Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell

$26.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

*AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 2 FACT NOT FICTION BOOKCLUB AND READ BY BILL NIGHY ON AUDIO* 'I was hoping against hope that the penguin would survive because as of that instant he had a name, and with his name came the beginning of a bond which would last a life-time' Tom Michell is in his roaring twenties: sin gle, free-spirited and seeking adventure. He has a plane ticket to South America, a teaching position in a prestigious Argentine boarding school, and endless summer holidays. He even has a motorbike, Che Guevara style. What he doesn't need is a pet. What he really doesn't need is a pet penguin. Set against Argentina's turbulent years following the collapse of the corrupt Per nist regime, this is the heart-warming story of Juan Salvador the penguin, rescued by Tom from an oil slick in Uruguay just days before a new term. When the bird refuses to leave Tom's side, the young teacher has no choice but to smuggle it across the border, through customs, and back to school. Whether it's as the rugby team's mascot, the housekeeper's confidant, the host at Tom's parties or the most flamboyant swimming coach in world history, Juan Salvador transforms the lives of all he meets - in particular one homesick school boy. And as for Tom, he discovers in Juan Salvador a compadre like no other... The Penguin Lessons is a unique and moving true story which has captured imaginations around the globe - for all those who dreamed as a child they might one day talk to the animals. ...Show more

A House in the Mountains: the Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead

$40.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

The extraordinary story of four courageous women who helped form the Italian Resistance during the Second World War In the late summer of 1943, when Italy changed sides in the War and the Germans, now their enemies, occupied the north of the country, an Italian Resistance was born. Ada, Frida, Silvia a nd Bianca were four young Piedmontese women who joined the Resistance, living secretively in the mountains surrounding Turin. They were not alone. Between 1943 and 1945, as the Allies battled their way north, thousands of men and women throughout occupied Italy rose up and fought to liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made the partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women in its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued across the country pitted neighbour against neighbour, and brought out the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together as a coherent fighting force. And the women's contribution was invaluable - they fought, carried messages and weapons, provided safe houses, laid mines and took prisoners. Ada's house deep in the mountains became a meeting place and refuge for many of them. The death rattle of Mussolini's two decades of Fascist rule - with its corruption, greed and anti-Semitism - was unrelentingly violent and brutal, but for the partisan women it was also a time of camaraderie and equality, pride and optimism. They had proved, to themselves and to the world, what resolve, tenacity and above all exceptional courage could achieve. ...Show more

Someone's Wife by Linda Burgess

$37.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General | Reading Level: near fine

A brilliant collection of personal essays from a quietly subversive writer. These pieces read like the freshest of recent novels: clever, restrained and wittily observant. They range across the personal and the observational. There are essays on her lifetime of being an All Black wife (once an AB, alway s an AB); her love of teaching, education and the young; and a powerful essay on the death of her baby, Toby, striking in its honesty.  Linda is interested in family and friendship; shared and sometimes distorted memories. Her personal truths link to universal truths. Linda explores the era in which she grew up, and her experiences are timeless. She looks at living overseas, at children leaving home, at house-hunting in Wellington, at travelling with a grandchild, at Leonard Cohen concerts as tribal gatherings.  In the hands of a writer as accomplished as Linda Burgess, these essays are riveting and engaging. ...Show more

James Cook Master Mariner Navigator and Cartographer - the Man Behind the Myth (HB) by Peter FitzSimons

$50.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General | Reading Level: 3 Biography

Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable names in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated. But who was the real James Cook? This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, navigator and cartographer of h is era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation. Leading a crew of men into uncharted territories, Cook would face the best and worst of humanity as he took himself and his crew to the edge of the known world - and beyond. With his masterful storytelling talent, Peter FitzSimons brings James Cook to life. Focusing on his most iconic expedition, the voyage of the Endeavour, where Cook first set foot on Australian and New Zealand soil, FitzSimons contrasts Cook against another figure who looms large in Australasian history: Joseph Banks, the aristocratic botanist. As they left England, Banks, a rich, famous playboy, was everything that Cook was not. The voyage tested Cook's character and would help define his legacy. Now, 240 years after James Cook's death, FitzSimons reveals what kind of man James was at heart. His strengths, his weaknesses, his passions and pursuits, failures and successes.     ...Show more

Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump by Neal Katyal; Sam Koppelman

$25.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

What is impeachment? How does it work? And why is it so urgent to impeach Donald Trump? In this clear and direct book, celebrated Supreme Court lawyer and former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal explains what impeachment is, why it's in the U.S. constitution and why Donald Trump has left Congress an d the American people with no choice but to remove him from office.No one is above the law. This belief is fundamental to how the American system of government is meant to function - as fundamental as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - held sacred by Democrats and Republicans alike. But as Katyal argues in Impeach, if President Trump is not held accountable for repeatedly asking foreign powers to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, this could very well mark the end of US democracy. To quote President George Washington's Farewell Address: 'Foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.' Impeachment should always be a last resort, explains Katyal, but the founders, core principles, and the Constitution leave no choice but to impeach President Trump - before it's too late. ...Show more

Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Brotherhood and Sacrifice by Adam Makos

$25.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

"Devotion is the gripping story of the US Navy's most famous aviator duo - Tom Hudner, a white, blue-blooded New Englander, and Jesse Brown, a black sharecropper's son from Mississippi. Against all odds, Jesse beat back racism to become the Navy's first black aviator. Against all expectations, Tom passe d up a free ride at Harvard to fly fighter planes for his country. Barely a year after President Truman ordered the desegregation of the military, the two became wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32 and went on to fight side-by-side in the Korean War. In the war's climatic battle at the Chosin Reservoir, Tom and Jesse flew headlong into waves of troops in order to defend an entire division of Marines trapped on a frozen lake. Jesse was shot down and pinned in the burning wreckage of his fighter. Tom then faced an unthinkable choice - to see his friend burn to death or to go down in a blaze of glory, flouting the rules to crash-land behind enemy lines and save Jesse - or die trying. The question was crueller than the freezing wind: How far will you go to save a friend?" ...Show more

A Game of Birds and Wolves by Simon Parkin

$38.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

It's 1941. Imagine you're Winston Churchill. The Battle of the Atlantic is a disaster. Supply ships ferrying vital weapons, food and fuel from North America are being torpedoed by the German U-boats. You are lying to the country about the number of ships sunk. You are lying about the number of men kille d. Without the supply ships Britain will starve. The tide of the war is turning in Germany's favour. This is the story of the game of battleships that won the Second World War. In 1941 Prime Minster Winston Churchill gathered a group of unlikely heroes - a retired naval captain and eight brilliant young women, the youngest only seventeen years-old - to form a secret strategy unit. On the top floor of a ramshackle HQ in Liverpool, the Western Approaches Tactical Unit spent day and night playing war games to crack the U-boat tactics. A Game of Birds and Wolves takes us from the steamy fug of a U-boat as the German aces coordinate their wolfpack, to the tense atmosphere of operation room as the British team plot battles at sea on the map. The story of Operation Raspberry and its unsung heroines has never been told before. Investigative journalist Simon Parkin brings these hidden figures into the light in this gripping tale of war at sea. ...Show more

The Note Through the Wire by Doug Gold

$37.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

An extraordinary true story of a love that emerged, against all odds, from the brutal war in Nazi-occupied Europe.

When the Dogs Don't Bark a Forensic Scientist's Search for the Truth by Angela Gallop

$35.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Taming the Wild by Kelly Wilson

$45.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Wild Kaimanawas set her on a journey of self-discovery, teaching her not only the language of horses, but the powerful impact they can have on our lives. In Taming the Wild, Kelly Wilson shares her training philosophies for creating happy horses that love their lives among humans. From learning how to r ead a horse's body language to taming a horse and starting it under saddle, this book is the ultimate how-to guide for everyday people training their own horse, whether wild or domestic. It is also the personal, uplifting story of the 24 wild horses Kelly helped save from slaughter during the 2018 Kaimanawa muster, and the experience of mentoring 10 riders as they tamed their very first horses. Full of breathtaking photography, Taming the Wild will educate and inspire novice and experienced riders alike, or anyone who wants to better understand the wild ways of these exquisite creatures. ...Show more

Southern Nights: The story of New Zealand's night sky by Naomi Arnold

$65.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Aotearoa New Zealand was founded on stargazing. It was celestial navigation that brought the first people here, and it was tatai arorangi, Maori astronomy, that helped people survive once they arrived. There is no better place on Earth to view the brilliance of other worlds.  Covering eclipses, aur orae, comets and constellations, backyard observatories, traditional stargazers and world-class astrophotographers, this is the unique story of Te Whanau Marama, our family of light - the night sky that glows above us all.  ...Show more

Tools and Weapons: Promise and Peril in the Digital Age by Brad Smith; Carol Ann Browne

$35.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General | Reading Level: very good

"A clear, compelling guide to some of the most pressing debates in technology today." - Bill Gates, from the foreword From Microsoft's President and one of the tech industry's wisest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. __________ Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: when your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. Now, though, we have reached an inflection point: Silicon Valley has moved fast and it has broken things. A new understanding has emerged that companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future. And governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation that is impacting our communities and changing the world. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith takes us into the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no pre-existing playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of AI, big tech's relationship to inequality and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir," the book opens up the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points, as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. Every tool can be a weapon in the wrong person's hands, and companies are being challenged in entirely new ways to embrace the totality of their responsibilities. We have moved from a world in which Silicon Valley could take no prisoners to one in which tech companies and governments must work together to address the challenges and adapt to the changes technology has unleashed. There are huge ramifications to be thought through, and Brad Smith provides a marvellous and urgently necessary contribution to that effort. __________ In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith takes us behind the scenes on some of the biggest stories to hit the tech industry in the past decade. From Edward Snowden's NSA leak to the NHS WannaCry ransomware attack, this book is essential reading to understand what's happening in the world around us. ...Show more