A guide to print culture in Aotearoa, the impact of the book and other forms of print on New Zealand. This collection of essays by many contributors looks at the effect of print on Maori and their oral traditions, printing, publishing, bookselling, libraries, buying and collecting, readers and reading, awards, and the print culture of many other language groups in New Zealand.

Colonising New Zealand offers a radically new vision of the basis and process of Britain’s colonisation of New Zealand. It commences by confronting the problems arising from subjective and ever-evolving moral judgements about colonisation and examines the possibility of understanding colonisation beyond the confines of any preoccupations with moral perspectives. It then investigates the motives behind Britain’s imperial expansion, both in a global context and specifically in relation to New Zealand. The nature and reasons for this expansion are deciphered using the model of an organic imperial ecosystem, which involves examining the first cause of all colonisation and which provides a means of understanding why the disparate parts of the colonial system functioned in the ways that they did. Britain’s imperial system did not bring itself into being, and so the notion of the Empire having emerged from a supra-system is assessed, which in turn leads to an exploration of the idea of equilibrium-achievement as the Prime Mover behind all colonisation—something that is borne out in New Zealand’s experience from the late eighteenth century. This work changes profoundly the way New Zealand’s colonisation is interpreted, and provides a framework for reassessing all forms of imperialism.

"Books have long been objects of beauty. For many centuries and in societies across the world, bookmakers have lavished great care on the paper, binding materials, and illustrations that surround the words on a page as well as on the lettering or type in which those words appear. This volume, featuring an array of beautiful books from the British Library's collection, focuses on the sensory experience of holding these objects in your hands. Each book represents a specific moment in the development of the object-from scrolls and bound illuminated manuscripts to paperbacks and formatted digital information. The books range from the seventh century to the present and include examples from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East as well as Europe and North America, with separate features on book traditions in Africa and Oceania. Expert curators and other specialists explore these books from the perspective of design and manufacturing, with original art photographs that zero in on their texture and materials as well as graphics that detail their size, number of folios, and other specifications. Offering a wide-ranging look at the creation and use of books, this volume is itself an object of beauty"--

The Devil's Henchmen throwing Molotov cocktails at the Epitaph Riders in Christchurch's first gang war. Prime Minister Rob Muldoon surrounded by Black Power members at the Royal Tiger Tavern in Wellington. The Magogs and the Mothers, PEP schemes and P dealers, patches and ridgies, colours and class: for five decades gangs have had a massive impact on New Zealand life.

The Postcolonial Historical Novel is the first systematic work to examine how the historical novel has been transformed by its appropriation in postcolonial writing. It proposes new ways to understand literary realism, and explores how the relationship between history and fiction plays out in contemporary African and Australasian writing.