This book provides a concise introduction to the history of South Polynesia during the period typically defined as the ‘Middle Ages’ by western historians, focusing on Aotearoa New Zealand, Rēkohu (Chatham Islands), and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Written in response to a wider global approach to medieval history, it offers a fresh perspective on the history of the region during that period. The comparative study of the southern Polynesian islands and Rapa Nui provides a thematic examination in order to avoid forcing the region’s history into a linear Western chronology. Themes of movement and migration, adaptation and change, and development and expansion offer an optimal means of understanding Polynesia during this period, in an account that incorporates oral traditions, historical analysis and archaeology. Drawing together a wide range of research from past and present scholars the book provides an accessible introduction both for students and for the general reader interested in the long history of these islands. Madi Williams (Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Rangitāne o Wairau) is a lecturer at the University of Canterbury where she researches the boundaries of history and the inclusion of Indigenous and non-Western perspectives in Aotearoa New Zealand and South Pacific histories. Madi is the recipient of a 2021 Judith Binney Writing Award, which will help her prepare a book based on her PhD thesis on the histories of Ngāti Kuia.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 94

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2021

There is absolutely nothing so inspiring, worthwhile or satisfying as your last mountain biking adventure, except of course the next mountain biking adventure, regardless of how it unfolds. Mountain biking is life, the rest is detail. The 2022 New Zealand Mountain Biking Calendar by renowned mountain biker and photographer Dave Mitchell presents fabulous colour photographs capturing the essence of off-road biking in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Bind: stationery

Dimensions: 340 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 20-07-2021

The story of the magnificent passenger and cargo ships that made New Zealand – and the colourful characters who manned them. Masters, engineers, deck officers, radio operators, seamen, cadets, shore staff and passengers talked to maritime historian Nick Tolerton for this brilliantly illustrated book, full of salty tales of adventures at sea and ashore, war, storms, smuggling, eccentric characters, and fun and misadventures in port. Special features include harrowing excerpts from the previously unpublished diary of a passenger on New Zealand’s worst immigrant ship on which 44 people died on the voyage to New Zealand and the recollections of New Zealand’s last Cape Horner. This fascinating story of the golden age of seafaring is complemented by 400 photographs, most of them previously unpublished.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 329

Dimensions: 210 x 295 mm

Publication Date: 30-07-2021

There are many messages in this book: Never go drinking using your passport for ID. Make sure to apply lidocaine before ripping out your toenails. Magic might be real, but it never fixes the worst of your problems. Try to fall in love with bastards. You or someone you know may be gayer than previously thought. We’re not going to make it to Mars. A locked psychiatric ward needs more books than a single copy of Jane Eyre. Asking time travellers for advice on your exams is considered cheating. It’s not just human houses that become haunted. The key message is this: Life in the early 21st century is often very strange. So are these stories. With a crisp insouciance and gliding charm, Jack Cottrell’s fiery, fey, finely-tuned fictions leap from sci-fi to fantasy, comedy to horror, literary realism to romance, and to hybrids of all of these. Featuring sport, friendship, love, health, family, climate change, artificial intelligence, desire, magic, Greek gods, ghosts, peanut butter, cyber pranks, racial prejudice, and creepy medical advances, his stories play with the allure of the past, the disturbances of our own times, and the dangerous idealism of our future technologies – each one in fewer than 300 words. Jack is a writer and volunteer rugby referee who knows how to pack a lot into a small space, whether a story or an extremely organised sports bag. With ‘Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson’, has he worked out how to cram an entire universe into a pocket-sized capsule? Jack Remiel Cottrell (Ngāti Rangi) grew up in Wellington and now lives in Auckland. His flash fiction collection was awarded the Wallace Prize for best manuscript in the University of Auckland Master of Creative Writing class of 2020. He has been published in numerous anthologies and online magazines, and his novella-in-flash ‘Latter Day Saints’ was published in 2018 by Ad Hoc Press.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 136

Dimensions: 165 x 225 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2021

How do we make our older buildings earthquake-safe? This book marks the ten-year anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, which transformed this New Zealand city. It provides a first-hand insight into the typical types of damage that occurred during the sequence and showcases earthquake-strengthening techniques that worked successfully and others that didn’t. The collection of vivid photographs within this book comes from one of the most comprehensive databases on post-earthquake damage to masonry buildings in the world. It is hoped that the information within will inform professionals and students who will work on future retrofit projects, as well as reach the wider audience and increase public awareness of how a safer building environment can be achieved. The lessons learned from Christchurch will assist in preserving much-loved historic buildings and businesses, and they will help save precious lives. Author bio: Dr. Dmytro Dizhur is an award-winning chartered structural engineer who has dedicated his career to the mitigation of earthquake risks for large-scale national and global heritage buildings. Having advised on over 1000 projects for assessing and strengthening masonry buildings, Dizhur is a leader in devising creative and innovative testing methods for optimising strengthening solutions. He has assisted in redefining national and international guidelines for the assessment and earthquake retrofit design of masonry buildings.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 168

Dimensions: 290 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 22-02-2021

This blacked-out, bourgeois, boarding-house life – God in Heaven, how I really loathe it! The smell of evening cooking in the passages, the businessmen’s faces, the church clock chiming the polite quarters down the street – the whole couchemar d’une incessante mise en scène. Pfui! Am I alive or dead? What I want is to get drunk, to lie in the hot and generous sun, to sleep with wild boys – yes, that is more like it. – James Courage, Diary, 24 Jan 1941. New Zealand author James Courage was born in Christchurch in 1903, and he became aware of his homosexuality during his adolescent years. He moved to London in 1927 and began writing novels, plays, poems and short stories. He was much more sexually open than most of his homosexual writer contemporaries – Frank Sargeson, Eric McCormick, Charles Brasch and Bill Pearson. A Way of Love, published in 1959, was the first gay novel written by a New Zealander, and some of his other seven novels (including Fires in the Distance and The Call Home) contain queer characters. Between 1920 and 1963, Courage confided his innermost thoughts to a private diary. He wrote about leaving New Zealand, the men he met in London’s streets, and forging friendships in the literary scene. He was an evocative chronicler of landscapes and indoor settings: life on long ocean voyages, air raid shelters during the war, and the psychiatrist’s clinic at a time when society was deeply ambivalent about homosexuality. Courage recorded his personal triumphs and struggles with an engaging honesty, a lively intelligence, and a whimsical sense of humour. Chris Brickell’s selections from the 400,000 words of diary entries reveal Courage to be a truly engaging man, a complex personality and an astute observer with a gentle, whimsical sense of humour, an acerbic wit and an artist’s appreciation of art. Courage’s diaries are a delightful surprise … James Courage is revealed to be both a significant writer and a sensitive, brave and engaging New Zealander we should be proud to own and celebrate. – Paul Millar What a wealth of contemporary detail is here about the shadow world (to many readers) of covert sexual engagement, and the sharp and engaging portrait of a middle-class privileged life, with its travel and its civilian experience of war. I also found of great interest his gradual change from an almost copy-book privileged aesthete, to a late in the day socialist. – Vincent O’Sullivan

Bind: paperback

Pages: 416

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 04-06-2021

Eisha lives with her mother, a ceramic artist, who helps her make a special shape out of a piece of clay. The shape reminds Eisha of her father, of the ocean, of a lemon. As Eisha goes through her neighborhood doing errands with her mother, the piece of clay hardens and then shatters into pieces when Eisha taps it. In poignant and powerful words and pictures, Kenesha Sneed shows how Eisha learns to live with the sense of loss and of the joyful power of making something new out of what is left behind. Illustrated with Sneed's bold colors, graphic lines, and gestural textures, the book celebrates diversity and shares a gentle message that we all have the ability to heal and create.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 44

Dimensions: 230 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 04-05-2021

When Hazel and her father bake together, her mother says they make the whole house smell like a fancy bakery. And when they bake in the morning, it's absolutely okay to sample the goods- even if it's for breakfast. One day Hazel decides to organize a bake sale for her school, encouraging her friends to contribute to the effort. The results take readers all over the world-from strawberry mochi and pumpkin empanadas to Indian-spiced shortbread and Egyptian basbousa cake. Best of all, each of these treat-along with muffins, carrot cake, scones, and vegan and gluten free items-comes with its own easy-to-follow recipe. The author of a popular blog with the same name, Cynthia Cliff knows how to make recipes look as good as they taste. Her charming illustrations combine the simplicity of folk art with a sophisticated flair. And her down-to-earth instructions accommodate all sorts of substitutions and skill levels. The perfect gateway book to a lifetime of satisfying and healthy baking, Pie for Breakfast will also introduce families to new flavours and treats, opening their palates and their eyes to the delicious ways that baking can bring us together.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 40

Dimensions: 230 x 300 mm

Publication Date: 30-04-2021

This book accompanies Yayoi Kusama’s first major European retrospective exhibition, offering a comprehensive overview of the Japanese artist’s influential oeuvre, which spans more than eighty years. The companion to the groundbreaking new retrospective at the Gropius Bau, this publication examines Kusama’s life and work through wholly original insights by leading experts. The book traces the development of Kusama’s creative output from her early paintings and accumulative sculptures to her immersive environments, as well exploring her lesser-known artistic activity in Europe and Germany in particular. It illuminates Kusama’s commitment to political and social issues in Europe, the US and Japan. A diverse selection of images and archival documents feature alongside texts by authors from different theoretical backgrounds. Essays discuss Kusama’s accomplishments in the worlds of fashion, film, art marketing and publishing. They focus on her engagement with different artistic spheres and offer genre-specific observations about her performances, installations and painting series. As panoramic and fascinating as its subject, this monumental retrospective guides viewers interested in Kusama towards a deeper understanding of her creative trajectory and of the breadth of her extraordinary career.

Pages: 352

Dimensions: 220 x 280 mm

Publication Date: 30-04-2021

Bracelets are the focus of this latest instalment of Nicolas Estrada's series on contemporary jewellery. This book confirms that auteur jewellery is currently flourishing. This collection of bracelets that come from all over the world and showcase totally different styles will surprise readers with its freshness, diversity (with plenty of materials and approaches, such as classic gold, silver and precious stones, as well as paper, wood, plastic and resins) and colourfulness. This is a comprehensive selection of what is happening in the world of auteur jewellery right now and is part of our ongoing series which constitutes an overview on contemporary jewellery.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 250

Dimensions: 193 x 245 mm

Publication Date: 08-05-2020