Licensing Trusts are a uniquely New Zealand concept now over 70 years old. Sometimes maligned, they have quietly pursued enhancing and supporting their communities with annual donations of many millions; and generated through their businesses, community assets worth $350million. They have achieved much. A Great Social Experiment tells the story of their achievements and failures: why in communities like Invercargill, Mataura, Masterton, West Auckland and Flaxmere they are greatly valued, and why in others they have withered. It explains how two remarkable men in the 1940s, Peter Fraser, Prime Minister, and Rex Mason, Minister of Justice, conceived how communities may take control of the sale of alcohol, generate profits to provide much needed hotel accommodation; and through community support donations, a dividend to enhance their community’s well-being. This is a story told from the inside. Bernard Teahan worked for many years amongst Licensing Trusts and does not gloss over the inglorious failures. Yet, for all these, the success rate has been remarkable compared to the alternative structure of private enterprise. Outstanding people dedicated extraordinary time and commitment to making their Licensing Trust successful, thus proving the spirit of community continues to endure and endear throughout the ages. A Great Social Experiment’s extensive research lays a challenge: community ownership of trading enterprises provides an alternative to globalisation, and are an important vehicle for the 21st century. The Author Bernard Teahan worked for 30 years as Chief Executive of Licensing Trusts, primarily Masterton and Trust House Limited, but also at one time managed eight Trusts. Qualified as a chartered accountant, he holds two Masters degrees from Massey University and a PhD from Victoria University. During his time managing Trusts, they earned respect as innovators and prudent generators of community wealth.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 300

Dimensions: 163 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 14-07-2017

New Zealanders started hearing things in new ways when new audio technologies arrived from overseas in the late 19th century. From the first public demonstration of a phonograph in a Blenheim hall in 1879, people were exposed to a succession of machines that captured, stored and transmitted sounds – through radio, cinema and recordings. In The World’s Din, Peter Hoar documents the arrival of the first such ‘talking machines’, and their growing place in New Zealanders’ public and private lives, through the years of radio to the dawn of television. In so doing, he chronicles a ‘sonic revolution’ in how New Zealanders heard the world. The change was radical, signifying a defining break from the past. Human experience of the world changed forever during the late 19th and early 20 centuries because we learned to capture, store, and transmit sounds and moving images. ‘Audio’ since then has been a continued refinement of the original innovation, even in the contemporary era of digital sound, with iPods, streaming audio and Spotify. The World’s Din is a beautifully written account that will delight music-lovers and technophiles everywhere. Without further ado, it is time to crank the gramophone, or tune the wireless, or open the Jaffa box as the cinema lights dim, and hearken to the richness and variety of listening in New Zealand’s past soundscapes.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 288

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 15-03-2018

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.' The line from the Anzac verse provides the title of this novel, in which Hyde shows the predicament of returned servicemen and women after the First World War. Through the story of Douglas Stark, we see the many ways in which New Zealand was failing their expectations. It was not the 'and fit for heroes' they had fought for, but a changing society moving through the tough times of the twenties and thirties.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 292

The West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island arguably boasts the greatest range of the country’s natural attractions. From the warm, temperate nikau palm forests at Karamea to the cool beech forests of Haast, from the alpine heights of Arthur’s Pass to the dramatic Paparoa coast, glaciers that descend into valleys filled with unique podocarp rainforests, plus pristine lakes and lagoons – the West Coast has it all. New Zealand is a centre of endemicity, with over 80% of our native non-marine birds, reptiles, flowering plants, gymnosperms, land-snails and insects restricted to this country, and hundreds of those species are found on the West Coast. The Coast is an essential destination for any overseas naturalist or bird-watcher, and a place New Zealanders interested in nature should return to time and again. This remote part of the country is New Zealand as tourists and many Kiwis imagine it to be. Remote and wild it may seem, yet most of its natural attractions are accessible from sealed roads and well-formed paths, some even wheelchair accessible. This book presents an introduction to the West Coast’s physical environment, plants and animals, and a guide to the walks, lakes and highways of the region. Short easy paths are described in some detail, along with the plants, animals and natural features to look for along the way. Longer, more demanding trails are described in less detail. The lakes and lagoons are best explored by kayak, and guidance is given for the paddling naturalist. An essential guide to the region’s natural attractions since its publication in 2013, West Coast Walking has been reprinted and includes updates and minor corrections.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 368

Dimensions: 152 x 228 mm

Publication Date: 20-01-2018

The air temperature was probably -35 degrees Celsius with wind chill. We couldn’t stand still for long. Our brains felt taxed and our bodies were running on empty. On the Football Field not far from the summit, Sue discovered a square of chocolate. We shared it, telling our bodies we didn’t need more. As we continued the descent, the air warmed and filled with oxygen. We began to encounter climbers heading up. Most knew who we were, incredulously asking: ‘are you the girls who slept on the summit’? – Karen McNeill, ‘A Ridge Too Far: The first female ascent of Denali’s Cassin Ridge’ A schoolgirl races from class to join a weekend trip to the hills. A mountaineering guide recalls his first weeks on the job during the 1920s. A young climber is shown the best route over the Main Divide by a big bull thar. A climbing party is bombarded by falling rock when Ruapehu suddenly erupts. A mountaineer pays tribute to the Māori guides from south Westland, while a fighter pilot tries to recapture an ascent of the Minarets from his tent in Nigeria during World War II. From the Darrans of Fiordland to Denali in Alaska, New Zealand climbers, both experienced and recreational, have captured their alpine experience in letters, journals, articles, memoirs, poems and novels. Drawing on 150 years of published and unpublished material, Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey, two top contemporary authors, have compiled a wide-ranging, fascinating and moving glimpse into New Zealand’s mountaineering culture and the people who write about it.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 372

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 12-06-2018

You will be challenged and inspired as you join Neville on board for this real-life, white-knuckle adventure on the high seas. A magnificent account of courage and perseverance as a young doctor takes time off from his busy practice to sail a 31’ yacht (single-handed much of the way) from England to New Zealand. • Mutiny by his crew in Port St Louis, France • Confrontation with the Sicilian Mafia at Marsala • Collision with a freighter near Gabo Island, South Australia • Harassed by a UFO mid-ocean in the Tasman sea? Neville de Villiers comes from an aristocratic lineage of French Huguenot extraction. He completed his studies at Oxford University in 1959 and practiced as a doctor in Loughborough, UK for 11 years before purchasing the Doumar, a 31’ sloop, and sailed it to New Zealand. After the Doumar had logged 14,000 miles, he finally tied up at Marsden Point wharf, Whangarei in 1981. He worked as a GP for various practices and then set up his own, Ruakaka Medical Centre, until retiring in 2014. He now lives at One Tree Point and still sails the Doumar to this day.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 122

Dimensions: 140 x 216 mm

Publication Date: 09-04-2018

‘Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand’ traces the evolution of environmental administration in New Zealand since the dawn of the ‘environmental era’ in the late 1960s. The national campaign to stop the government from raising the water level in the scenically spectacular Lake Manapouri for a hydro dam is widely credited with the awakening of environmental awareness in New Zealand.Since then, New Zealand has established institutions and legislation dedicated to managing our environment, and the public’s ability to participate in environmental decision-making has been strengthened markedly. At the same time, New Zealanders’ knowledge and awareness of environmental issues have also increased. Even so, the latest reports on our environment indicate that all is not well: our waterways continue to deteriorate, our biodiversity is in decline and our greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb. ‘Beyond Manapouri’is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand why, in spite of the legislation and institutions put in place to improve the stewardship of our environment, we’re now facing more urgent environmental issues than ever before. In this richly illustrated and engagingly written history, Knight also identifies the cultural shifts that will need to take place if we are to live up to the ‘clean, green’ image we have constructed for ourselves in New Zealand. Catherine Knight is the author of ‘New Zealand’s Rivers: An environmental history’(CUP, 2016) which was long-listed for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017, short-listed for the New Zealand Heritage Book Awards and selected as one of the Listener’s Best Books for 2016. Her 2014 book ‘Ravaged Beauty: An environmental history of the Manawatu’ (Dunmore Press) won the J.M. Sherrard Award in New Zealand Regional and Local History, and Palmerston North Heritage Trust’s inaugural award for the best work of history relating to the Manawatu. Catherine is a policy and communications consultant and lives with her family on a small farmlet in the Manawatu.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 272

Dimensions: 155 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2018

From the classrooms and playgrounds of early 1900s New Zealand to the battlefields of Gallipoli, the tragedy of the Marquette, and the trenches of France, this is the story of Private Leslie McAlpine. Many families in New Zealand have an Anzac who served in the First World War. Leslie is the Anzac in our family. He is a fit, healthy young man who never completely loses hope that he will get back home. His story shows how decisions made in the wider world affect our lives and our opportunities. Leslie leaves New Zealand as one of the 2235 men in the 4th Reinforcements and the story follows their lives and deaths. In 1914, as New Zealand goes to war, Leslie is in the navy, on the Torch, and loving it. But he wants to see a bit more action. He reads the accounts in the papers describing what the New Zealand and Australian soldiers are doing as they travel across the world in convoy and he wants to be part of that. So in January 1915 he enlists in the army in the 4th Reinforcements. He is just 18. With an adventure before him that everyone in New Zealand approves of and celebrates, what can possibly go wrong? The Allied forces and politicians plan strategies and make decisions. Leslie and the 4th Reinforcements follow orders and do their very best. Surviving Gallipoli and the Marquette disaster, Leslie is killed in action on the Western Front. He is just 19.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 242

Dimensions: 170 x 239 mm

Publication Date: 30-03-2018

Hudson & Halls: The food of love is more than just a love story, though a love story it certainly is. It is a tale of two television chefs who helped change the bedrock bad attitudes of a nation in the 1970s and 80s to that unspoken thing – homosexuality. Peter Hudson and David Halls became reluctant role models for a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ generation of gay men and women who lived by omission. They were also captains of a culinary revolution that saw the overthrow of Aunty Daisy and Betty Crocker and the beginnings of Pacific-rich, Asian-styled international cuisine. Their drinking, bitching and bickering on screen, their spontaneous unchoreographed movements across the stage that left cameras and startled production staff exposed broke taboos and melted formalities. They captivated an unlikely bunch of viewers, from middle-aged matrons to bush-shirted blokes. Hudson and Halls were pioneers of celebrity television as we know it today: the naughty, not-quite-normal boys next door who rocketed to stardom on untrained talent and a dream. When Peter Hudson became seriously ill with prostate cancer, David Halls was inconsolable. What remained unchanged through it all was their abiding love for each other. In this riveting, fast-paced and meticulously researched book, New York Times bestselling author Joanne Drayton celebrates the legacy of the unforgettable Hudson and Halls.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 304

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 19-10-2018

"Standing among Tony's installation of paintings and painted Coca Cola bottles precariously balanced on a shelf held up by a stick, I was a little freaked out. Tony, the art provocateur, had succeeded in provoking me." Welcome to the low-brow, high-art world of Tony de Lautour. Writer and curator Peter Vangioni provides and entertaining introduction to the work of one of Aotearoa New Zealand's leading artists. Described as "a body of work like nothing else this country has seen", de Lautour's paintings and sculptures over the past thirty years are brought together taking the reader on a journey from the chaos of his early paintings inspired by seedy underground street culture to the careful geometric abstracts of his later major canvases. Includes an interview between de Lautour and fellow artist Peter Robinson.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 212 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 21-05-2018