Encounters and Collisions by Gordon McLauchlan

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

It was widely reported, when he died earlier in 2020, that Gordon McLauchlan’s last book was "Stop the Clock" but, in fact, he was finalising details of Encounters until several days before his death in January. In 26 engaging and provocative essays, Gordon McLauchlan writes about people, illustrious an d unknown, he has rubbed up against since his Press Gallery days in Wellington in the early 1950s. He gives fresh, and beautifully written, insights into a kaleidoscope of human nature – providing new perspectives on famous politicians, writers, broadcasters and ‘ordinary’ people who piqued his interest. Most – like Holland, Holyoake, Holmes, Key, Lange, Shadbolt, Davin and Ihimaera – are New Zealanders. Others – like Noam Chomsky and Felipe Fernández-Armesto– are from elsewhere. Gordon McLauchlan was one of New Zealand best-known and most popular writers, cultural critics and social historians. In a long career he was a newspaper journalist, magazine editor, columnist, book reviewer, radio commentator, and television frontperson. For 10 years he was the editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Encyclopedia, and the author of more than 20 books, with The Passionless People the most famous of several bestsellers. ...Show more

Joe Biden American Dreamer by Evan Osnos

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

A concise, brilliant and incisive examination of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his lifelong quest for the presidency This definitive history of Joe Biden tells the poignant story of the man – both his life in politics and the series of personal tragedies that have marked him – drawing on extensive co nversations with Biden himself from his time at the Whitehouse to his home during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as interviews with President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and some of the biggest names in American politics. Blending up-close journalism with broader context, award-winning New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos illuminates the life of Joe Biden and captures the characters and meaning of an extraordinary presidential election. In his nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy – a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history… ...Show more

Life as a Novel: Biography of Maurice Shadbolt Volume 2 1973-2004 by Phillip Temple

$45.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

$70.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir | Reading Level: Easy

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of th e first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.  ...Show more

Condé Nast - The Man and His Empire by Susan Ronald

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

The first biography in over thirty years of Cond Nast, the pioneering publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair and main rival to media magnate William Randolph Hearst.   Cond Nast's life and career was as high profile and glamorous as his magazines. Moving to New York in the early twentieth century with jus t the shirt on his back, he soon became the highest paid executive in the United States, acquiring Vogue in 1909 and Vanity Fair in 1913. Alongside his editors, Edna Woolman Chase at Vogue and Frank Crowninshield at Vanity Fair, he built the first-ever international magazine empire, introducing European modern art, style, and fashions to an American audience.   Credited with creating the "caf society," Nast became a permanent fixture on the international fashion scene and a major figure in New York society. His superbly appointed apartment at 1040 Park Avenue, decorated by the legendary Elsie de Wolfe, became a gathering place for the major artistic figures of the time. Nast launched the careers of icons like Cecil Beaton, Clare Boothe Luce, Lee Miller, Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward. He left behind a legacy that endures today in media powerhouses such as Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, and Graydon Carter.   Written with the cooperation of his family on both sides of the Atlantic and a dedicated team at Cond Nast Publications, critically acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald reveals the life of an extraordinary American success story. ...Show more

One Life by Megan Rapinoe

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Megan Rapinoe is one of the world's most talented athletes. But beyond her massive professional success on the soccer field, Rapinoe has become an icon and ally to millions, boldly speaking out on the issues that matter most. In recent years, she's become one of the faces of the equal pay movement and h er tireless activism for LGBTQ rights has earned her global support. In One Life, Rapinoe embarks on a thoughtful and unapologetic discussion of social justice and politics. Raised in a conservative small town in northern California, the youngest of six, Rapinoe was four years old when she kicked her first soccer ball. Her parents encouraged her love for the game, but also urged her to volunteer at homeless shelters and food banks. Her passion for community engagement never wavered through high school or college, all the way up to 2016, when she took a knee during the national anthem in solidarity with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, to protest racial injustice and police brutality - the first high-profile white athlete to do so. The backlash was immediate, but it couldn't compare to the overwhelming support. Rapinoe became a force of social change, both on and off the field. Using anecdotes from her own life and career, from suing the United States Soccer Federation alongside her teammates over gender discrimination to her widely publicized refusal to visit the White House, Rapinoe discusses the obligation we all have to speak up, and reveals the impact each of us can have on our communities. As she declared during the soccer team's victory parade in New York in 2019, " T his is everybody's responsibility, every single person here, every single person who is not here, every single person who doesn't want to be here, every single person who agrees and doesn't agree.... It takes everybody. This is my charge to everybody. Do what you can. Do what you have to do. Step outside yourself. Be more. Be better. Be bigger than you've ever been before." ...Show more

Kamala's Way by Dan Morain

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Synopsis coming soon.......

Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living by Glennon Doyle

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent - even from ourselves. For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realised they had come to her from within. This was her own voice - the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to stop abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world's expectations of her. She stopped being good so she could be free. She stopped pleasing and started living. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanising wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is also the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honour our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts. Untamed shows us how to be brave. And, as Glennon insists, 'The braver we are, the luckier we get.'   ...Show more

English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm 'A beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape.' - Nigel Slater 'Just about perfect.' - Wendell Berry James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. But this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.   ...Show more

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life by Jane Sherron de Hart

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

'A vivid account of a remarkable life' --The Washington Post In this bestselling comprehensive, revelatory biography -- fifteen years of interviews and research in the making -- historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg's passion for justice, her adv ocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs was her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to "repair the world," with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. Ruth's journey begins with her mother, who died tragically young but whose intellect inspired her daughter's feminism. It stretches from Ruth's days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn's James Madison High School to Cornell University, and to Harvard and Columbia Law Schools; to becoming one of the first female law professors in the US and having to fight for equal pay and hide her second pregnancy to avoid losing her job; and to arguing momentous anti-sex discrimination cases before the US Supreme Court. All this, even before being nominated in 1993 to become the second woman on the court, where her crucial decisions and dissents are still making history. Intimately, personably told, this biography offers unprecedented insight into a pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, American society, and American character and spirit will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond. ...Show more

Peter and Me: When a love story becomes a carer's anguish by Helen Ritchie

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

When a love story becomes a carer’s anguish They first met when Helene was 18 years old. Together for nearly 40 years, this is the story of their relationship through Peter’s intense last four years involving 24/7 care, the impact of a horrible illness and a shameful and ad hoc health system. It aims to give a voice to isolated and exploited carers, especially those in private homes, and to expose fundamental issues about humanity and failed systems. It calls for and it calls a Royal Commission inquiry and a ‘bipartisan’ Parliamentary response to produce viable solutions. ...Show more

Under the Covers: Secrets of a Magazine Editor by Jenny Lynch

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Former editor Jenny Lynch takes the wraps off the unreported side of life in print, explodes myths, unearths secrets and shows that even on seemingly conservative publications such as the New Zealand Woman's Weekly things were seldom exactly as they seemed. Her memoir, aptly titled "Under the Covers", i s a revealing account of what went on behind the closed doors of various editorial offices and newsrooms during one of the most colourful periods in magazine and newspaper history. Lynch's 30-year path to her top job was full of drama and off-beat activities. But nothing she had experienced before she became editor of the Weekly prepared her for the challenges that lay ahead. Indeed, the magazine's battle for dominance in what became known as The Magazine Wars was fought against a backdrop of management turbulence and ownership changes. Peppered with the names of those who have touched the author's life, including the famous and the fleeting, "Under the Covers" will appeal to everyone who enjoys reading about the ever-changing world of print media. ...Show more