We always tend to focus on Gallipoli as an Anzac story but it was a battle involving seven countries, all of which suffered in the hell of the 1915 campaign. This new book takes a fresh approach to telling the…
Category: History
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The ugly face of war
Reconstructing Faces: The Art and Wartime Surgery of Gillies, Pickerill, McIndoe and Mowlem, by Murray C Meikle (Otago University Press, RRP $60): While the horrors of war are something we would all rather avoid, sometimes it is through those horrors…
Tracing NZ’s tartan history
Unpacking the Kists: The Scots in New Zealand, by Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking and Jim McAloon (Otago University Press, RRP $70): This is an informative study of the nature and effect of Scottish migration to New Zealand. It covers myriad…
Tracking a moment in history
The Trigger, by Tim Butcher (Chatto & Windus, RRP $40): Most people know that it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that eventually triggered the beginning of World War I, but the story of the man who…
What shaped our evolutionary path?
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari (Harvill Secker, RRP $38): With a PhD in history from Oxford University, Dr Yuval Noah Harari is well-qualified to examine the history of us – the human species. Sapiens: A Brief…
Hold it in your hands and feel the history
Paper: An Elegy, by Ian Sansom (Fourth Estate, RRP $30): Where would we be without paper? Sure, the digital age has changed the way we read our books, magazines and newspapers, but we didn’t get there without killing a few…
Author follows path laid out by Khan
On the Trail of Genghis Khan, by Tim Cope (Allen & Unwin, RRP $37): I’m done some travelling over the years but it’s fair to say that Mongolia wasn’t high on the list of destinations. Not for any particular reason,…
Aussie journalist gives Gallipoli insight
Gallipoli, by Peter FitzSimons (Random House, RRP $57) Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter FitzSimons takes readers into the heart of the chaotic and devastating Gallipoli campaign in this insightful and comprehensive book. On 25 April 1915, Allied forces landed on…
Soldiers’ snaps bring war home
Anyone attending Anzac Day services will be left in no doubt that there is growing interest among younger Kiwis in our military history. Each year, it seems there are more and more families at these services and there is a…
A little something to cure what ails you
Pills & Potions At the Cotter Medical History Trust, by Claire Le Couteur (Otago University Press, RRP $25): This little book offers a fascinating trip down the memory lane of pills, potions and, in some cases I am sure, snake-oil…