016. Written in a wry and humorous manner, the book is mainly a memoir of Lebedev’s own hair-raising experiences as someone who aspires to show that an ‘honest banker’ is not an oxymoron. There is the thread of a whodunnit as his attempts at constructive and charitable business enterprises are systematically torpedoed by a person or persons unknown. He describes the dirty tricks used against him and the attempt to assassinate him and details how the Russian and international political and business elite live. Lebedev openly tells of his relations with leading politicians, businessmen and cultural figures in Russia and abroad, and investigates corruption scandals, dodgy multi-billion-dollar deals and contract killings. A comical episode on how he faced five years of imprisonment for a minor fracas during a television talk show, and how world show business stars (Elton John, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, John Malkovich, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry) rallied to his defence. He describes in detail how and why he became involved with two prominent newspapers. Lebedev reveals his access to inside sources of information, with policemen and secret policemen slipping him memoirs and transcripts of episodes which would otherwise have remained unknown. It is ultimately a portrait of a political system which ensures that genuine attempts to improve the fortunes of the country and its citizens are built on sand. Author Alexander Lebedev is a Russian banker, philanthropist and public figure. A member of the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence Service, he worked in the USSR Embassy in London in the 1980s. Since 1992 he has been a businessman, founder and beneficial owner of financial & industrial group National Reserve Corporation, including National Reserve Bank, he has property assets throughout Europe and enterprises in aviation, agriculture, engineering, catering and beyond. He is also the proprietor of UK newspapers The Independent and the Evening Standard, London Live TV channel, and is shareholder and investor of investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta in Russia. He also has a Ph.D in Economics.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 256


Dimensions: 156 x 234 mm


Publication Date: 26-07-2019


Tags: Biography   Business
$55.00
Fearless and Outspoken : The larger-than-life Alfred W Renall

ISBN: 9780995123205

Publisher: Wairarapa Archive

As A.W. Renall’s 1902 obituary noted: “For a quarter of a century he was the most notable personage in Masterton; and on the public platform swayed people a...


As A.W. Renall’s 1902 obituary noted: “For a quarter of a century he was the most notable personage in Masterton; and on the public platform swayed people as no other man could move them”. Alfred Renall, an early settler in the Hutt Valley and then in the Wairarapa, was a successful miller, father of 16 children and at various times a Provincial Council member, elected to the first Parliament, he was also a Masterton borough councillor and twice the mayor as well as a leading figure in the Small Farms Association and subsequent Masterton Trust Lands Trust. As his friend Alexander Hogg M.P. said: “An energetic and industrious settler, a public man, fearless and outspoken for over a half century he made his influence felt in the wider Wellington province”. Fearless and Outspoken is the story of Alfred W. Renall from his birth in Heybridge, Essex, England in 1813 to his and his family’s voyage to Port Nicholson aboard the Martha Ridgway late in 1840, followed by his rich, varied and sometimes controversial life during the next six decades. It provides a fascinating portrait of one pioneer and how he and his family succeeded in a very different land at the bottom of the world.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 146


Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm


Publication Date: 03-06-2019


Tags: Biography   History   New Zealand
$30.00
My Life In Public Health

ISBN: 9780473470913

Author: Dr Murray Laugesen    Publisher: Health New Zealand

Dr Murray Laugesen’s long career as a public health specialist has seen him involved in some of the major public health initiatives, both global and national,...


Dr Murray Laugesen’s long career as a public health specialist has seen him involved in some of the major public health initiatives, both global and national, of the latter part of the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first. While working in India early in his career, Murray played an important role in popularising the immunisation of children in the Punjab and other states. He vaccinated and treated cholera, and lent his efforts to vaccinating against smallpox, polio and tetanus. Today, India is free of these diseases. Back in his home country of New Zealand, Murray, now working in the Department of Health, resumed work and research into child health. Then, in 1984, he launched the first serious campaign to reduce smoking in New Zealand, and it is this work that has most engaged him in the decades since. With Minister of Health Helen Clark, Murray was the architect of the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, which abolished tobacco advertising and sponsorship, and, when amended in 2003, abolished all remaining smoking at work. In 2007, while working for his own company, Health New Zealand, Murray was the first person outside of China to research and advocate the new electronic cigarette as an alternative to smoking. Murray’s account of his and his colleagues’ efforts to curb smoking in New Zealand serves as a blueprint for other countries wanting to end this major health hazard, while his story of his life, both personal and professional, reveals a person of compassion and commitment whose work has benefited the health of a great many people at home and abroad.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 344


Dimensions: 163 x 235 mm


Publication Date: 23-08-2019


$45.00
Losing The Silver Spoon

ISBN: 9780473504397

Author: James Wilson    Publisher: Henry Elworthy Publishers

This us a rollicking tale of the highs and lows of a life well lived. Born into a life of privilege, James Wilson was always too free-thinking to be kept down o...


This us a rollicking tale of the highs and lows of a life well lived. Born into a life of privilege, James Wilson was always too free-thinking to be kept down on the farm, content to follow in his ancestors' footsteps. Slowly but determinedly he pulled away from tradition and set off on his own sometimes rocky and precarious path. Ten years at elite boarding schools didn't snuff out his dreams of adventure, which subsequently found him travelling across the Sahara desert and down the length of Africa in a little Mini, and later upifting his wife and four children to work as a farm advisor on a cattle farm in Malaysia. Back home again, he turned the farming over to his long-suffering wife Barbie and embarked on a career as an inventor and entrepreneur, with some successful - and occasionally disastrous - results. Eventually the family farm was sold and Barbie and James have carved out a new active life in the Marlborough Sounds. James's ride through life has been a rollercoaster, but he has few regrets and the proverbial silver spoon is now but a faint memory.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 208


Dimensions: 152 x 235 mm


Publication Date: 01-01-2020


Tags: Biography   New Zealand
$35.00
Mastermind of Dunkirk and D-Day

ISBN: 9781612008387

Author: Brian Izzard    Publisher: Casemate

This is the major biography of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay in fifty years. Ramsay masterminded the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in ...


This is the major biography of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay in fifty years. Ramsay masterminded the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940. Initially, it was thought that 40,000 troops at most could be rescued. But Ramsay's planning and determination led to some 330,000 being brought back to fight another day, although the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy paid a high price in ships and men. Ramsay continued to play a crucial role in the conduct of the Second World War - the invasion of Sicily in 1943 was successful in large part due to his vision, and he had a key role in the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion - coordinating and commanding the 7,000 ships that delivered the invasion force onto the beaches of Normandy. All this from a man who had actually retired in 1938, after forty years in the Navy. He was persuaded out of retirement by Winston Churchill in 1939, however he was not reinstated on the Active List until April 1944, at which point he was promoted to Admiral and appointed Naval Commander-in-Chief for the D-Day naval expeditionary force. Dying in a mysterious air crash in 1945, Ramsay's legacy has been remembered by the Royal Navy but his key role in the Allied victory has been widely forgotten. After the war ended his achievements ranked alongside those of Sir Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and General Dwight Eisenhower, yet he never received the public recognition he deserved. Brian Izzard's new biography of Ramsay puts him and his work back centre-stage, arguing that Ramsay was the mastermind without whom the outcome of both Dunkirk and D-Day - and perhaps the entire war - could have been very different.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 288


Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm


Publication Date: 13-03-2020


Tags: Military   Biography
$69.99
Journey To The Centre Of My Being

ISBN: 9789387242647

Author: Jim Wilson    Publisher: Zen Publications

Jim Wilson is an adventurer: mountaineering; Antarctic exploration; adventure films with Sir Edmund Hillary (on one of which he drove a jet boat up Mother Gang...


Jim Wilson is an adventurer: mountaineering; Antarctic exploration; adventure films with Sir Edmund Hillary (on one of which he drove a jet boat up Mother Ganga from ocean to sky); climbing and school building with Sir Edmund in the Everest region of Nepal; and sailing to Pacific islands in a small yacht. These physical adventures provide an exciting backdrop to this book. But Jim is also a religious adventurer. He relates in depth, with clarity and humour, his long journey in search of a satisfying way of understanding and experiencing the true nature of his self, and of his place in this mysterious universe. Studying Western philosophy and theology moved him away from intense involvement in the liberal Christianity of his parents. So he looked to India, inexhaustible source of inspiration. For two years he studied Indian philosophy and religion at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Then he taught for 23 years in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, returning many times to India and Nepal. Though profoundly moved by the religions he studied and taught about, he was unable to accept the metaphysical beliefs underpinning them. Increasingly, though, he became fascinated by modern scientific discoveries about the universe, and about our planet and the evolution of life on it. So he wove together elements from religious and scientific traditions. In particular, he took Adi Shankara’s Advaita, also known as spiritual monism, and applied it to the physical universe, adding in also feelings and attitudes from New Zealand’s indigenous Maori religion. He now believes that the centre of his being is the physical energy of the universe, with which, therefore, he is at one. He finds this deeply satisfying in understanding, and emotionally and morally experiencing, his place on this planet and in the universe. Because it owes so much to spiritual monism he calls it physical monism, or physical Advaita.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 230


Dimensions: 153 x 230 mm


Publication Date: 01-11-2019


Tags: Biography   Travel
$39.99
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