the penguin history of new zealand by michael king

Though extraordinarily well-informed in terms of modern research details, King's account is also notable for its perspectives on time and on the themes that have defined us. It covers New Zealand from its geological formation through to the present. King's History is too long to be called a short history, yet even at 500 pages it has an apparent compactness due to tight organisation and lucid presentation. Like Sinclair's history at the time, King's version will be widely accepted, at least for a while, as a defining historical text for a nation, one that records as well as creates perceived historical trends and the evolution of its citizens' characteristics. Michael King has now produced a general history of New Zealand that is both truly accessible to all readers and also sustains explanatory themes that give instructive meaning to our past and present. With its slightly postmodern story-telling and all too vigorous (post-angst) proclaiming of New Zealand's new complexity and diversity, it emphasised discontinuities rather than continuities, and was more descriptive than explanatory. James Belich's two-volumed history of New Zealand (Making Peoples, 1996, and Paradise Reforged, 2001) was rather too long for general readership.

It was as much disturbing as enlightening. Collectively, the chapters mirrored the angst of the Muldoon years, and their inherent grizzling about their present was projected on to the past. It reflected the tendency of historians to fragment the past into their now narrow specialisations and to talk in relatively exclusive ways.

Williams, in 1981 (and revised under the editorship of Geoffrey Rice in 1992), was a multi-authored work, by academics, essentially for academics. The Oxford History of New Zealand, edited by W.H. Of course, it is now long past its use-by date. It was characterised by a proud account of the building of an enlightened and prosperous democracy on remote islands. Keith Sinclair's Short History of New Zealand, first published in 1959, was the last genuinely accessible and instructive (at the time) version of our past. Howe This is by far the best general history of New Zealand to be published in a generation.

The penguin history of new zealand by michael king