Imagine in Michael Schumacher had come back to Formula 1 and won the World Championship. This is what Mark Todd has achieved - winning at Badminton in 2011 and being a favourite to win a third Olympic gold medal. Mark Todd retired from eventing in 2000, after the Sydney Olympics, to take up a career as a racehorse trainer and breeder in his native New Zealand. He had a great deal of success but always hankered after competing at the highest level. He set his sights on riding at the 2008 Olympics - he achieved this, jumping a dou... read more
How is it that someone who gets seasick and loves her two showers a day attempted to sail across the Pacific in a small yacht with her new husband and baby? It can be summed up in two words. Love. Adventure. Yep, there is the love of adventure, which is pretty self explanatory. And then there is love with a capital L, which needs a little more explaining. In Mrs Blacksmith's (aka Angela Meyer) words: 'I should have known that a life on the high seas was on the cards when our wedding cake featured a cut out of a sailing ship. The o... read more
Family trusts are as popular today as ever. A family trust offers you the benefits, use and control of your assets and doesn't penalise you for owning them. Clear and straight-forward, and aimed at the layperson, Family Trusts includes up-to-date advice, with real-life examples and answers to commonly asked questions throughout. It has sold well over 100,000 copies since it was first published and is an essential book for anyone curious about family trusts, whether they are self-employed, a business owner, a wage and salary earner ... read more
After years spent eating like the Hungry Caterpillar, I am sick of it. Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months and months are suddenly years. Then all of a not-so-sudden, I am 100.6 kg.
The time has come for transformation.
Former champion netball player and Silver Fern April Ieremia has struggled with her weight since retiring from elite sport in 1996. Fed up, April sets herself the challenge to lose 30 kg in 30 weeks. No gimmicks and no tricks – just eating intelligently and exercising regularly. She ... read more
New Zealand in the 1820s had no government or bureaucratic presence; no newspapers were published; the literate population was probably no more than a couple of dozen people at any one time. Early explorers' assessments of New Zealand were haphazard at best - few knew what to make of this foreign land and its people. In this groundbreaking history of early New Zealand, Paul Moon details how so many of the events in this decade - the introduction of aggressive capitalism, the arrival of literacy and the beginnings of Maori print cu... read more
The first paperback edition of this classic A.W. Reed title remains true to the original vision - to create a highly accessible reference to the traditional life and customs of Maori. Taonga Tuku Iho translates to "treasures from the past that have been handed down to us". This superb resource of information about early Maori is now available to a wider audience. Originally published in 1963 (and reprinted every two to three years until the early 1980s), with a second edition published in 2002, the book has been edited and updated ... read more
The Meeting Place is an examination of relationships between Maori and Pakeha focusing predominantly on the period between 1814 and 1840 when, author Vincent O'Malley argues, both peoples lived / inhabited a 'middle ground' - in the historian's Richard White's phrase - in which neither could dictate the political, economic or cultural rules. O'Malley begins by introducing readers to pre-1814 encounters between Maori and European from Tasman and Cook to sealers and whalers. He then provides a thematic analysis of the 1814 to 1840 pe... read more
Country folk have their own way of doing things and their own sense of humour too. They are naturally wary of men in suits and university types, and such people have to be put to the test before they can be accepted. They are not too keen on new-fangled ways of doing things either; a meal of mountain oysters is one thing, but washed down with a glass of bull's semen? What's the world coming to? Once Upon A Cowpat is a hugely enjoyable collection of rural yarns, with subjects ranging from the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival, country rug... read more