Non-Fiction General - History

This edition officially Out of Print. Madras Cafe Books have some stock of new copies. New Zealand was the last country in the world to be discovered and settled by humankind. It was also the first to introduce full democracy. Between those events, and in the century that followed the franchise, the movements and the conflicts of human history have been played out more intensively and more rapidly in New Zealand than anywhere else on Earth.The Penguin History of New Zealand, a new book for a new century, tells that story in all it... read more

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Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August 1945, five men connected by happenstance fought the key battles of the war against Japan. In The Pacific, Hugh Ambrose focuses on the real-life stories of these five men, who put their lives on the line for their country. The book is published to coincide with the broadcast of the brand new HBO miniseries The Pacific on Australia's Channel 7 in April 2010, executive produced by Tom... read more

This book originated from the 1918 Year of Victory Conference, convened by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, November 2008 marking the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War. First World War scholars from a number of nations, gathered to present their research findings and share their insights into the Great War.

During Queen Victoria's long reign British power was at its zenith and almost every year saw British troops in actioin in some part of the globe. There were many victories but there were also disastrous occasions when the thin red line was broken, melted away, or was simply not there to begin with. Professor Denis Judd has written a vivid report spiced with contemporary eyewitness accounts of these blunders, including the Retreat from Kabul in 1842, the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, the Siege of Cawnpore, the Invasion o... read more

This remarkable collection of letters provides a rare female perspective on life in colonial Canterbury, when letter writing was the only way to keep a close relationship with family members on the other side of the world. The writers were four women of the Hall family. Unlike Charlotte Godley and Lady Barker, whose correspondence, experiences and impressions of the time have been widely promulgated, the Hall women were anonymous members of the middle class in England with no ties with the aristocracy. But ironically, the le... read more

How would you feel if you woke one morning to find your partner lying dead beside you, not just still and cold, but their skin turned purple-black?Or if your neighbour’s children came to ask for food because their parents had been ‘asleep’ for two days... read more

Houses. . . homes. . .the house as a physical structure, or the home as a place of emotional intimacy? Or is it the home as an institution? At Home in New Zealand is a vigorous exploration of the idea of 'home' throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Architects discuss housing styles - the place of the Gothic in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern housing in the twentieth century, women's role in relation to modernization. Historians assess the famous state housing scheme of the 1930s and 1940s, the p... read more

This book is based on the oral histories of 130 women who worked as land girls during the Second World War and the written interviews of 90 others. Wartime land girls broke new ground. Throughout the nation, for the first time, women were in paid employment on farms, making administrative decisions. Previously, wives and daughters of farmers laboured on farms mainly out of economic need, a practice described as 'a disgraceful blot on our national life'! But from 1940, city girls of seventeen and over were sent to work on sheep,... read more

The Australian Women's Weekly has resonated with generations of Australian women and men. There's barely a family whose life hasn't been touched by this extraordinary magazine at some stage. This book covers 75 years with historic stories and photographs.

This memoir of Jewish family history is also a documentation of atrocities inflicted by the fascist militia during the German occupation of Eastern Europe. It is a personal account of the legacy of the Holocaust.

Many of our forebears emigrated to New Zealand with little more than the dream of a better life. No Simple Passage tells the story of the passengers on board the London in 1842, undertaking a four-month journey from London to Port Nicholson at the end of which they will begin the process of becoming New Zealanders. Keeping company with her ancestor Rebecca Remington, author Jenny Robin Jones imagines herself on board and records life at sea on the London using the journals of the ship's surgeon and a cabin passenger. We meet the e... read more

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For New Zealand, World War One was wholly avoidable, wholly unnecessary - and almost wholly disastrous. Stevan Eldred-Grigg believes that the enormous cost of the war to our people was way too high - and that we still feel its effects, both socially and culturally, today. This is excellent narrative non-fiction, analyzing our history in a novel way. It's very accessible, almost chatty, but is backed up bymeticulous research. Stevan goes against the accepted line and gives us a fascinating look at our social history before, during a... read more

May 2009 is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Published in conjunction with the New Zealand Herald, Auckland Harbour Bridge - 50 Years of a City Icon is a wonderful celebration in photographs of the bridge's creation, development and anniversary. Broken into sections, the book explores the construction, opening, extensions (the clip-ons), toll booth closure, human interest stories and the future. The New Zealand Herald opened its archives of clippings and photographs to make this book the wonderful... read more

This collection of first-hand accounts, drawn from early writings and out-of-print books, lets the first Europeans to visit this country tell their own stories of exploration, risk and adventure. Abel Tasman and Joseph Banks write of their first encounters with the people of this new land, followed by missionaries, traders, whalers and sealers, regency bucks, gentlemen scientists and entrepreneurs keen to explore its possibilities.
Told in their own words, these stories bring to life a young country yet to come under British ... read more

This books lists chronologically, by month and day, significant events that affected New Zealand and New Zealanders, but this is no mere shopping list of dates. Each entry is like a potted biography of how New Zealand developed as a nation and of the events that made the news at the time. It begins with pre-European times (when definite dates were known) and traverses the exploration years, the colonial period, the changing times of the 1890s and 1900s, both world wars and up to the present. It is a self-contained history of New Ze... read more

The decision by TVNZ to commit over $5 million dollars to the most ambitious historical show ever produced in NZ has generated major headlines. The show went to air in September 2005. Tying-in with the show, but also a stand-alone book, this comprehensive title is one of the finest one-volume national histories produced. Written by the historians of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage who were the drivers behind the TV scripts, the book is made accessible to ordinary New Zealanders using many panels, maps, time-lines and other vis... read more

Frontier of Dreams accompanies the 13-part television series of the same name - New Zealand's most substantial history documentary in a quarter of a century. The book is written by a pantheon of New zealand's leading historians, is in full colour and lavishly illustrated with over 450 carefully chosen photographs and artworks, many previously unpublished. There are specially drawn amps, images from the television series, and handy timelines which set out the key dates and events of each chapter. A sumptuous book!