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What's New McNab

The latest in the New Zealand collection.

Acknowledge No Frontier: The Creation and Demise of New Zealand’s Provinces, 1853-76. André Brett

New Zealand’s provinces were abolished 140 years ago yet their legacy still endures in the strong provincial identities to be encountered among much of the population. Brett answers the question of why New Zealand abolished its provinces unlike the other main British settler societies – Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa – which all retain a state or provincial system.

Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch, 1933-1953. Peter Simpson

Simpson reflects on the artistic ferment in early to mid-century Christchurch that produced the canonical modernism and cultural nationalism exemplified by The Group, the Caxton Press, Little Theatre, Landfall and Tomorrow. Beautifully illustrated with full colour reproductions of the artwork and literary editions of the time.

Bromhead. Peter Bromhead

Peter Bromhead is one of our most famous cartoonists, serving as the editorial cartoonist at the Auckland Star from 1973 to 1989. Born in Portsmouth, England in 1933, Bromhead emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-Fifties working first as an industrial designer before turning his hand to professional cartooning. His autobiography promises to be a hilarious read full of the wit and warmth he is well known for.

Endeavouring Banks: Exploring Collections from the Endeavour Voyage 1768-1771. Neil Chambers

This book contains a beautiful pictorial record of artefacts and artwork collected and produced by English naturalist Joseph Banks and his colleagues on the voyage of HMS Endeavour to document the 1769 Transit of Venus. Each item is accompanied by an explanatory text and the book is interspersed with a series of 5 essays offering different accounts of Banks’ collecting and its subsequent interpretation and reception.

Labour: The New Zealand Labour Party, 1916-2016. Peter Franks and Jim McAloon

This is an historical overview of the development of New Zealand’s oldest political party in its centennial year produced by two well-known labour historians and Labour Party members. They trace the party’s roots in the rapprochement of the radical and moderate wings of the trade union movement and the turn to independent working class representation in parliament after the repression and defeat of the great strike of 1913. The reforms of the first Labour government set the political consensus for post-War New Zealand and again the party’s radical neoliberal reforms of the 1980s set the consensus for the following decades.

Re-inventing New Zealand: Essays on the Arts and Media. Roger Horrocks

One of New Zealand’s leading cultural critics ranges over the huge changes in cultural attitudes and forms that have transformed our literary and visual arts, popular culture and entertainment in dramatic ways since the 1980s. This anthology collects 21 essays from 1983 to the present with an introduction in the form of a personal memoir that sets the scene for Horrock’s subsequent reflections.