One of the early terms I learned in the publishing business is ‘bind-up’. It wasn’t the first term I learned. But it came close. It’s not what you might think. I mean, all books are bound, by definition. But ‘bind-up’ has a specific meaning. It refers to collecting several related books under one cover and … More Book bind-ups and how to avoid stepping in them
This year a whole swag of my older print books have been brought back into print as second editions. They’ve also come with new covers – strongly branded, themed, and to my mind highly evocative of the subject matter. I thought I might feature them for a few weeks, starting this week with the cover … More This week’s feature book cover
A decade or so ago I wrote a book on the psychology of military heroism. How is it, I wondered, that ordinary, everyday people, can find strength in themselves to do the extraordinary? It is a test to which many everyday people were put during the dominating wars of the twentieth century, when whole populations … More The search for the hero
A few years back I discovered something about myself in in an academic magazine. They’d reviewed my major book on the New Zealand Wars and, according to the reviewer, I’d apparently written this book to intentionally displace a particular Oxford professor in the public eye. It was the first I knew of this supposed motive. … More All about the history of Hawke’s Bay, and some other things
I have always thought it ironic that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed on 6 February 1840 largely by accident. If everything had gone according to prospective governor William Hobson’s plans, it would have been signed on 5 February. That was the day Maori assembled outside the house of James Busby at Waitangi to discuss … More The Treaty of Waitangi and ‘Hobson’s pledge’
It’s the eighty-seventh anniversary today of New Zealand’s most lethal historical disaster; the Hawke’s Bay earthquake. Around 10.47 am on the sunny morning of 3 February, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck the district and threw the towns of Napier and Hastings into ruin. Damage extended from Gisborne in the north to Whanganui in the south-west, … More Remembering the Hawke’s Bay quake of ’31 – and the ‘big ones’ of 1460
I was rather sorry to see that an Auckland memorial to the New Zealand Wars (1845-1872) was vandalised the other week. Those doing it, according to the reports, were protesting the act of colonial oppression that these wars represented. And that’s fair enough; the wars were indeed colonial assertions of power, although not quite in … More Remembering the New Zealand Wars
