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Antipodean Empire : The New Zealand and Australian Land Company in New Zealand. Noel Crawford
Agriculture in New Zealand has been big business for a long time and one of the biggest companies to profit from the land was the Scottish-owned New Zealand and Australian Land Company. Founded by Glasgow merchant James Morton in the late 1850s, by the end of the 19th century the New Zealand and Australian Land Company had become the largest sheep farmer in New Zealand. Morton’s company has been enormously influential on the economic development of the country and on the lives of countless southern South Islanders.
Birdstories: A History of the Birds of New Zealand. Geoff Norman
Norman’s wonderfully illustrated Birdstories reflects on the extraordinary development of Aotearoa’s birds, many of which are unique to this country. 80 million years ago the landmass that was to become New Zealand separated from the Gondwana supercontinent. New Zealand species evolved in isolation from the rest of the world, an isolation that gave rise to our unique bird life – the moa, tūi, kiwi, takahē, kākāpō – to name but a few.
Hudson & Halls : The Food of Love. Joanne Drayton
Drayton celebrates the legacy of the incomparable and much-loved Hudson & Halls, New Zealand’s celebrity TV chefs who helped bring the lives of gay men into the open and break down societal taboos even though they were both still ‘in the closet’.
My Body, My Business : New Zealand Sex Workers in an Era of Change. Caren Wilton
Oral historian Caren Wilton has gathered eleven personal testimonies from sex workers in New Zealand in which sex workers speak frankly about their own lives in and outside the of the sex industry. It is now fifteen years since the decriminalisation of prostitution and New Zealand remains the only country in the world to do so.
The New Biological Economy : How New Zealanders are Creating Value from the Land. Eric Pawson and the Biological Economies Team
The New Biological Economy focusses on the question of New Zealand’s agricultural producers ‘moving up the value chain’. In other words, producing higher value goods from our abundant ‘biological’ resources instead of simply pumping out high volumes of simple agricultural commodities like milk powder or raw, unprocessed logs. Pawson and the Biological Economies team look at examples like Icebreaker merino, kiwifruit, the Central Otago wine industry and ecotourism, to draw more general lessons as to how New Zealand could develop a higher-value, sustainable future for its primary industries.
Scarfie Flats of Dunedin. Sarah Gallagher with Ian Chapman
Sarah Gallagher has been compiling the names of Dunedin student flats since 2000 for her Dunedin Flat Names Project, documenting Dunedin’s ephemeral scarfie culture for posterity. Now in collaboration with Ian Chapman, aka Dr Glam, Gallagher has produced this substantial pictorial work featuring a selection of some of the wittiest, funniest and smuttiest flat names with historic photographs and ephemera of the time. The book includes an index of flats by decade, street and name.
Theo Schoon: A Biography. Damian Skinner
One of New Zealand’s lesser known but most important artistic modernists, Theo Schoon came here in 1939 from the former Dutch East Indies. His work brought together a variety of influences from Javanese and Balinese dance and gamelan music, Māori rock drawings and the European avant-garde to create a fascinating artistic amalgam. Skinner gives Schoon the attention he deserves as one of the pivotal figures of New Zealand modern art.