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What's New McNab  

The latest in the New Zealand collection.

The Drawings of Susan Te Kahurangi King. Tina Kukielski

Published alongside her first solo museum show, this is a beautiful catalogue of the stunning works of self-taught NZ artist Susan Te Kahurangi King. King stopped talking as a young child but continued to communicate through the medium of art. Her intense and highly idiosyncratic drawings are endlessly fascinating.

The Dunedin Sound: Some Disenchanted Evening. Ian Chapman

Several years ago, local music lecturer Ian Chapman decided to start collecting photographs and other memorabilia from the ‘Dunedin Sound’ bands. Eventually he decided that he needed to publish a book and went about soliciting stories from the bands, and other personalities from the scene. This is the result, a compelling addition to the handful of other books that cover the period and makes a good companion to Roger Shepherd’s recently published autobiography.

Hera Lindsay Bird. Hera Lindsay Bird

Bird has managed to shock and excite her readers with her sexually-explicit and often-times very funny poetry, and has generated a whole new audience for contemporary poetry through exposure on the Spinoff website. See what all the fuss is about and have a read for yourself.

New Zealand Wine: The Land, the Vines, the People. Warren Moran

Moran takes an in-depth look at the wine industry from its inception, approximately fifty years ago. Each key wine-growing region is studied, with information on climate, soils, geography and the different varieties of grapes that go into producing New Zealand’s top wines. This looks like it will become a crucial reference book for years to come.

New Zealand’s Rivers: An Environmental History. Catherine Knight

The state of our rivers has been of high political interest of late. If you want to understand how we got to where we are now, this book is an excellent starting point. Knight uncovers the history of river use in New Zealand contrasting the dominant utilitarian view of rivers as a seemingly limitless resource to exploit for industrial and agricultural uses, to those who value rivers for recreational, ecological and cultural reasons and recognise the necessity of sustainable use.

Robert Burns: Poet and Revolutionist. Harry Holland. Ed. Dougal McNeill

Socialist and literary scholar Dougal McNeill has rescued the Harry Holland’s work on Burns from oblivion and brought it back to life in this nicely edited volume from Steele Roberts Press. Holland was a lifelong socialist union organizer, who became the first leader of the Labour Party in 1916. He valued poetry and other cultural expression as a crucial part of the struggle for a better world, and Burns’ own radicalism spoke to his hatred of cant and injustice.

A Striking Truth. Helen McNeil

McNeil’s novel is set in 1986 rural New Zealand, around a strike in a paper mill, and brings to life the conflicts associated with the turn to neoliberal economic policies of the fourth Labour government, and the ordinary, everyday resistance of working class New Zealanders.