By Alice Te Punga Somerville. Published by Bridget Williams Books, 2020. Reviewed by Ann Gilroy

This is an intriguing and clever book. Alice writes: “There was never a single beginning point for the history of this place” and in 250 entries has demonstrated that point. We might think that we know the story of Captain Cook’s visit to New Zealand over 250 years ago but Alice shows that “our story” is a single facet, an airbrushed perspective as it were, of Cook’s colonial legacy. Her 250 starting points for other stories introduce the perspectives of Māori and people from other Pacific islands of Cook’s travels as well as connections globally. The reader is taken on a journey of discovery and introduced to those who also have a real story about this visit 250 years ago which has impacted their lives and place since. Fundamentally, in heralding Cook’s visit as a discovery by the “civilised world” of the “native world”, we blinded ourselves to the truth of colonialism and racism. Alice does not hammer the reader — she doesn’t need to. The 250 story beginnings are informative and convincing, beg for questions and upset our well-known facts. The book will be a valuable resource for the new history curriculum. I loved it.