Stop the Train! I Want to Get On! by Graham Hutchins (Exisle, RRP $50): As a boy in the railway town of Te Kuiti, Graham Hutchins spent many hours watching the trains thundering through the town, fascinated by the machines. There’s something special about train travel and train enthusiasts then to be quite passionate about...
Optimum Health the Paleo Way, by Claire Yates (Exisle Publishing, RRP $40): It seems every week there is some new fad diet promising to fight flab in some miraculous way, but the so-called paleo diet is proof that there is really nothing new under the sun. The paleo way is is all about a...
Without Warning, by Damien Thomlinson with Michael Cowley (HarperCollins, RRP $37): It would take a special type of person to criticise this book. The front cover sums it up – a surfie-looking guy smiling into the camera, fit and tanned, standing on two prosthetic legs. Damien Thomlinson was an Australian Special Forces soldier whose...
New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame: 25 Kiwi Champions, by Maria Gill; illustrated by Marco Ivancic: Following on from the author’s earlier New Zealand Hall of Fame book, this does something that very few other “best Kiwi sporty types” books fail to do: it covers a variety of sports. I’m a proud Kiwi, so...
Victory: New Zealand Airmen and the Fall of Germany, by Max Lambert (HarperCollins, RRP $40): New Zealand pilots served in both the RNZAF and also the RAF during World War II, and this is an account of the heroic and often deadly role played by those Kiwi air crews during the final stages of...
Jim Henson: The Biography, by Brian Jay Jones (Virgin Books, RRP $40): I grew up with Sesame Street and later the Muppets and it has to be said: Jim Henson was a genius. This biography of the ultimate puppet-master, written by award- winning writer and biographer Brian Jay Jones, is a truly comprehensive read...
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