History

James Cook is one of the most contested figures in Aotearoa New Zealand’s past. Today, his name evokes not only exploration and scientific endeavour but also the violence of first encounters and the enduring legacies of colonisation. In...

On May 19, 1942, during WWII, a U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey fifty miles from New Orleans. The submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia. Most onboard were merchant seamen, but there were also civilians,...

The islands of Aotearoa New Zealand were once inhabited by birds. Shrieking, warbling, tinkling, booming. Poised, strutting, gliding, dancing in scribbled loops through the air. Forest, river, marsh, mountain, ocean, shore-everything charged with their mauri, life force.Across centuries,...

Take a joy ride through 60+ years of America’s most iconic pony car, model by model, with this officially licensed and lavishly illustrated reference. According to many, Mustang is the only vehicle that actually deserves the title “pony car.”...

The gripping untold story of Britain's first Antarctic expedition -- a daring journey that launched the legendary careers of Scott and Shackleton. Before Robert Falcon Scott's tragic race to the South Pole and Ernest Shackleton's legendary Endurance, there...

'A book brimming with deep insight, courage and conscience. Astonishingly beautiful, subtle and simply unforgettable.' Elif Shafak Winner of the Women's Prize Non-Fiction Prize 2026Book of the YearThe Times • Financial Times • Guardian • Observer • Economist...

A visual exploration of the Impressionists' love affair with the new thinking about garden design that swept 19th-century France. In the Gardens of Impressionism explores the Impressionists' fascination with gardens, parks and flowers in the context of the...

In the spirit of previous volumes, Damien Lewis reveals the untold stories of the war's most daring and audacious escapes as executed by the world's most famous fighting force, the SAS. Reaching back into the earliest origins of...

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history's first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a...

A paperback edition of the massive bestselling HB. Charles Upham was the most highly decorated soldier in the Commonwealth forces of WWII, and could arguably be called the bravest soldier of the war. An unassuming stock worker/ valuer...

The devastation caused by the Nazi regime during the Second World War was vast and multifaceted, leaving a profound and lasting impact on the world. In response, the Allies brought the leading civilian and military representatives of wartime...

A major work by a distinguished historian, Garrison World examines the lives of soldiers and families constituting the British military presence in New Zealand and other territories during the nineteenth century. The British Empire's expansion relied on a...

A fascinating and detailed analysis of one of the most iconic works of SurrealismIn 1931, Salvador Dali (1904-89) painted The Persistence of Memory, a work that has become virtually synonymous both with the artist and with Surrealism itself. In...

The Canterbury Mountaineering Club is one of New Zealand's Leading regional climbing clubs. Today members of the Club climb mountains, ski or parapente off them and race through them. When the Club began its life in 1925 as...

Professor Paul Moon is one of New Zealand's most prolific authors; his latest biography on photographer Ans Westra garnered glowing reviews. In this book his meticulous research shows, through selected art works, how imperial art became a form...

The Cold War had been over for two decades when, in 2010, ten Russian agents were arrested in the United States after a decade-long FBI operation. Among the spies were three couples who had lived as Americans for...

Born Maori (Ngatikahungunu), raised Pakeha, Kim Rangiaonui Logan's father was commander in D Company, 8th Maori Battalion, but returned from war a damaged man, unable to cope with his children. But this is no misery memoir. Kim climbed...

The Accidental Soldier is brilliant. It's hilarious. It's laugh-out-loud funny. A confident 11/10.-The Wavell Room This book is absolutely incredible. It made me laugh more than any book in so many years. I found the writing just so...

In Crucible of Light, Elizabeth Drayson pulls together the epic interwoven history of the Muslim and Christian worlds over an 800-year span, taking in the conquest and re-conquest of Spain, the meteoric rise of Arabo-Norman Sicily, the Ottoman...

What draws us to the night sky and how can we make sense of all that lies there?In this unique synthesis of science and culture, former astrophysicist and writer Joanne Baker charts the global history of humanity's relationship with the cosmos....

Agent Zo tells the incredible true story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 resistance fighter known as 'Zo'. The only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army...

 'The Hollows Boys' is the story of the helicopter deer recovery era in Fiordland, told through the lives of three brothers, Gary, Mark and Kim Hollows. There is the usual dare-devil 'boy's own adventure' side of the story....

On 8 November 1942, British and American troops invaded French North Africa as part of Operation Torch, the largest amphibious operation of the war to date. The Germans responded by flooding troops into Tunisia and the stage was...