What's New McNab
All the Juicy Pastures : Greville Texidor and New Zealand. Margot Schwass
British-born, Texidor emigrated here in 1940, with her German husband Werner Droescher, fleeing war-torn Europe. Both had fought in the anarchist militia during the Spanish Civil War. Texidor fell in with Frank Sargeson’s circle and became an accomplished short story writer. Her novella These Dark Glasses was published by Caxton Press in 1949. Schwass tells the full story of Texidor’s fascinating life for the first time.
Backstage Passes : The Untold Story of New Zealand’s Live Music Venues 1960-1990. Joanna Mathers
Relive the heyday of live music in New Zealand with Mathers’ lively history, Backstage Passes. Venues up and down the length of the country were packed out every weekend by sweaty audiences clambering to see local acts or touring sensations. If you were ever a habitué of the Sunset Strip or the Empire back in the day then you should definitely check this out.
A Communist in the Family : Searching for Rewi Alley. Elspeth Sandys
Written by Alley’s cousin, and fellow-author Elspeth Sandys, this is more than a straight biography of Alley, recounting as it does the 2017 trip Sandys and other family members made to mark the 90th anniversary of Alley’s arrival in Shanghai, and reflecting on our relationship with China now. It sets out to answer why Alley is so little known in the West despite his high status in China and his life already being the subject of several books and films.
Marilyn Waring : The Political Years. Marilyn Waring
The memoir of a political maverick, only the fifteenth woman to be elected to the NZ Parliament, Waring has travelled a remarkable distance since she was voted in as National MP for Raglan. Waring recounts the years from her election in 1975 to crossing the floor in 1984 to vote for the Labour opposition’s anti-nuclear bill triggering Muldoon’s famous snap election.
Precarity : Uncertain, Insecure and Unequal Lives in Aotearoa New Zealand. Eds., Shiloh Groot, Clifford Van Ommen, Bridgette Masters-Awatere and Natasha Tassell-Matamua
Originally coined by British economist Guy Standing, who has supplied the book’s foreword, the precariat is that layer of the population characterised by insecure employment, e.g. ‘zero hours’, fixed-term, casualised work, with a lack of the basic employment conditions available to the permanent, fulltime workforce. The editors have decided to use an expansive definition of the concept of precarity, taking in other forms beyond the world of work – migrants, the homeless, the disabled, beneficiaries, to name a few – all those whose life experiences are structured by uncertainty, perilousness and insufficiency.
Salutary Punishment : Taranaki Māori Prisoners in Dunedin, 1869-72 and 1879-81. Ian Church
Published posthumously by the Pātea Historical Society, well known Port Chalmers historian, Ian Church, turned to a subject he had been interested since being a schoolteacher in Pātea in the 1970s. This book is the result of years of research into the fate of the Pakakohi prisoners, and later the passive resisters of Parihaka, who were transported to Dunedin, many of whom died due to the conditions they endured undertaking hard labour in an unforgiving climate.
Whale Oil. Margie Thomson
In 2012 Auckland businessman Matt Blomfield fell victim to the slanderous lies of infamous right-wing blogger Cameron Slater in his Whale Oil blog. This is the story of his long but ultimately successful struggle to defend himself against an orchestrated smear campaign that culminated in an attempt on his life two years later when an armed intruder came to Blomfield’s house. It took seven years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove that Slater’s vendetta was baseless. Thomson’s book details the inadequate protections against such vicious digital attacks and the indifference of the police to Blomfield’s plight.