Many a Muddy Morning by Mark Warren

$37.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

The off-roading, hillseeking and muddymorning adventures of farming legend Mark Warren. Mark Warren is a larger-than-life character of rural New Zealand. He grew up with an obsession with Land Rovers, council tip trucks, bulldozers, hill-country tractors, snow-plows - basically anything with four wheels . Interwoven with his stories of working as a grease monkey, rallying in a purpose built Toyota Landy, rescuing ski-bunnies off icy mountain roads, is his tale of being thrust into single-handedly managing a muddy Hawke's Bay farm in his twenties, just as Rogernomics was introduced and the removal of subsidies that would change the face of farming forever. Many a Muddy Morning is a funny, original and affecting read that will appeal to petrolheads and farmers alike. Mark brings together the traits we love to celebrate in our rural heartland in a book that is a colourful addition to the Kiwi story. ...Show more

Milk! A 10,000 year old Food Fracas by Mark Kurlansky

$35.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk becam e our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago, originally as a source of cheese, yogurt, kefir, and all manner of edible innovations that rendered lactose digestible, and then, when genetic mutation made some of us lactose-tolerant, milk itself. Before the industrial revolution, it was common for families to keep dairy cows and produce their own milk. But during the nineteenth century mass production and urbanization made milk safety a leading issue of the day, with milk-borne illnesses a common cause of death. Pasteurization slowly became a legislative matter. And today milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement, and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurization. Profoundly intertwined with human civilization, milk has a compelling and a surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid's diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics. ...Show more

Two Slices of Bread: Interned in a Japanese Concentration Camp- Then Finding Peace at Last... at the Bottom of the World by Ingrid Cole

$40.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

 Interned in a Japanese concentration camp-then finding peace at last... at the bottom of the world. You will be moved beyond words, even to tears-a true story of heartaches and triumphs... As a young child in Holland, Ingrid's uncle offered her another slice of bread. "Two slices of bread?" she a sked, never having been allowed that many before! Her memory jumped to the starvation and cruelty her family had experienced at the hands of extremely cruel captors. Ingrid Coles was born in Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), on 28 November 1942, during the Japanese occupation of WWII. Three months after her birth, she and her family were incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps. Her father died, aged 43, in a prison camp. Her 6-year old brother died of starvation and pneumonia en route to Holland, when the family was evacuated during the Indonesian War of Independence. Life changed drastically in the Netherlands for Ingrid and her three siblings, who had to learn how to cope with their mother's post-traumatic stress and their own war-time experiences. However, Ingrid, now orphaned aged 16 in 1958, had a clear idea of her future calling and emigrated to New Zealand to begin nursing training. This memoir traces Ingrid's background and growing-up years, revealing the secret of her successful life in her country of adoption (New Zealand); and how she overcame the hurts and hurdles of the past - even to how she learned to forgive her oppressors. ...Show more

Ghost Riders - The Secret Wartime Mission to Save the World's Most Precious Horses by Mark Felton

$33.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

April 1945. As Alliedbombs rain down on Europe, a 400-year-old institution looks set to be wiped offthe face of the Earth. The famous white Lipizzaner stallions of the SpanishRiding School in Vienna, unique and precious animals representing centuries ofcareful breeding, are scattered across rural Austri a and Czechoslovakia inareas soon to be swallowed up by Soviet forces - there, doubtless, to becomerations for the Red Army.   Their only hope lies withthe Americans: what if a small, highly mobile US task force could be sent deepbehind German lines, through fanatical SS troops, to rescue the horses beforethe Soviets arrive. Just five light tanks, a handful of armoured cars and jeeps,and 300 battle-weary GIs must plunge headlong into the unknown on a rescuemission that could change the course of European history.   So beginsOperation Cowboy, the greatest Second World War story that has never been fullytold. GIs will join forces with surrendered German soldiers and liberatedprisoners of war to save the world's finest horses from fanatical SS and theruthless Red Army in an extraordinary battle during the last few days of thewar in Europe. ...Show more

Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin

$40.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

____________________________________ BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK ____________________________________ HMS Erebus was one of the great exploring ships, a veteran of groundbreaking expeditions to the ends of the Earth. In 1848, it disappeared in the Arctic, its fate a mystery. In 2014, it was found. T his is its story. ____________________________________ 'Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end.' - Bill Bryson ____________________________________ Michael Palin - Monty Python star and television globetrotter - brings the remarkable Erebus back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic. The ship was filled with fascinating people: the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier'; the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus's final, disastrous expedition; and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist - when he wasn't shooting the local wildlife dead. Vividly recounting the experiences of the men who first set foot on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, beyond the reach of desperate rescue missions, Erebus is a wonderfully evocative account of a truly extraordinary adventure, brought to life by a master explorer and storyteller. ____________________________________ 'Thoroughly absorbs the reader. . . Carefully researched and well-crafted, it brings the story of a ship vividly to life.' - Sunday Times 'This is an incredible book. I couldn't put it down. The Erebus story is the Arctic epic we've all been waiting for.' - Nicholas Crane 'Palin is a superb stylist, low-key and conversational, who skillfully incorporates personal experience. He turns up obscure facts, reanimates essential moments, and never shies away from taking controversial positions. This beautifully produced volume - colour plates, outstanding maps - is a landmark achievement.' - Ken McGoogan, author of Fatal Passage 'I absolutely loved it: I had to read it at one sitting . . . Fascinating.' - Lorraine Kelly, ITV Lorraine 'Magisterial . . . Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s.' - The Times ...Show more

The Diary of a Bookseller (HB) by Shaun Bythell

$33.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Hilarious, wry, and charming tales of bookselling in remotest Scotland   "Among the most irascible and amusing bookseller memoirs I've read." --Dwight Garner, New York Times   The funny and fascinating memoir of Bythell's experiences at the helm of The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second h and bookstore--and the delightfully unusual staff members, eccentric customers, odd townsfolk and surreal buying trips that make up his life there. ...Show more

Written in History: Letters That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore

$40.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

WRITTEN IN HISTORY celebrates the great letters of world history, creative culture and personal life. Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects over one hundred letters from ancient times to the twenty-first century: some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling; some are exquisi te works of literature, others brutal, coarse and frankly outrageous; many are erotic, others heartbreaking. The writers vary from Elizabeth I, Rameses the Great and Leonard Cohen to Emmeline Pankhurst, Mandela, Stalin, Michelangelo, Suleiman the Magnificent and unknown people in extraordinary circumstances - from love letters to calls for liberation, declarations of war to reflections on death. In the colourful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading: how they enlighten our past, enrich the way we live now - and illuminate tomorrow. ...Show more

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

$38.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

As heard on NPR's This American Life "Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air "One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever." --Christian Science Monitor A rolli cking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins--some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them--and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature. ...Show more

The Handy Box of Knots by R Penn

$25.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

$28.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Twenty-five years after she left, Kassabova returns to Bulgaria to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece in an immersive travel narrative that is also a shadow history of the Cold War, a sideways look at the migration crisis troubling Europe, and a deep, witchy descent into interior and ex terior geographies. ...Show more

Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff by STEVENS, CHRIS (ILLUSTRATOR)

$15.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

Red Notice : How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy by Bill Browder

$26.00 NZD

Category: Non-Fiction General

I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed some day. If I?m killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know.Reads like a classic thriller, with an everyman hero alone and in danger in a hostile foreign city ... but it?s all true, and it?s a story that needs to be told.LEE CHILDAn unburdening, a witness statement and a thriller all at the same time ... electrifying. THE TIMESA shocking true-life thriller. TOM STOPPARD---In November 2009, the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight police officers in a freezing cell in a Moscow prison. His crime? Testifying against Russian officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes. Red Notice is a searing expose of the whitewash of this imprisonment and murder. The killing hasn?t been investigated. It hasn?t been punished. Bill Browder is still campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. This is his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through battles with ruthless oligarchs in turbulent post-Soviet Union Moscow, to the shadowy heart of the Kremlin. With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Noticeis a shocking political roller-coaster. ...Show more