Modern

The Making Of Modern New Zealand

Although The Land of New

ealand by Michael Turnbull

id lan A. McLaren is obviously

ritten for schools, it, in fact,

akes fascinating reading for

iy Antipodean with the slightest

terest in his Colonial past.

'HE book covers a century and a half of New Zealand history, )m the coming of the first Euro ans to the present day, but the >ry is presented in quite a new ty.

It consists of extracts from letters, tries, old newspapers, posters and vertisements, giving I-was-there :ounts of events and modes of A “boat-steerer” in one of the very rliest whaling expeditions gives a jcription of how a Maori who had m recruited (or kidnapped) as :ra crew, took on a whale, single nded.

Early missionaries describe their »rk not only among the Maoris t in acting as a buffer between :m and the European adventurers o were the first white men to tie in NZ.

When the great migration from rope began in the 1840’s, there re many who left descriptions of veiling conditions in the sailing ps of the day and of the first few irs of settling in a completely

developed country.

Dther extracts cover the conflict ween Maori and Pakeha—physical well as cultural—in the years 10 to 1870, mostly in the North md.

Phere are pieces about transport, uri fellers, roads, education and Dlic health, the first motor cars, Boer War and Gallipoli, the eat Slump (the depression of the 10’s) and the Great Prosperity e post-World War II period) of present.

Mthough designed to be read h a companion volume by the ne writers (The Changing Land- Short History of New Zealand ), » book can stand on its own feet a fascinating social document and mger-post to all variety of back end material to New Zealand’s ) years of modern history.—JT.

The Land Op New Zealand

igmans, Green & Co. Ltd. 16/6).