Bridget Williams Books: 132 books
The Forgotten Worker
The Rural Wage Earner in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2015
As New Zealand's agricultural industry developed in the twentieth century, the rural worker shearer, labourer, musterer began to disappear from public view. In this fascinating study, John Martin uncovers the lives of these 'forgotten workers', describing their working lives, relationships with employers,...
Haerenga
Early Māori Journeys Across the Globe
Language: English
Release Date: May 4, 2015
From the late eighteenth century, Māori travellers spread out from New Zealand across the globe. They travelled for a variety of reasons curiosity, adventure, commerce, political missions or duress and were part of an international movement of Māori of surprisingly large scale. Most travellers eventually...
The Big Smoke
New Zealand Cities, 18401920
Language: English
Release Date: October 10, 2016
Unlike in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere, urban history has never been sustained as a distinct field of scholarship in New Zealand. This is surprising, considering that since the early twentieth century most New Zealanders have lived in towns and cities 86 per cent were urban in 2014....
The Bike and Beyond
Life on Two Wheels in Aotearoa New Zealand
Language: English
Release Date: October 25, 2016
The bicycle is a time machine, a link to the past. But sometimes the bicycle also feels like a link to the future not the future we once imagined, the one with flying cars and replicators, but more like the one the Victorians might have pictured: streets crowded with bikes, strange ones of all kinds.'The...
by K. Emma Ng
Language: English
Release Date: July 10, 2017
Language: English
Release Date: July 10, 2017
A 2010 Human Rights Commission report found that Asian people reported higher levels of discrimination than any other minority in New Zealand.
K. Emma Ng shines light onto the persistence of anti-Asian sentiment in New Zealand. Her anecdotal account is based on her personal experience as a...
Up from Under
Women and Liberation in New Zealand, 19701985
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2015
Christine Dann was an early participant in the women’s movement that swept through New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s. Up from Under is a detailed and fascinating study of the achievements and aspirations of women at that time.Dann chronicles the upheavals and events of that time, examining developments...
New Territory
The Transformation of New Zealand, 198492
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2015
New Territory is an analysis of the turbulent years of the late 1980s and early 1990s by one of New Zealand's leading political commentators. Colin James looks at the way Labour’s structural reforms shattered the ‘prosperity consensus’ that had gone before, setting the changes of the 1980s in a...
Reclaiming the Future
New Zealand and the Global Economy
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2015
Jane Kelsey’s exploration of the effects of globalisation on the New Zealand economy was eye-opening when published in 1999. She offered a trenchantly expressed response to the neoliberal slogan of the time, ‘There is no alternative.’ Kelsey’s analysis remains a critical yardstick for current...
by Barbara Brookes
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2016
What would a history of New Zealand look like that rejected Thomas Carlyle’s definition of history as ‘the biography of great men’, and focused instead on the experiences of women? One that shifted the angle of vision and examined the stages of this country’s development from the points of...
In/visible Sight
The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand
Language: English
Release Date: December 29, 2015
In/visible Sight is a fascinating exploration of a little-known part of our history: the lives of part-Māori, part-Pākehā New Zealanders in the nineteenth century.Focussing on interracial intimacy between Ngāi Tahu and Pākehā settlers, it explores how intermarriage played a key role in shaping...
Portacom City
Reporting on the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes
Language: English
Release Date: December 8, 2017
The ripples the earthquake sent across the region and down the years continue to affect our lives, our livelihoods and endeavours.
On 4 September 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck 30 kilometres west of Christchurch. Half a year later, a 6.3 aftershock hit Christchurch, killing 185 people...
An Unsettled History
Treaty Claims in New Zealand Today
Language: English
Release Date: December 21, 2015
An Unsettled History squarely confronts the issues arising from the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand today. Alan Ward writes lucidly about the Treaty claims process, about settlements made, and those to come.New Zealand’s short history unquestionably reveals a treaty made and then repeatedly breached....
Creeks and Kitchens
A Childhood Memoir
Language: English
Release Date: April 3, 2013
Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers, Maurice Gee has written virtually no non-fiction. The exceptions are the two exquisite childhood reminiscences combined here into a memoir in this BWB Text.In this little known work, Gee describes in fascinating detail his...
The Stolen Island
Searching for 'Ata
Language: English
Release Date: November 21, 2016
‘What had happened to the stolen islanders? Had any survived slavery?’
One day in 1863 a strange ship stopped at ‘Ata, a tiny island in the wild seas between Tonga and New Zealand, and sailed away with one hundred and forty-four men, women and children. The ‘Atans were never heard from...